Swatches and Comparisons

This is a bunch of swatches.. comparisons.. and basically, how I decide what palette to keep and what to let go :P

Lancome Color Design Sensational Effects EyeShadow

*gifted from Yasumi.. love!*

I'm not exactly sure how to read the colors on the back.. SO.. bear with me.

Filigree (shimmer) - what I imagine in my head of MAC Ricepaper.. yellow-beige

Mannequin (shimmer) - warm toned taupe?

Strut (intense) - blue/green awesomeness

Lezard (matte) - slightly-warm/red brown.. from a distance it looks sort of plum-y.

Bronze Glow (blush) - cool toned peach with gold flecks

The colors are slightly off and are NOT a true representation of their actual color.. the blue has a blue-green duochrome and otherwise I think this entire picture is a tad warm.. or magenta-ish (my current lightbulb in my lamp tends to run a little green).

Here's the gigantic comparison chart! Er, tissue paper..

Filigree & Mannequin -VERSUS- Rimmel 002 Smokey Brun

Top two are Rimmel, bottom two are Lancome

I couldn't decide between the two palettes at this point.. the colors that are similar are really totally different. If I had to choose two colors, I would probably choose the bottom left Lancome and the top right Rimmel.. though the bottom left Lancome does remind me of coffee or hot chocolate :P

Lezard -VERSUS- Rimmel

Lezard (bottom brown) is warmer than the Rimmel, and even at a distance, sort of plummy.. PLUS the Lancome doesn't have silver glitter, which makes it the winner between the two (IMO).

Strut -VERSUS- KATE

These colors are ssoooooo different, I don't even know why I swatched the two. I guess they're the two MOST similar colors in my collection as far as dark greens go. Kate is obviously much more blackish with green glitter while Strut has this awesome blue-green duotone. I would love both as nail polish colors, really.. hahah. As for on my eyes, I think Lancome wins just because it looks so cool :P plus it doesn't have glitter!

KATE -VERSUS- Majolook

These two colors are preeeeetty darn similar.. Kate has silver glitter while MM is just shimmer. MM wins out in texture.. and while Kate does pop a little more, I'm not a fan of fall-out glitter (on the off-hand chance of it). In the picture, Kate also looks a bit warmer though they look aboooout the same when it's sitting next to me on the tissue paper. MM it is.

Bronze Glow -VERSUS- Bourjois Peche blusher

I muuuuuch prefer the texture of Bronze Glow over Peche.. and while Peche looks gorgeous, I feel like I have to dig in my brush to get enough color out, which is bad for my brushes. The two colors are pretty far apart, though I like the brown-tone to Bronze Glow. I just swatched MAC's Margin and all three colors are fairly different. Based on texture, I would blogsale the Bourjois but by color, I'd have to keep them all.

So.. I phased out the Kate green gradation palette :P and failed at getting rid of another blush. And this totally makes me debate between the Rimmel and the Lancome palettes.. though I maaaay let go of the Rimmel, just because the Lancome bluegreen is way more awesome than four neutral shades. I haven't tried out the Lancome so we'll see if I like the warmer shades on my lids :P

Rimmel 002 and Kate/MM comparison

*This is a scheduled post*

SWATCH: Rimmel "Smokey Brun 002"

As I described in my last post, this is definitely my "go to" palette. The texture isn't all that great.. I feel like I sort of have to dig in my brush to get enough color for some of the lighter shades (but hey, I'm NC37). The dark brown goes on easily enough, as does the lightest shade. I would describe the colors as (lightest to darkest): A light yellow/gold-ed out white (what I imagine MAC's Ricepaper to look like--though I don't have it for comparison), a beige-champagne, copper and a brownie (food) cool-toned brown. The darkest brown doesn't show up very well in this swatch.. scroll down a little bit to see a better color representation.

Here, I swatched them with my other brow-highlight shades:

Top L-->R: Wet and Wild "Fine Wink", MAC Shroom (go-to brow h-light color), MAC Phloof

Bottom L-->R: Rimmel eyeshadows

You can see that they're all really quite different.. though "Fine Wink" and "Phloof" are sort of similar, except for "Phloof" has more silver shimmer to it and is lighter.. and "Fine Wink" has more traces of pink. These colors really aren't that dark.. I didn't brighten the photo in Photoshop because I wanted to really see the color tone difference that you couldn't normally see if the colors were brighter and more washed-out.

L-->R: Rimmel vs MAC "Handwritten"

As evidenced, "Handwritten" is a much warmer (reddish?) shade of brown than Rimmel (which also contains some silver glitter). Texture-wise, I prefer MAC over Rimmel though if you're on a budget (like me), this palette will be a great addition and it's perfect for every day wear, though you could totally use more of the dark brown to smoke out your look for night time!

KATE vs MAJOLOOK

The darkest blue shade on both are pretty good dupes for each other. The Kate (K1) blue glitter is much more noticeable than the one in the MM (M).. Plus I think the Kate glitter is slightly larger. The Kate blue looks slightly more blackish while the MM looks slightly more grey-toned. I'm not sure why I swatched (K2) which is the second darkest shade in the palette.. but there you go, hahaha. I would loooooove a nail polish that looked like K1!

KATE: There's definitely your blue spectrum in this one palette, and it makes it very easy to grab ONE palette and go, especially with you lucky gals who can use 5 colors in one look and have it ALL show (grumbles a bit about having monolids--not that there's ANYthing wrong with that!). The texture of these shadows is smooth but a little more powdery.. I keep feeling like I would have a bunch of fall out, but I don't. The fact that there's a cream shadow on the rightmost side kind of annoys me, since I don't tend to use cream shadows, but it's not enough to turn me away from using the palette. All of the shadows have some glitter in them.

MM: This has a nice variety of colors that I wouldn't normally think to put together. Fuzkittie made a great "vintage" look using just this palette--definitely one of the main reasons why I bough it in the first place. All of the shadows are shimmery and have this amazing buttery-soft texture to them. The issue I have is whenever I use MM palettes, they seem to fade like crazy on me! Maybe I just need to use a better base or I have super oily lids, who knows; I haven't heard many complaints about that from other people.

OVERALL: Even though I think the Kate palette is slightly more pigmented than the MM one, I find myself reaching for the MM palette more often.. mostly because of the color variety, and the fact that I don't tend to do all-blue EOTD's. I find myself hard-pressed whenever I think about putting EITHER of them up on blogsale though..