The BECCA Balearic Love Palette from their Winter 2011 Balearic Love Collection contains 3 powder eye shadows designed to give you the perfect smoky eye. The description from the BECCA Australia site is as follows:
Create richly shaded, sensuous eyes in jewelled tones of bronzed plum and violet with this limited edition eye palette.
A combination of velvet matte and soft shimmer textures, shades Atlas, Romal and Marcella blend effortlessly for an on-trend festive look.
When I read that description I knew I needed to have this palette. Bronzed plum and violet?! Umm YES PLEASE. Here is the promo picture for the palette:
Now I think you can already see where my issue lies. The palette is not at all what I was expecting. That shade on the far right. You can see the the plum tones in the promo pic above. My pictures. Not there. Not there at all. I see nothing indicative of the jewel tones implied in their product description. The far right shade (Marcella) in my palette is a bronze shade with mostly copper shimmer and subtle plum tones. It is a gorgeous shade but not as overtly plum as I was expecting. Marcella is somewhat sheer so it definitely works best layered over the darker shade Romal. The other two shades also appear much more cool toned in the promo pic. The first shade (Atlas) appears in the promo pic to be a light almost pink taupe. Atlas in actuality is a warm, matte tan shade. It is similar to Naked in the Urban Decay Naked Palette. This is a nice crease shade for me. Too dark and warm to serve as a highlight shade on my fair, cool skin. Overall a really lovely palette but not in line with the promotional material in my eyes.
This is a very well put together palette. The shades work wonderfully to create a smoky eye that can be intensified depending on your application. I do find however that to get the more plum/violet nuances to the smoky eye look the Cabrera eye liner that was released with this collection is essential. I will show you some looks I created with all the items together as soon as I’ve completed my reviews.
Now one weird thing about my palette, both the back of the compact and the box, all three shades are labelled as Demi Matt. This is my first experience with BECCA eye shadows so I’m not sure what their demi matt formula is usually like but the first two shades in this palette are absolutely matte. They are a wonderful formula though that blends very nicely. The third shade is not matte. It is definitely a subtle shimmer shade although the base seems to be somewhat matte.
Here is a quick eye look I did last night using all my new BECCA Balearic Love items. Sorry these were taken in poor lighting with flash but it’ll give you an idea of how nicely these shades apply together. You can see the plum tones near the lash line achieved mostly through the use of the eye liner. I found Atlas too warm in my crease. I have done another look today that I will feature in the full FOTD post where I omitted Atlas. I find using a cooler shade to blend out the crease works best with my colouring.
It appears that this collection may not be released in North America. Fret not though because I picked the items up online at Zuneta who ships internationally.
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