Hey Beauties,

Today, I have a really exciting review! Well, exciting for me. I just picked this palette up, but I really couldn’t wait any longer to swatch and play around with it. That’s how happy I am about this release. If you’ve been here a bit you may have noticed my slight love over Kat Von D’s entire makeup line. I adore everything she comes out with. The packaging is always so edgy and sleek, and even the names of her products make my heart flutter at times.

It’s safe to say that her brand is probably my favorite makeup brand at Sephora. So, when she started showing sneak peaks of the Shade+Light Eye palette…I knew I needed it. It was love at first Instagram like. I’m a gal that loves mattes, neutrals, and grungy styled things, and this palette looked like it would deliver all of that and more. I also thought this palette would make a great companion to my Melt Cosmetics Dark Matter Stack and my Innerstellar Palette since I reach for those constantly, yet I always need shadows from elsewhere if I’m feeling elaborate.

I had seen people saying that the Sephora’s inside of JcPenney already had these palettes out before any other Sephoras, so of course I went to see for myself. I looked in the Kat Von D section and couldn’t find it and looked elsewhere and started to lose hope, and then there she was. Waiting for me.

Alright, enough of my palette love story, I’m sure you all have come here for the review. This palette is marketed as the “companion” to the Shade Light Contour Palette. I don’t own that, but that’s a different rant for a different day.

This palette is $46 (as are all of her eye palettes) and has 12 shadows in all. Kat Von D is exclusive to Sephora and Sephora.com. As far as I know, this palette will be permanent since the contour palette is as well.

The packaging is the standard thick cardboard. I admit I am not too fond of the cardboard, but I know that in order to keep the palletes under $50 it may be needed. It’s still very thick and dense though, and the black and gold lettering on the front is so sexy. Yes, I just called this palette sexy.

There are 12 shadows in all. 3 very large “base” shadows that are 2.3 grams each and 9 smaller shadows that are 1.1 grams each. So, there’s quite a bit of product in this palette.

The way this palette works is it’s divided into “quads.” The first quad is the neutral quad, and consists of the first base shadow and the 3 shadows beneath it. The second quad is the cool toned quad, and the third is the warm toned quad. There was a little booklet that came with the palette explaining the quads and how to use the shadows to lift the eyes and such, and I thought that was neat.

However, I don’t play by the rules and I like to play and mix all the colors. From looking and swatching these colors, I don’t think any colors are too warm or too cool to mix and match quads, and I like that. I like that I can comfortably color outside the quadrants and still create great looks.

Update: I actually used 2 shades from the warm quad this morning and a few from the neutral quad and the look turned out fantastic! I think I may sit down and actually film it 😉

I also love the balance of light and dark shades in this palette. Often I see palettes have too many brown or almost black shades and 1-2 light shades and it’s not a great variety. There’s a variety of transition, highlight, base, and contouring shades in this palette. There’s also a matte black, but that’s in every single one of Kat Von D’s palettes. I think I’m set on black shadow for life at this point.

Swatches:

Pigmentation: These are very pigmented. The swatches I did above were done with no primer…and the lighter shades even showed up on my ghostly pale skin. That’s right, rest assured that these are very pigmented. I have a problem with getting too excited and just digging my brush right into shadows…probably not the best choice with these. A little will go a very long way. I will say that I was under the assumption that every shade in this palette was matte, but Samael (the far end light shade) is not. It’s actually a little pearlized, but that’s okay. I think that shade would be the one to add a bit of dimension to any look if you’re not about a full matte look.

Texture: These are very soft and buttery. The shade “liberatus” from the cool quad actually had a bit of fallout when I was playing with this palette, but that was the only one that did. So, be careful and maybe slowly build up with that shade because I went kinda ham on it and had brown shadow all over my face afterwards. The other shades did not have any fallout though.

Overall thoughts: Do I even need to say it? I love this palette. I think this will be an amazing partner to my other grungier palettes, and will be great on it’s own. I feel this palette is definetely worth the price given the amount of product as well. I skipped out on the Too Faced matte palette to snag this one, and I am glad I did. I really love the packaging and names of the shadows. Gah, I just love it.

As always, thank you for reading my review! I hope you all found something helpful in this. I can’t wait to play with this palette more! I’m sure I will be mentioning it often in the upcoming weeks.

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