Makeup Goodies: Too Faced Be Merry & Bright and Urban Decay Black Market

I recently had a little fun money, and I decided to buy myself a couple of goodies with them. Among other things (what up shoes for $11 on Amazon!), I bought these two little darlings, which I had been eying for a while & since I had the money AND a coupon AND some ulta points, I figured why not.

Too Faced Be Merry & Be Bright

Urban Decay Black Market

The Urban Decay set was easy–I basically want every eye pencil & set Urban Decay makes & this little travel set was the one I could rationalize spending money on. I’m pretty happy with all the colors.

It’s hard to tell from this picture (stupid terrible lighting in my house), but there’s a coppery reddish brown (West), grey (Desperation), black (Black Market), purple (Riot), olive green (Apathy), & navy blue(Ink). I’m super excited by them all, but especially the grey & olive green. The black isn’t crazy dark black (like Perversion), but it has a really nice subtle pearly sheen to it, so it’s a nice addition to my other 3 or 4 Urban Decay black eyeliners. (See some better swatches here). All in all, I can’t be happier with this set. What can I say, I have a thing for eyeliner.

I don’t own much Too Faced stuff, but I’ve been wanting basically ALL their holiday sets. I swear I went back and forth for almost a week before picking this one. But I’m glad I did.

This one comes with two palettes, Be Merry & Be Bright, and a full sized Lash Injection mascara. Each of the palettes has 6 shadows and two face products–a blush and a highlighter in one, and a blush and a bronzer in the other.

First up, Be Bright.

This palette is aptly named, as you can see.

My swatches are terrible, but hopefully you can still see how gorgeous these are. They’re incredibly soft, and pretty pigmented. Mauvelous needed a couple of swipes to build up, as did Wish (but that’s not surprising given that Wish is a light neutral), but the others were just one swipe to get that color.

Then there’s the highlighter, Inner Light, which is a nice pinky goldeny highlighter. It’s shimmery, but doesn’t look to be a total glitter bomb. We’ll see after I play with it some more. Then the blush Lollipop. It’s pretty pink, but I think it’ll blend out nicely. (By the way, getting good swatches? WAY HARDER than beauty bloggers make it look. Sheesh, these almost don’t tell you anything.)

And, I do appreciate that the palette has some suggestions for how to use everything.

Next up is the Be Merry palette.

This one has much more neutral, everyday colors.

But again, super buttery and soft, even the glittery shades. Bubbly (the peachy color) is a little chalky, but should be a nice color to work with. And man, Very Merry (green) & Buttered Rum (warm champagne-y color) are just stunning.

This palette has a bronzer Spice, which I think will be perfect for contouring as it’s not super dark despite how it looks in the pan. Definitely lighter than Too Faced Chocolate Soleil (which I have. It’s beautiful, but it is DARK, and as someone who is only starting to dip my toe in the contouring waters, it’s beyond my skill level).  And the blush is Peachy Keen, which swatches way pinker than I was expecting. In the pan, it looks sort of like theBalm’s Hot Mama, but I’ll have to see how it actually looks on my face.

And again, with some ideas of how to use. (Man, contouring pictures always look CAH-RAZY).

(Seriously, swatching is HARD. Beauty bloggers, I salute you.)

I can’t wait to play with all of my new goodies, to see how they actually perform when I’m using them–with my base level of knowledge, user error can make a wonderful palette sit unused in my drawer. Let’s hope they live up to a beginner’s tricks. And who knows, maybe it’ll keep me from coveting the rest of the holiday makeup goodies.

Probably not, but let’s pretend for a few minutes, k?

Tagged as: NaBloPoMo