Review: Stila’s In the Light Eye Shadow Palette

So today, Sydney feels like this:

It’s 14 degrees today, which may sound not toooo bad – but, there’s a difference between a dry cold and a moist cold. We get the ‘moist’ kind, so because there’s lots of moisture in the air, it feels colder than it actually is. I remember when I was in Europe and it would be below zero, it was cold but it was bearable because the air was so dry. Oh and it’s raining and it’s windy. Just awful. Ok, so now that I complained for a bit, let’s move on to todays review lol

Before this palette, I hadn’t owned any Stila products previously. I love their packaging and their aesthetic direction but because it was a little difficult to get my hands on and pricey here in Aus, I always skipped their products for other higher end brands. A friend of mine bought this palette for me in the States. I asked her for it on a whim and I’m sooo glad I did because it’s so so lovely.

I’m really impressed by the quality of these shadows. They remind me of Urban Decay eye shadows a lot: buttery, smooth and pigmented! Plus, the colour selection in this palette is just gorgeous! I’m not sure why, but it reminds me quite a bit of my days in Scandinavia. Maybe because the light in the arctic circle is so diffused and extraordinary, these tones really do match the palette name.

You get 4 matte shadows in this palette, 6 shimmery shadows and a Smudge Stick eyeliner. Let’s go through each shadow and hopefully I will be able to describe the colours well for you!

From bottom swatch to top (without primer underneath):

Bare: A matte champagne/ivory shade. It isn’t to powdery and is the perfect base colour for other shadows. It matches my skin tone very well, but evens out the colour on your eyelids.

Kitten: Stila’s most famous shade. It actually looks a little more yellow in the swatch above than it does in actual life. It’s a pale metallic gold, that can in some lights look a little peachy almost. The shimmer shadows in this palette are soooo buttery soft and this shade is probably the softest of them all! Kitten just glides onto your skin beautifully.

Bliss: I love this shade! It’s a matte somewhere in between a brown and a purple. It blends easily for a matte shadow and it’s powdery at all.

Sunset: A red toned metallic gold, which is supper buttery like kitten. It’s a little redder than the swatch shows above.

Sandstone: Matte deep neutral brown. Also easy to work with and pigmented.

Bubbly: A metallic honey hued gold. Super soft and buttery.

Gilded Gold: This is an interesting shade. It’s like the base of this shade is a cool toned matte brown, but it has very small and sparse gold flecks throughout the shadow. It’s probably the driest and most packed matte shadow out of the palette, so it’s difficult to translate the depth of this colour onto the lid. It’s gorgeous though because it ‘s so unique, so it’s worth the work!

Luster: Suuuper buttery and pigmented! It’s a deep cool toned brown, with some gold shimmer. The shimmer is so fine, it’s actually not very ‘shiny’ in real life – it’s very understated. This is the perfect shimmery deep brown shadow, if you are scared of shimmer.

Night Sky: The perfect night shade! It’s more blue than grey and contains silver shimmer.

Ebony: A matte, dark black. Staple shade.

The mattes in this palette aren’t as buttery and soft as the shimmer shadows, but that’s t be expected as matte eye shadows tend to be drier and more tightly packed in general. They are hard to do and I think Stila has done a really good job with theirs. They are still pigmented (you have to pack Gilded Gold on a bit to get a deeper brown shade like in the pan, but it’s such a unique shade that I forgive them :P) and easy to blend, without being super powdery.

You also get a Smudge Stick eyeliner in the palette in Damsel – a deep matte brown. I’m so impressed with this liner, it’s super super soft and just glides on like Stila’s buttery metallic eye shadows, but also sets so it doesn’t budge or move around. They are also meant to be waterproof. The only ‘issue’ I have with mine is that I don’t know how to wind the product up. Did I get a faulty one or am I just doing it wrong? If someone could help me that, I’d appreciate it! I don’t technically ‘need’ to wind it up yet, but I’m still worried lol

Today I used Bare as my eyeshadow base and Bliss in the outer corners of my eye and inner corners (I made a V shape facing inwards on the outer corner and another facing inwards but in my inner corner). I then used Kitten just in the centre of my lids. I also took Bliss down onto my lower lash line and used Kitten in the inner corner. Unfortunately, using my phone camera, the colours gets washed out (I have my eye on a specific camera now, so things are moving forward and hopefully in a few weeks it will be mine!). But hopefully you get an idea what I was going for 🙂

Something else I love, is that Stila has a few palettes like this one (with different colour combinations and the In the Know palette contains all matte shades, so that one is on my wish list next!) and they are all permanent.

I’d love to also try more of Stila’s liners since this one is so good! Urban Decays 24 hour liners are similar, but they smudge for me. So maybe these will end up being made for me? 🙂 Do have any makeup favourites from Stila? Anything you could recommend? I’d love to know! I think I will also try doing a complete gold eye makeup look next using this palette 🙂

If your curious about what I mean about the light diffusing colours differently in the arctic, here are some of my own personal snaps from Sweden. These were taken in a place called Kiruna, which is within the arctic circle. It’s realllly far north, towards the ‘end’ of Sweden, near the border with Norway.

Don’t forget to join me on Facebook for more inspiration and shenanigans! May is looking to be super cold for us Sydneysiders, so I hope you are staying toasty warm wherever you are and getting some sunshine!

Catch ya next time!

Beauty Bee~

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