New and improved? The new Wet N Wild Comfort Zone palette compared to the original

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I have something of a series now comparing reformulated Wet N Wild products with their predecessors (here and here), among them some of my favorite affordable makeup. Those previously revamped products didn't exactly measure up to the originals in my comparisons, so I have to admit I had serious doubts about the new Wet N Wild Comfort Zone palette. Why change something that has been consistently recommended as one of the best drugstore eyeshadow palettes on the market?

I've been thinking the answer to that question for a while. Unlike many redesigns by other brands, Wet N Wild didn't reduce the product size while jacking up the price. In fact, the price has remained the same, while the weight has actually increased (minimally) from 0.3 to 0.32 oz. Because two new matte shades were added, and they are in the largest pans, that should mean that the size of each of the original shades has decreased, however, which is worth noting.

If I had to guess why the change was made, I'd point to the fragility of the shadows, and maybe the packaging too. I can't be sure, but I do know lots of people complained about their Wet N Wild shadows crumbling and shattering with the slightest bump. I don't know if you can see it in the photo above, but the duochrome in the in bottom right of my old palette does has a small chunk missing--I have no idea when or how that happened. If the eyeshadows broke too often after people bought them, you have to assume that they also frequently broke in transit and while they were in stores, so the amount of product discarded might not have made up for the number of sales. (I'd be curious to hear if anyone's new palette has crumbled, but the shadows seem a bit more durable to me.) Of course, there's also the fact that a new release/re-release generates publicity and increases sales.

I've had my OG Comfort Zone palette since 2011 or 2012, and despite appearances, I've used it quite a lot. It has intense, smooth, metallic shimmers that perform really well. I'm not such a fan of the matte shades with glitter ("Definer" on the left and "Crease" on the right) though they are decent for lining the eyes. I like it so much that the reformulation had a lot to live up to. I'm not going to do a full review of each palette, but I am going to compare each shade and show you some swatches and eye looks.

Here is the first row of shimmers, in the (new) order of the new palette, starting with the left hand column. All applied over Wet N Wild primer (reviewed here) to make the colors and finishes as clear as possible for comparison. The old version is on the left and the new version is on the right.

The duochromes always get me: Review of L'Oréal Infallible Galaxy Lumiere Holographic Eyeshadows in Crescent Moon, Full Moon, and Moon Kissed

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Two duochrome posts in a row? Is that allowed? (As usual, we ignore the word "holographic" when it's in the name of a makeup product.) I love duochromes, and they make me pay more for drugstore eyeshadows than I normally would. More for eyeshadow singles in general (though there was that time I paid full price for Urban Decay X, and I don't even really like it). These (deep breath) L'Oréal Infallible Galaxy Lumiere Holographic Eyeshadows are $13 a piece, so I suggest waiting for a sale, which will always come sooner or later for drugstore makeup. I had a B2GO Free deal from, but if I hadn't also had Ulta points from my credit card to spend, I might have balked even at that.

None of that is to say that I don't think these eyeshadows are amazing and totally worth picking up if you are a duochrome fiend like I am. They're absolutely lovely.

The formula of these eyeshadows is interesting. Though they have the "Infallible" name attached to them, they're not the same as the regular Infallible singles (reviewed here), which come with little plates on top to keep them densely packed. These Galaxy shadows have a more spongey texture--not as squishy as Colourpop Super Shock eyeshadows, but if you press your finger into the pan, you can feel it compress a bit. I dropped Full Moon on the floor and, instead of shattering, the whole shadow came loose in one piece inside the pan. I was able to press it back in place with a finger. Like the L'Oréal Infallible eyeshadows and the Colourpop Super Shock shadows, these apply best with a finger. With a brush they go on very sheer and a little patchy.

How about I let my many, many photos do the talking? My swatches were made with a brush without primer. Each one is several layers, because these shadows are sheer, and in swatch form they don't show up clearly in a single layer.

Left to right: Crescent Moon (sheer beige with green shift), Full Moon (white gold), and Moon Kissed (purple with blue shift).

Butter London Glazen Blush Gelee in Glimmer

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I love my Butter London Glazen Eye Gloss in Oil Slick (swatched here), and so I was curious about how a similar formula would function as a blush. The eyeshadow has intense glitter and dries very quickly--neither of which are qualities I'm looking for in a cream blush. And Butter London's promotional photos weren't very inspiring. (My Instagram stories commentary on their ad below.)

Actually, yeah, that is a pretty accurate photo, I suspect, if you just smeared an opaque layer of this blush on your cheek in a circle. If you want to avoid that look, like I do, it's kind of a tricky product to use. I'll get to that later.

First, the texture. It really is unusual. It's gelatinous and jiggly. I made you a GIF!

Shadow Swatches: Miscellaneous Eyeshadow Singles and Quads from Stila, L'Oréal, Tom Ford, Butter London, Revlon, and Urban Decay

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I didn't buy anything during the Sephora sale, did you? 20% off just isn't very exciting for me. I mean maybe if there was something I was definitely planning to buy anyway, it would be better to get 20% off than no discount at all, but there wasn't. Plus I have a bunch of Ulta points to use on frivolous shit.

Instead of shopping, lately, I've been playing with what I already have, including these eyeshadows which I realized I'd (mostly) never written about on my blog. Rather than doing a full review of them, I thought I'd just take some swatch photos and say a little about what I like or don't like about each. Not all of them are currently available, but I hope you enjoy the pretty pictures anyway.

The swatches below were made with a brush over primer (Black Radiance eyeshadow primer, reviewed here). If this were a proper review, I would have swatched them with and without primer for your information, but I just really wanted to show you the color and finish clearly. You can still tell which ones are shitty even over primer, anyway.

Oh, and I took way too many photos, which probably all look the same, so here's a cut.

ULTA Holographic Eye & Cheek Palette: My alternative to the Kat Von D Alchemist and Anastasia Beverly Hills Moonchild Palettes (and all the others)

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This is really just a post about something fun and shiny I've been playing with lately. Tons of photos, so be prepared! I got this Holographic Eye & Cheek Palette recently using some ULTA points (it's normally $16, but on sale for $8 right now). I'd been moving the Kat Von D Alchemist palette in and out of my Sephora cart for a few months. I love anything duochrome or shifty, but I had a hard time justifying $32 when I don't wear noticeable highlighter very often, and I doubted how much I'd actually use it as an eyeshadow transformer. I'm more of a 1-2 shades of eyeshadow person. For while I considered the BH Cosmetics Blacklight Highlight Palette, which contains 6 huge pans of iridescent highlighter for $17--but then I remembered that I was trying to minimize the amount of makeup I traveled with, and carting around an enormous highlighter supply probably wouldn't help me achieve that goal. (I'm not going to do a whole price-per-ounce analysis right now, but I can tell you that in the BH palette, you'll get a lot more product than in the ULTA palette for close to the same price, and in the KVD palette you'll get significantly less for twice the cost.)

So I settled on this ULTA option, in part because of my points, and in part because I've had good luck with ULTA brand products in the past. I think they're pretty underrated--the eyeliners are particularly great--and they always have some sort of sale on the store brand, so that you should never have to pay full price for anything.

As it turns out, I'm very happy that I bought this palette and equally happy that I didn't buy Alchemist, because while it's a lot of fun to play with, my predictions about how I would or wouldn't use it were accurate.

ULTA's Holographic Eye & Cheek Palette includes, as you can see, four iridescent, shifty, sheer highlighters. Have another look at the pans, and then I'll show about a million swatches after the cut.

It looks really pretty in the bathroom lighting, ok?

Butter London Glazen Eye Gloss 50% off today

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I have a real post almost finished that should go up later today, but in the meantime, I wanted to alert you to just about the only interesting thing I've seen so far in the ULTA 21 days of beauty sale, which is the Butter London Glazen Eye Gloss, which is on sale for $12. I have the shade Oil Slick (below, swatches here), and it's great. Have any of you tried the other colors? I'm tempted.

Well this is now officially the messiest makeup product I own. . #makeuplove #beauty #makeup #eyeshadow#makeupstash #bblogger #bbloggers #instabeauty#beautyblog #beautyblogs #beautyblogger #beautybloggers #butterlondon #duochrome #oilslick #glitter #shimmer

A post shared by Lyn (brutally honest beauty) (@brutallyhonestbeauty) on Aug 16, 2017 at 9:37am PDT

Good fortune: Wet N Wild Limited Edition Color Icon Trio in Plain to the Bone

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You know when you see an acquaintance coming toward you across the street, so you cross to the other side of the intersection to avoid an awkward stop-and-chat? But then you realize they're crossing too and you're forced into small talk that neither of you particularly wants to engage in anyway? Just me? Well, anyway, there was a CVS on that side of the street. so I ended up wandering in, and found one lone Wet N Wild Color Icon trio in the fall display, and it was the one I wanted: Plaid to the Bone. The universe was in balance again.

I don't know how likely it is that you will be able to find these eyeshadows in your local drugstore. I think they only appeared in my CVS 1-2 weeks ago, but like I said, the display was almost picked clean. I hope you do find them, though, because they are perfect and beautiful and you know I don't often gush about things. Either way, gaze on the duochrome beauty here and be in awe.

Unlike some of the weird combinations of shadows Wet N Wild sometimes comes up with, these are really well coordinated. The duochrome is basically a combination of the other two shades, which is a cool idea. I wouldn't wear them on the places they suggest you wear them (the "Browbone" shade is too dark for that part of my eyelid), but I think it would be possible to create a look using all three together. So far I have worn the duochrome on my mobile lid and the brown in the crease, and I wore the navy/teal as a liner with a matte brown shadow.

Swatches:

These swatches were done with a brush, not over primer. The teal took a little extra work to build up, but they're all very nicely pigmented, and they work wonderfully over primer. It's interesting that in sunlight, the middle dark teal shade, which looks like a completely matte navy blue in the pan, actually has a slight sheen to it. It does look pretty much matte on my eyelids though.

Here are a couple of comparisons (again on bare skin with a brush). The duochrome from the Wet N Wild Comfort Zone palette has a similar teal shimmer, but a much redder base. The Plaid to the Bone duochrome is a neutral brown base, and the shimmer might be slightly greener. The Comfort Zone shadow is a little softer and more intense.

I also compared the teal shade to Makeup Geek's Time Travel (reviewed here). It's so interesting to me that Time Travel looks teal in the pan, but often looks navy when you use/swatch it, and the Plaid to the Bone shadow looks navy in the pan and teal when you use/swatch it. I like the Plaid to the Bone teal better.

Swatches in indirect light: Wet N Wild Comfort Zone duochrome, Wet N Wild Plaid to the Bone duochrome, Makeup Geek Time Travel and Wet N Wild Plaid to the Bone.

Swatches in direct sunlight: Wet N Wild Comfort Zone duochrome, Wet N Wild Plaid to the Bone duochrome, Makeup Geek Time Travel and Wet N Wild Plaid to the Bone

I haven't had time to take photos of these on my eyes, but I thought I might as well post swatches and review details sooner rather than later, since this won't be around for long. I'm not usually someone who goes after "limited edition" shit, and I wouldn't have made a special effort to hunt this down, but I'm very pleased that I happened upon it. It really is great. I think Wet N Wild should seriously consider making it permanent. It's much more interesting and useable than some of their other Color Icon Trios.

If you really want it and can't find it in a store, some intrepid entrepreneurs resellers gougers have snatched some of these up and are selling them for $8+ on Ebay and Amazon. Otherwise, happy hunting! An excellent duochrome for under $4 is truly a blessing unto all who find it.

Urban Decay deals and free stuff (plus another duochrome!)

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HauteLook has 28 shades of the discontinued Urban Decay Revolution Lipsticks for $9.97 each. I highly recommend Rapture and the matte After Dark. I was hoping that they'd have Tilt, since I missed out on that one in the sales during the spring, but since they don't appear to, I will probably sit this one out. (Ulta has marked them back up to $21 for some reason.) Shipping for beauty products from HauteLook is about $6 and you usually have to wait a couple of weeks for your order to ship.

Since I got the order pictured above in the mail yesterday, I figured I'd make this post completely Urban Decay-themed. I got everything shown there for $10. It's actually just 4 items, but still! From upper left going clockwise: travel-size Perversion mascara, eyeshadow single in Sideline, blush sample card, and 7 eyeshadow samples cards with a primer sample.

The way to do this is to sign up for Urban Decay Junkies program, which is free. By doing so, you get free shipping on every order, and you get a free eyeshadow single of your choice (regular price $19) during your birthday month with any full-price order. That includes travel-size products, so I picked out the Perversion mascara, which I've had samples of before and really liked. One of these mini tubes lasts me at least three months, which is when you're usually advised to toss mascaras (though I rarely adhere to that rule). Anyway, I get about as much use out of it before it dries up as I do a full-size mascara. The free sample cards were added to my cart when I checked. And let me repeat: free shipping!

You also earn points for purchases and other things like posting reviews, referrals, and connecting your social media accounts. The points can be redeemed for $10 and $20 rewards toward purchases on the site. It's a pretty good program. I don't know if I'll make many other orders, but it's worth signing up for the birthday gift alone.

Finally, swatches of Urban Decay Sideline, since of course I chose a duochrome as my free eyeshadow. It's a peachy gold with a green shift. The green is really vibrant in person, but for some reason it doesn't come across strongly in my photos.

[Note: I also took new photos of the Maybelline duochrome Color Tattoo for my recent duochrome eyeshadows post. They still don't show it in all its true glory, but they are an improvement.]