Warm summer shimmer: Review and swatches of Juvia's Place Nubian Palette

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Before I get into my review of this palette, and my millions of photos (you have been warned!), I want to alert you that TheBalm is on sale on HauteLook right now for 40-50% off (among some other brands). I mention this here because I bought this Juvia's Place palette on HauteLook a while back marked down to $19 (I had a credit).

Because I tend to do a lot of research before buying things (with some regrettable impulsive exceptions, of course), I'm rarely pleasantly surprised when I try out a new product. Sometimes I'm disappointed; a lot of the time it lives up to my expectations. In this case, however, the Juvia's Place Nubian Palette (or "The Nubian By Juvia's") as the packaging calls it) is much more amazing than I had expected or hoped. The colors are beautiful, and despite the fact that I usually have trouble wearing reds and oranges as eyeshadows, I've used every shade in this palette multiple times by now, and they all work for me. They're stunningly pretty, pigmented eyeshadows.

First, check out the cover, if you haven't seen it before:

For whatever reason, my camera (and most cameras, from other photos I've seen) has a hard time capturing the actual color of the packaging, which is definitely green (i.e. not blue or teal or aqua). As you may know, I don't tend to care much about packaging so long as it's functional. This is a cardboard palette with a magnetic closure. It's smooth enough that I've had it for a couple of months now and used it regularly, and it's not getting messy from the eyeshadow inside.

My favorite part of the packaging is the illustration on the lid. Look at all that detail in Nefertiti's makeup and crown! Very nice. My only pedantic quibble is that Nefertiti was Egyptian, not Nubian, and we don't have any evidence that she had Nubian ancestry. But hey, who knows.

Juvia's Place doesn't state anywhere on their website that their products are designed specifically for women of color, but the palettes are inspired by places in Africa and are illustrated with these beautiful images of women of color. The eyeshadow shades included tend to be on the deeper or more vibrant side, colors that would work well for deeper skin. Nevertheless, they also perform excellently on my pale complexion, so I'd recommend this palette to just about anyone (except if you absolutely can't wear warm colors).

Let me show you more pictures of the pretty!
The shades aren't given names on the palette or the external box, which doesn't really affect how I use it, though it means that I have to refer to them by their location here, which is a bit awkward. Here's the top left portion of the palette:

Top right:

Bottom left (repeating the middle row):

You'll notice that there's a bit of shiftiness in the shimmers, so they can look different from one photo to the next.

Bottom right (repeating middle row):

LET'S GET EVEN CLOSER! Top far right:

Middle far left:

Middle far right:

Despite all my photos, I suspect you might have the same experience I did, and find this palette much more impressive in person.

Swatches! All of these were done with a brush without primer. Here's the top row:

The far left shade in the top row is really interesting. It's a multichrome with some gold-orange-pink shift. Because it's translucent, I think it would work well as a highlight shade on darker skin without looking chalky, since there's no white base. I've also used it as a face highlight, and it's very pretty and subtle.

Middle row (my favorite!):

All beautiful! The far right coppery-brown creates a bit of fall-out, as you can see.

Bottom row:

The dark matte shades don't look very impressive in swatches, but I've had no problems using them on my eyes. The shimmer in the second shade to the right does tend to get lost a bit.

Because I'm not used to eyeshadows that are quite this richly pigmented, it's taken me a bit of practice to get the hang of them. My biggest problem is that I end up packing too much shadow onto my eyelid with the result that all the shades I use blending together during the day (no doubt exacerbated by my hooded lids) so that after a few hours it looks like I used just one shimmery eyeshadow. I really suggest, particularly with the shimmers, only tapping your brush lightly in the pan once, blowing off the excess, and then using just what's on your brush. For me, that's more than enough product to cover my entire mobile lid. I have a habit of doing half my eyelid and then going back for more eyeshadow, and that's when everything muddies together. When I exercise restraint, I don't have that problem.

Here's a simple look I did using the middle far right shimmer on my mobile lid, the matte clay color that is second from the left in the top row to blend it into the crease, the far right highlight shade in the top row on my browbone, and the darkest matte shade from the bottom row to lightly line my upper lashline.

This shimmer is the shadow that I noted above has the most fallout. You can see it to the right of my eye and in my waterline. Use a light touch!!

Also note that, on me at least, almost every shadow in this palette ends up looking much warmer and oranger/redder on my face than it does in the pan. I'm note sure if it's the green background that contributes to that, or if it's my own coloring. But I'll think, "Now I will use this brown," and it's orange. A miraculously flattering slightly brownish orange, sure, but orange.

The look above is about as fancy as I usually get with my eyeshadow, but the prettiness here inspired me to try a halo eye, and I think it worked out ok. You can tell from the first photo why I don't usually bother with anything this elaborate--I don't have much eyelid space to begin with, and what I do have gets lost in my crease. Next time I'll bring the crease shade up just a little bit higher in the middle.

It's been a while since I took the photos below, so I'm having a hard time remembering exactly which shades I used. I know that on the center of my lid I used the shimmer from the far right of the top row, and I used the rose-gold shade from the far left of the middle of the row on either side. It looks like I used that top left highlight on the browbone, but as you can see, it's subtle and sheer. I might also have used one of the mattes from the top row in the crease.

Shiny! If you're on the pale side like me, you'll probably notice that there's no light beige/champagne highlight shade in here, but since almost every other brand in the world includes one of those in their palettes, you likely already have one. Or you can just buy Wet N Wild Brulee and use it with everything.

This palette is one of my favorite purchases not only of this year, but in a long time. And you know I don't unequivocally rave about things very often.

I got the Nubian palette for $19 on Hautelook. Unless it appears there again, it looks like the best place to buy it at the moment is directly from the Juvia's Place website for $25 or Amazon where the price fluctuates. Anyone know of another good source?

ETA: It's now available for $20 from ULTA.