What I'm Not Buying: Tarte Bush Palette Color Wheel

So, as per usual, Tarte has come out with a holiday blush palette. Their Amazonian Clay blush formula has been incredibly popular for years, so the ability to nab a palette full of these pretty shades for the cost of about two full-sized blushes is very appealing. 

But, I'm not gonna buy this. 

This blush palette, with ten (ten!) shades comes off the heels of Tarte releasing and selling out of the Big Blush Book 2, which helped perpetuate the hysteria that if one does not sit in front of their computer frantically refreshing cosmetic pages that they will miss out of the latest hyped release. 

That's just not my style. 

The biggest positive that I can give the Color Wheel is the packaging. It's a smallish round disk that opens to reveal ten shades. 

I think this design is ten times better than that of the Big Blush Book 2, which was enormous and very flimsy with a sliding lid and no clasp. 

The Color Wheel palette is a little less than half the size of the Big Blush Book 2, which makes it compact, easy to store, and potentially good for traveling.

Traditionally Tarte's holiday blush palettes come in square, clutch-style packing: 

And I like the design of the Color Wheel better as it allows for twice the amount of shades.

But, and here's the thing. No one needs ten blushes. And that's the biggest reason why I won't be purchasing the Color Wheel. 

Really, the palette looks to be about eight blushes and two highlight shades. And even though there are eight individual blush shades, I know they would not look markedly different on my skin. And my guess it that they won't look all that different on most skin tones. 

That's the thing about blush. We don't pack it on like we do eyeshadow, and we always sheer it out. We want it to look natural, and when sheered out, most colors look pretty similar. 

For my warm olive skin, these are the blush shades I want:

• A rose
• A mauve
• A warm pink
• A coral 
• A mauve/brown 

That's it. That's all I want. And really, the rose, mauve, and mauve/brown shades all look pretty similar as is. 

If I had cool-toned skin, I would want a cool pink instead of a warm pink and maybe a lavender instead of a coral. But really, I don't see most skin tones wanting/needing more than five blush colors ever. 

I look at Tarte's Color Wheel and I ask myself: 

Will all the colors look markedly different on me? No. 

Will all the colors flatter my skin? No. 

Does the entirety of this palette offer me something I don't already have? No. 

Will I use this over my current collection of blushes? No. 

So, what's the appeal of this palette? Is it the color selection? The packaging? The value? 

I suspect the latter. See, that's how this entire holiday shopping season works. If you compare how much it would cost you to buy each individual blush at full size, this seems like a steal. BUT. You likely wouldn't buy every single one of these colors full-sized if you had to. And I think that's something a lot of people (myself included) forget. If I wouldn't buy them full-sized, why should I get them in a value set?

The last thing I want to address is quality. Year after year I am always SO disappointed in the quality of holiday products compared to their permanent counterparts. I have one Tarte Amazonian Clay blush, and it was made in the USA. The Color Wheel was made in China. I know this can be a controversial topic, but it's important to see that Tarte uses a different factory when making holiday palettes because it cuts a lot of the cost to them. But this also means that the quality is not the same. Sure, the formula could be similar, but since it is made at a different lab, the quality will inherently be different. 

And if you look at it from the business perspective, of course it makes sense to use a cheaper factory and to cut costs. But really, does the product become a value to the consumer? If it was the exact same as the original product, of course it would be, but when corners are cut, I personally don't think the value is there. 

From my personal experience, when companies change labs for limited edition products, the quality is just not up to par. And I won't purchase. Some reviewers will say that they notice no difference between the quality of Tarte's permanent blushes and the value sets. But that is not my personal experience. 

So, frankly, I don't need this palette. I don't need this many blushes in general. And I'm not going to buy it.