One Week, One Palette: Anastasia Beverly Hills Singles and Melt Lovesick Stack

For the eleventh week of my one week, one palette project, I decided to go with my Black Friday/Cyber Monday purchases: Anastasia Beverly Hills singles and Melt Lovesick Stack. While this could be looked at as using two palettes, I wouldn't have really wanted to dedicate an entire week to just using either one of these palettes. So, I look at it as a collection of singles. 

These are two recent additions to my collection. I know that I write an anti-haul blog, but that doesn't mean that I'm not going to buy anything ever again. I have curbed my spending tremendously and have not purchased a "hyped" product in months. Over the sales weekend, I purchased a few select items that have interested me for a while. They were items that I considered for a substantial amount of time, and I waited and intentionally purchased them during a sale to save money. 

I purchased the Anastasia Beverly Hills shadows to grow familiar with the formula and to try some colors I didn't have in my collection. My only exposure to ABH shadows was in Modern Renaissance, and as I've said before, that was not a successful purchase for me. 

I've been interested in the Melt stacks for a long time, but never actually purchased any because of the high price tag. I will say that the Lovesick Stack didn't feel like a complete palette to me, and so I also purchased the single Unseen from the Dark Matter Stack and added it to Lovesick. 

In case you're unfamiliar, Melt stacks are magnetic and come in a stack:

And can be splayed out while magnetized (as shown below) in several different ways. 

Melt Lovesick Stack:

From left: Love Sick, Unseen (purchased separately), Amelie, Fixated, and Promiscuous 

Anastasia Beverly Hills singles:

Top, from left: Buon Fresco, Dusty Rose, Blazing, and Fudge

Bottom: Macaroon, Rosette, Brownie, and Chocolate 

I tried to use all colors from both palettes last week, and I did, but some were not used in major ways. I also used Kat Von D Liberatus on the brow bone and Make Up For Ever Pearl on the inner corner every day. 

Below are six looks that I did last week.

Look 1:

ABH Macaroon on the lid, ABH Buon Fresco blended into the crease, and ABH Rosette padded onto the outer corner and on the lower lash line. 

Look 2:

Melt Promiscuous on the lid, Melt Unseen and Melt Love Sick blended into the crease, and Melt Fixated on the lower lash line. 

Look 3:

ABH Brownie on the lid, Melt Unseen and ABH Fudge blended into the crease, and ABH Brownie on the lower lash line. 

Look 4:

ABH Rosette on the lid, ABH Dusty Rose blended into the crease, and ABH Rosette on the lower lash line. 

Look 5:

Melt Amelie on the lid, Melt Unseen blended into the crease, and Melt Promiscuous padded onto the outer corner. Melt Unseen on the lower lash line. 

Look 6:

ABH Chocolate on the lid, ABH Blazing blended into the crease, and ABH Fudge on the lower lash line. 

This was a fun week, but it wasn't the most fun I've had since starting this project. The formulas from both brands were really lovely, but on the whole, the mattes from both brands were better, which is odd. The shimmers were nothing to sneer at; the mattes just performed a little better. This was especially interesting for me because I did not enjoy the matte formula on Modern Renaissance. I wonder if the formula in ABH singles differs from that in palettes. 

Buon Fresco was the only shade from Modern Renaissance that I truly loved and felt I didn't have a duplicate in my collection. I absolutely have several shades that are similar, but I was happy to purchase a full-sized single to have back in my collection. I read months (maybe even a year?) ago that Dusty Rose was a close duplicate for Urban Decay's Nooner from the Naked 3 palette. That was easily my most used shade in the palette, and I loved wearing it all over the lid. If Urban Decay sold it as a single, I would snatch it up immediately. From what I remember, Nooner was slightly more rose than Dusty Rose, but I may be misremembering. There was actually a seventh look I did last week that I didn't photograph, and it was ABH Dusty Rose on the lid with ABH Buon Fresco blended into the crease. I wasn't a fan of the look, which isn't that surprising since I don't like all-matte looks on me, but I used to like Nooner (which is matte) all over the lid, so either my tastes have changed, or the two shadows don't look the same on me. 

Macaroon was my favorite shadow from the ABH singles. (I should also mention that I own ABH Pink Champagne, but it is in my main custom palette with Makeup Geek, MAC, MUFE, and Morphe shadows.) Rosette was also really beautiful, and surprisingly unlike any of my other cranberry shadows. Most cranberry shadows in my collection have a strong red base, but Rosette had a strong berry base, which I really enjoyed. Brownie and Chocolate were both lovely. I was a little disappointed when I saw them because I figured I had countless duplicate shades in my collection, but to my surprise, they weren't quite like anything else that I had. Blazing and Fudge were gorgeous and great to work with. I thought Blazing was going to be more "tropical" peach, but on me it is a burnt orange. 

Overall, I think I might have preferred working with the Melt shadows more than ABH, but only because the colors were a little more fun. It's funny because I used to absolutely love a bronzed shadow on the lid with a light orange/peach brown in the crease. And now, while I still like those looks, I much prefer something a little more fun and colorful. The only Melt shadow I didn't really get a chance to use much was Fixated. I tried pairing it with ABH Chocolate, but it ended up just looking like a dark brown on top of dark brown, and I washed it off. I also thought about trying it paired with Amelie, but didn't get a chance to before the week was over. Promiscuous was my favorite shadow from the Melt stack, though I have to say that it and Amelie photographed terribly on my eye. In the photos, they look patchy, creased, and somewhat nonexistent, but that's not at all how they looked in person. They were really stunning. Promiscuous was a little challenging to work with, however, and it required more than one layer to give an even application. The only negative about the Lovesick Stack, in my opinion, is that it lacks a shade like Unseen. I'm glad that I purchased Unseen and added it to the stack for ease of use, but I certainly have plenty of mid-tone brown shades that I could have supplemented instead. Love Sick, like Unseen, performed beautifully. 

Looks 1 and 2 were my favorite looks, and I also really enjoyed looks 5 and 6. The other ones were fine and pretty, but they just weren't my favorites. I have to admit, though, that I experienced a little bit of fatigue with this project throughout the week. I suppose it makes sense given that I've done this for eleven weeks, but there are still many more palettes and weeks to go. It's not even that I was necessarily wanting to use another palette, I just felt tired. And maybe that's because these shadows were pretty neutral? And I didn't have a ton of fun colors to play around with? I'm not really sure, to be honest. I think it could also be that I didn't buy the ABH shadows to necessarily make a palette that I would want to use exclusively. I bought certain shades that I thought were missing from my collection. So while they kind of go together, the collection of shadows didn't hugely inspire me. A similar thing happened with the Melt stack. I really didn't know how to incorporate Fixated with the shadows I used, which was kind of frustrating, especially since I really like the color of that shadow. 

I'm also afraid that this same thing might happen to me this week since I'll need to wear more professional/toned down looks. And that brings me to something else. I wasn't going to mention this at all, but since my one week, one palette posts are usually only read my regular readers, I thought this would be a nice place to include a personal tidbit. I'm starting a job tomorrow, and this is the first I've worked since completing graduate school. This blog has been really incredible in a lot of ways, and I did not expect to love it as much as I do. I will absolutely continue blogging, but I have no idea yet how my work schedule will affect the blog. I just wanted to give you a heads-up in case I post infrequently next week. Thank you for reading and understanding.