One Week, One Palette: Laura Mercier Eye Art Artist's Palette

For the fourteenth week of my one week, one palette project, I decided to use the Laura Mercier Eye Art Artist's Palette. This is actually an interesting palette purchase for me because it is what I decided to buy when I returned Modern Renaissance. I had an upcoming two-week trip, and I told myself that I was going to bring Modern Renaissance to force myself to use it. When I realized I really, really didn't want to be left with only that palette for two weeks, I knew I had to return it. I bought this palette instead, brought it on my two-week vacation as my only palette, and loved it!

But that was because I basically only did one eye look the entire time. We will get into that at the end of the post. 

I used every shadow in the palette last week and pulled in Make Up For Ever Pearl only two days. 

Below are five looks I did last week. 

Look 1:

African Violet on the lid, Plum Smoke and Kir Royal blended into the crease, Fresco blended above the crease, Violet Ink padded onto the outer corner, MUFE Pearl on the inner corner, and Vanilla Nuts on the brow bone. Violet Ink on the lower lash line. 

Look 2:

Kir Royal on the lid, Truffle blended into the crease, Fresco blended above the crease, Violet Ink padded onto the outer corner, MUFE Pearl on the inner corner, and Vanilla Nuts on the brow bone. Kir Royal and Violet Ink on the lower lash line. 

Look 3:

Guaca on the lid, Fresco blended into the crease, Plum Smoke blended above the crease, Truffle padded onto the outer corner, Sparkling Dew on the inner corner, and Vanilla Nuts on the brow bone. Truffle on the lower lash line. 

Look 4:

Primrose on the lid, Plum Smoke and Kir Royal blended into the crease, Fresco blended above the crease, Violet Ink padded onto the outer corner, Sparkling Dew on the inner corner, and Vanilla Nuts on the brow bone. Kir Royal on the lower lash line. 

Look 5:

Bamboo on the lid, Truffle blended into the crease, Espresso Bean padded onto the outer corner, Sparkling Dew on the inner corner, and Vanilla Nuts on the brow bone. Truffle on the lower lash line. 

As you might have guessed, the look I did on day 1 was the look I wore for that two-week trip and the look that makes me "love" this palette. This is one of my favorite looks I have ever created, full stop. And African Violet is one of my favorite eyeshadows ever. But this is how my week went:

• Day one: Man, I love this palette. This is the prettiest eye look ever. No way would I ever get rid of this palette. 
• Day two: Were these shadows always this hard to work with? I was hoping I would like this better, but maybe this just isn't the right shadow look for me. 
• Day three: These shadows sure do lack pigmentation. Not sure how I feel about this palette. 
• Day four: This shadow looks identical to the one yesterday. I think I might actually declutter this palette. 
• Day five: This look is pretty, but is quite sheer in relation to my other bronzes. It's nothing special. I'm going to declutter this palette. 

So, yes, I have decided to declutter this palette, and that is the reason I didn't do six looks like I typically do. I had already run the gamut with looks to create, and I had used several shadows multiple times. 

I don't typically discuss palettes shade by shade, but I feel it is useful to share my opinions on each shade. 

Sparking Dew: This was so sheer. It was too light for me to want to wear it all over the lid, but packed no punch or interest whatsoever in the inner corner. 

Vanilla Nuts: This was fine as a brow bone shade, but I have suitable duplicates in spades. 

Guava: This color was also very sheer. It looked like a very light wash of pink on my skin and looked identical to Primrose. 

Primrose: This color was also very sheer and looked identical to Guava. Having both shades in the palette felt like a waste. 

African Violet: The powerhouse shade of this palette. This is one of my favorite eyeshadows I have ever used. It's purple, pink, and gold. I absolutely love it. 

Fresco: This was a pretty crease shade, but I have several alternatives or duplicates in my collection.

Plum Smoke: This was a nice crease shade, but I have several that look like it from Lime Crime Venus, Anastasia Beverly Hills (Buon Fresco), Ciate London, Inglot, Too Faced Chocolate Bon Bons, and Becca Ombre Rouge. 

Bamboo: This was also a sheer color. It looks a little more intense in the photos, but it was a sheer bronze. It was a pretty color, and it worked for conservative, professional makeup, but I personally like something that packs more color and payoff. 

Kir Royal: This was pretty to deepen the crease or outer corner, but I felt it was a bit patchy and bruise-like when used on the lid. 

Truffle: This was a pretty crease or outer corner shade, but it tended to skip a little when blended. I like the color, but I have a ton that duplicate it. 

Violet Ink: This was fine to deepen the outer corner. It's not a shade I would use very often and not one that really matters to me.  

Espresso Bean: Like Violet Ink, this was fine to deepen the outer corner. I'm not a huge fan of super dark shadows, and they don't get a ton of use from me, but I have shadows in my collection that perform better than this. 

As you can see, I only really loved one shadow in the entire palette. I liked a few other colors, but really only for how they worked with African Violet. I've heard so many rave reviews of this palette, and I think a lot of that is because of African Violet, to be completely honest. I was extremely disappointed with ALL other possible lid shades; Guava and Primrose are basically the exact shade and both are lacking in pigmentation; Sparkling Dew was a light wash of color; and Bamboo was also sheer. The crease shades were nice, but the quality was not out of this world above others in my collection, and the outer corner shades were nothing special. 

And that is not how I want to feel about any palette in my collection. The way I feel about African Violet is how I want to feel about the entire thing. But I found this palette to be so difficult and uninspiring to work through, and once I had used every color in it, I immediately wanted to stop. 

On the positive side, I think this palette would be great for a makeup beginner who loves purple or for someone who works in an extremely conservative office. I'm still too afraid to wear eyeshadow looks with a little more oomph to them at work (I didn't wear looks one and two to work), and this palette let me pile on the shadow without feeling like I was overdone whatsoever. I know there is certainly an audience for a product like that, but I am not a part of that audience. 

On the negative side, I also have to say that this palette feels very much like it is not only for light skin, but for the fairest of skin tones. I have warm olive undertones, and Sparkling Dew, Guava, and Primrose looked like nothing on me. I imagine someone would need exceptionally fair skin in order to see a distinction in shades. Some of the darker shades would work on medium to deep skin tones, but it's disappointing to see that the majority of the palette is skewed so heavily to extremely fair skin. 

With all that said, last week might have been my favorite week of this project. Obviously that is not because I enjoyed using the palette, but because it was the week I learned the most. Had I not started this project and forced myself to not only use my palettes for a solid week but to use every shadow in the palette, I probably wouldn't have realized that I don't actually like the Eye Art Artist's Palette. Before this project (and this blog), I would reach for a palette when I was feeling a specific eye look. So, every time I wanted to use African Violet, I grabbed for this palette, thought it was beautiful, and had no way of knowing I actually didn't like it. It reminds me of life before iTunes or Spotify when you would spend upwards of $20 to buy a CD because you liked one song on it. And you would convince yourself that you would listen to the entire album and learn to love it, but you never did. You just played that one song over and over until you got sick of it. 

Fact is, I love African Violet so much that I have ordered it as a single shadow. It cost half the price of the entire Eye Art Artist's Palette, but I'm okay with that. I would rather have the one shadow that I want than an entire palette that I actually really dislike. I feel like I've read some people complain that the African Violet that came in their various Laura Mercier palettes was different from the single shadow, and if that's the case, I might depot African Violet from this palette and put it in one of my custom palettes. 

It feels good to get another palette out of my collection, especially since it wasn't a palette that I really loved. I routinely look at my collection and see if there are any items in it that can be decluttered, and the Eye Art Artist's Palette always got a save. It took actually using it to its fullest for me to realize I only liked a tiny portion of it. And just for that one lesson, this has been an incredibly successful project thus far.