Viseart is a pro-oriented brand that features no fuss and frill palettes in a variety of finishes, but the one beaten to death in the makeup world is their Neutral Matte Palette ($80.)
For the price, you'd expect the twelve pans to be enclosed in a gold encrusted clam shell decorated with tiny real pearls and elaborate gem stones. Nope. You get a sturdy plastic casing that snaps shut so tightly that you might chip a nail opening it each time. The lid is clear so you can see inside and know it's your matte palette. The smaller size of the palette is ultra travel friendly and fits into my makeup bag with ease.
There were a lot of factors going against my decision to purchase it online at Sephora.com.
1. $80 bucks for an eye shadow palette. I don't care that it has 12 pans...it's still a splurge.
2. Although many, many, many people have raved about the performance of these shadows I was afraid of it falling short of the hype. After all, you can't find it in stores and online swatches are mediocre.
3. I was also afraid of it being a superfluous "want but not need" palette. I've been lemming it since November of last year but never pulled the trigger.
4. I very rarely wear an all-matte eye and enjoy a bit of sparkle on the lids even for every day at the office.
Wrong! All wrong!
First of all, the shadows are actually comparable IN PRICE to most other individually sold shadows, if you break it down in terms of price per gram. For the price, you're paying almost $7 per pan which isn't bad.
That is, considering how lovely these eyeshadows are on the lid. If you look at swatches anywhere online where the reviewer has not done several passes on the arm, it looks....dry. And chalky. Like every other matte eyeshadow palette. Look below. These swatches were made with one pass with no primer in various lighting situations. They're just not impressive when swatched.
Chalk city? Not so on the lids. A special kind of magic happens when I use a natural hair brush to pack down color or blend into the crease with this palette. The shadow's texture is soft without being overly powdery and there is absolutely no fallout.
As for pigmentation, these last ALL day without a primer. You read that right. In fact, I find that applying them over a drier primer like the NARS Pro Prime only encourages color skipping. I like using these without a primer because they perform that well. There's no creasing, no transferring, and definitely no fading of intensity in terms of pigmentation as the day goes on.
It's witchcraft. Out of the many mattes I've tried in my lifetime, I think these are a little better compared to MUG, better than MAC, and much more buttery than an Urban Decay matte (which is never truly matte in the first place). The Neutral Matte palette makes the UD Naked Basics series look like chalkboard crumbs.
Though, if you're looking for a drugstore dupe you may want to look into the Sonia Kashuk variety. It's a lot drier in texture and soft in pigmentation, but it has the same layout of all matte eyeshadows if you're a fan.
Besides the phenomenal formula, I also really like how they've edited the colors in this palette. You have a great range of undertones but the warm colors seem to dominate with the first two rows of shadows.
The best part? It's so multi-purpose. Because the pigment is light, very pigmented, and easy to blend, all of these shadows can be used for other purposes on the face. Contour? Mix a few browns and greys together. Blush? How about some nice terracotta and peach shades? Need to fill in your eyebrows? Wet your brush and dip into a lighter grey-brown or dark brown. I've tried it all with great success.
Here is the most true to color swatches in natural daylight by the window.
My favorite part about this palette is not the neutral browns but the lighter shades which ACTUALLY show up on my lid with no effort to "pack on" the color. I'm around NC30-35 at the moment, and I can use any of the four colours in the first row in order to blank out my lids. You know, in case of a cut crease! There are very few matte and light eyeshadows that will stay true to color and vibrant on my lids.
I later picked up Sultry Muse at Frendsbeauty.com on a 20% discount because I was dying to experience the subtle shimmer many have raved about for Viseart's non-matte palettes. Apparently the shimmer is so fine that it looks soft, understated, and never garish or loud. The lids look absolutely GLOSSED in flash photography.
I picked Sultry Muse because, hello, it's warm! But take a look at that sad afterthought that is the frosty baby blue. Strange indeed.
These swatch a lot more nicely than the mattes but I would say that they have less of a "wow!" factor. They are softly pigmented but doesn't skip, drag, or patch up. However, you won't be a fan if you love say, Urban Decay shimmers and duochromes and the flashy world of frequent fallout. The shade layout could also use some work..perhaps a light to dark gradient to guide the user. If you don't care about having true mattes you'll still be able to create a complete look with this palette and take it from day to night. These are one swipes each with three swipes for the mid toned warm brown, neutral brown, and navy. Similar to the Mattes, they don't swatch prettily in one swipe. With a natural or synthetic brush, however, you'll do some magic in the crease.
These are pigmented but densely packed shadows, so you might be surprised that there is minimal to no fallout with each shade and they look much more vibrant on the lid than swatched. They aren't packed too firmly into the pan and you'll get some powder kickup if you swirl your brush around too liberally.
I wish I could explain to you the beauty of these eyeshadows, because pictures don't do them justice. You can easily layer these on top of each other to create MOAR complexity. They all have varying degrees of glitter "chunk", as I'd like to say. You can dabble and layer the lighter shades on the far right over any of the colors and intensify the glow of the more seemingly muted colors in the palette.
There are lots of flash photo swatches online for some reason or another, but they are really useless in my opinion because they capture the luminosity of the sparkuhs but none of the pigmentation. (This is why I hesitated to pull the trigger on this one in the first place.)
And another indoor shot in front of a window.
My final thoughts: buy the Neutral Matte palette and think long and hard about an accompanying "shimmer" palette depending on whether you like warm, cool, or neutral tones on the lids. These shadows are gorgeous and forgiving to lines and texture and they don't require ANY primer to last throughout the day!
xo Be
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