The Only Eyeshadows You'll Ever Need

Except not really, because if you're anything like me, you think you "need" a new eye shadow palette every time you watch your favorite Youtube beauty guru review one. However, if you can only splurge once, I have one palette in particular that I can't recommend enough. In fact, it's the only eye shadow that I've bought/used since moving to France over a year ago, and I still haven't hit pan!

Disclaimer: I realize that I'm not actually a beauty blogger, but it's Saturday. That means that I can post whatever I want. I've also received a handful of requests for more beauty and skincare product reviews. So if you were one of the ladies who asked me about that, here you go! This is sort of a practice :)

A little background:

Let me tell you why make up artists scare me a little bit. I once had a very kind roommate who decided to spoil me for my 18th birthday. One amazing facial later, I found myself being made over at a NARS beauty counter. I had asked for a regular day look, and the very kind MUA got to work. I was SO excited.

But alas, NARS and I got off to a bad start. The make up felt cakey and thick on my face. The colors she chose seemed rather dark. And when she turned my chair around for the big reveal, I was slightly horrified. Talk about tacky. Yuck. I looked so trashy. It was really, really bad. I obviously couldn't tell the poor girl that she'd made me look like I imagine Lady Gaga looks after getting caught in the rain. I thanked her and headed out as quickly as I could manage.

That's the only time I've ever had my makeup done by a professional. So when the topic of who would be doing my wedding makeup popped up, I opted to do it myself. I know that there are many, many wonderful make up artists out there more talented than I, but I don't personally know of any in my area and didn't want to take a risk on my wedding day. Plus, when given the option of spending 100€ on a one-time look or spending 100€ on new make up to play with, I will always, always choose new make up.

I think my mouth looks a bit funny in this photo, but you can see how I chose to do my eye make-up that day pretty well.

Fast-forward to the classic Naked palette by Urban Decay. I spent so much time researching the products that I would buy, and this palette was recommended by pretty much every beauty blogger out there - so I took the plunge (and waited for Sephora to have a 20% off sale).

This was the first expensive eye shadow in my collection. Up until this point, I'd been gettin' pretty with Wet n' Wild or Mark shadows. The Mark by Avon shadows were actually pretty good, but I'd had them since the beginning of high school, so they needed to be chucked ("just say no" to eye infections and all that).

Oh my goodness. This palette changed my whole perspective on what make up could be. I was so excited and couldn't help but watch hours and hours of video tutorials on Youtube. I'm sure that I'm still messing up some most of the techniques, but I love it SO much.

You see how powdery and beaten up the packaging's gotten? That means it's very well-loved. :)

This is also great for beginners because there are so many blog tutorials and videos explaining how to use it. You can combine the colors in so many different ways, and it's extremely easy to achieve both day and night looks. The colors last all day (especially with a good eye primer) and are perfectly pigmented.

I think I've gone on quite long enough. To be honest this review is kind of beating a dead horse. Many thousands of blog posts have already been dedicated to this miracle in a box, but I was going through my make up kit the other day and decided that this product deserved it's very own post. I just love it that much. :)

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Next time I promise to review something that's a little less well known in the States. If you have any requests please let me know in the comments!