Viseart Neutral Matte Eyeshadow Palette
By Alina Avery
Ok, the video streak has ended.
Instead, I offer you a review of another product I picked up during the Sephora VIB Rouge sale. I actually bought a number of things online, and two in store, but wanted to give them an honest and thorough trial before blogging them. One that’s impressed me right off the bat: The Viseart Neutral Matte Eyeshadow Palette.
It’s safe to say now that this palette and I are getting along great. I’ve had a love/hate relationship with palettes since I started getting into makeup. Originally, I was drawn in by the great value, pre-matched shades and pretty packaging. Later, I started seeing drawbacks. Palettes would be missing a key shade, so you needed other single eyeshadows or another palette to finish a look. Or some shades would get completely used up (ok, not completely, but heavily!) and others would go untouched. I’ve been a bit jaded by the palette market over the past few years, preferring to build my own MAC, Urban Decay, or Z-Palettes (the new NARS Pro Palettes are still calling my name)!
But the Viseart Palette attracted me for a number of reasons. First, it has a whole range of shades from pale cream to solid black, with plenty of both warm and cool shades in between. Second, it’s totally matte, which makes it really versatile for day/night/work/weekends. And finally, it’s gotten fantastic reviews from Anna and Christine and on Sephora.com.
The Viseart Neutral Matte Eyeshadow Palette wears a hefty price tag. Ringing in at $80 full price, it costs more than any of the Urban Decay Naked palettes, and is on par with palettes from Guerlain and YSL (but the Viseart boasts more shades). With the 20% discount however, it came down to $64 which is much more reasonable and on par for other similar palettes. Full price it’s under $7 a pan and on sale it was less than $6 so it’s about what you’d pay for a similar palette from Inglot. The packaging isn’t really all that much to write home about, but I like that you can see all of the shades even when it’s closed. It’s compact and sturdy, so I don’t feel worried about handling it, and there isn’t too much extra space between pans (or too little)! There are 12 shades in the palette, which can be used to blend, contour, or shade the eyes. You can go for a no-makeup look, using the lighter shades to conceal redness and even the tone of bare eyelids, or really go for a smoky eye using the darker shades.
My favorite looks have been: working from light to dark, blend shades into the crease with progressively smaller brushes to create a defined, sculpted eye. Or working from dark to light, apply a tiny bit of black shadow along the outer third of the lashline. Choose a lighter color and a fluffier brush and blend that out, extending to the outer half of the eye. Continue expanding and blending with lighter and lighter colors until you create a blown out wing shape for a wearable, daytime smoky eye.
Three of my favorite shades have been Canelle, Cafe, and Tabac (swatched above L-R) which are the first in the top row, last in the middle row, and last in the bottom row respectively. I’ve been loving mixing the last two to create a warmer or cooler shade depending on the other makeup I’m wearing, and the first one makes a great all over lid color if I’m going for a bare faced look or even just into the crease as a transition shade.
The quality of the shadows is great, they are pigmented, smooth, blendable and buildable. I’ve been wearing them with the NARS Smudgeproof Pro Primer which has been my eye base of choice for everything for years, and I get more than 12 hours worth of wear out of them, with a bit if smudging but no creasing or fading. The colors appear true to pan when swatched.
On the downside, I probably could have replicated this palette with other shades from my collection. I have a lot of matte single shadows that I love from Laura Mericer, MAC, Inglot, and Urban Decay, as well as similar shades to these across other palettes, but it’s nice to have everything from dark to light and cool to warm in one place. I pretty much have been wearing this palette and this palette alone since I received it.
Overall, is it worth the large price tag? If you’re going to use it all of the time, appreciate professional quality cosmetics, and wear a mix of cool and warm shadows, then maybe. I’d repurchase it because I find myself getting a lot of use out of it and I love how versatile it is, but you might get the same results with a less expensive product, especially if you want to combine mattes with satin or shimmery shades.
