Tarte Cosmetics recently teamed up with beauty vlogger Makeup Shayla for a collaboration that caters to women of color. And for the love of melanin, I must say - yesssssssssssss! It's about time that multi-billion dollar companies started listening to women of color and giving us products that cater to our skin tones .
The Tarteist contour palette ($45) was designed specifically for contouring, sculpting and highlighting darker skin tones. It is cruelty free, made in the USA and comes in purple and gold packaging. Once you remove it from the outer packaging, you will have a gold circular palette that is about the size of your hand. It features six circular pans - five of which have a net weight of 4.5 g / 0.16 Oz. x5 and one smaller glow pan which has a net weight of 1.90 g / 0.067 Oz. The 6 contouring shades includes:
- Highlight (champagne shimmer highlighter)
- Correct (matte yellow correcting powder)
- Soft contour (tan to deep skin tones)
- Deep contour (deep to rich skin tones)
- Accentuate (peachy blush)
- Glow (shimmer bronzer but I use as another highlighter)
The shades are incredibly soft and buttery. I used this palette four times (so far at the time of publishing) so I can tell you that you're going to have a little bit of product fall out when you pick up a lot of a color onto your brush because they are so soft. Here are different types of swatches:
Swatch pictures aren't enough for you? Ok, well here is a live swatch video of it in natural day light.
[embed]https://youtu.be/0_sxRUGizBo[/embed]
When using this palette, I used the lighter contour shade to contour my nose and it gave it a very nice, natural contour. I used the darker contour shade to add dimension to my cheekbones and rounded chubby face. My favorite part about this palette is the highlighters. Linda listen...
I know you weren't expecting that type of a picture but I had to show you the highlight bling while I was testing it out (and practicing filming hair tutorials for YouTube). :-D I also have the blush and both contours on in this shot.
Sorry for the sucky last still shot. My Sony ended up overheating and I had to run out to do errands so my hair is all in my face buuut can you see that highlight peeking through?! On my lips I am wearing Kami Cosmetics Rich Girl.
In addition to a contour palette, you can also use it as an eyeshadow palette to create a natural glam look. Overall, I am happy that I purchased this, since I can use it for multiple reasons and use it to set my cream contours. If I had to give it a rating, I'd give it an 8 out of 10 - for my skin tone (for reference I am MAC NC50). The only reason that I am knocking off 2 stars is because I don't feel like all of the colors are deep enough for darker women (maybe around NW43's - 50's) so I would recommend going into Sephora or Ulta to test this baby out to see if it's a must have for you. However, the collector and woc supporter in me still wants to say no, buy it online immediately before it sells out lol.
[Edited for an update] It is available on Sephora.com now.
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For the holidays, Laura Mercier released a highlighter palette ($58 for 0.44 oz) that included four miniature sized versions of their permanent highlighters. The shades include Indiscretion, Addiction, Devotion and Seduction (from top left, top right, bottom left and bottom right). Normally, each highlighter costs $44 each for .35oz of product so this is a great way to test out new shades and to mix and match without paying for a full sized one.
