Tarte Make Believe in Yourself Palette

I have been eyeing the Tarte Make Believe in Yourself eye shadow palette for months. It's a limited edition palette, and when it went on sale at Sephora for $30 last week, I let myself be talked into purchasing it.

This is a great companion to my Tartlette Tease Travel Palette that has more mattes than shimmery colors. If I had one of the larger Tarte palettes that shimmer and matte, I'd have skipped this palette. It's a bit large for travel, but it's got so many different shimmer shades, that I'm probably going to make this my travel palette (here's my review of the Tartlette Tease). The only problem with that is there's only one matte color, myth, and it's a bit lighter than I prefer. I'll be looking for a single eyeshadow to keep with this palette so that I don't need to have several palettes balanced on my rather tiny bathroom counter.

The palette itself is gorgeous, and they placed the color names nicely around the circle. I was a bit disappointed when I found out that the pretty cover is plastic, but someone told me that it's still an impressive looking palette, so I went to Sephora and looked at it in person. It really is still a gorgeous palette, and being plastic helps keep the palette lighter than I had expected it to be. The light weight is necessary because the palette is far larger than it looks in photos. It is larger than my hand and is unwieldy enough that I can't hold it in my hand during application like I do my little Tease. However, the larger-than-expected size means there's a nice amount of eye shadow in each slot.

I use Too Faced Shadow Insurance Glitter Glue Glitter Bonding Eye Shadow Primer and follow it up with ArtNaturals Makeup Setting Spray, and all my Tarte eye shadows last the full day (or night). My Tartes have better staying power than everything else I own, including some drugstore brands whose brand I can't remember, Colourpop, Urban Decay, Sephora, and BH Cosmetics, my Tartes have the best staying power. My eye shadow collection has increased significantly from the zero I was at nine months ago!

This morning's subtle look - the shimmer's aren't showing up in this lighting, though.

The Make Believe colors go from super subtle to fairly bold-ish depending on how they're applied. I created a shimmering, natural look with a dry brush over the weekend that allowed my eyes to pop, even though the eye shadow itself wasn't visible through my glasses. This morning I decided to take my new Make Believe palette for a wet-brush test drive (see the subtle look above). I dabbed a wee bit of the center white on my inner eye then blended around my crease with the Tease heartbreaker, which I topped with the Make Believe myth matte shade and blended again. These two together are the exact shade I'm looking for, so when I have time, I'll go through my single beiges to see if I have something similar. I then wet my brush with setting spray and applied dream, the aqua color in the palette. I only did two quick swipes because I was in a rush and also wanted some subtle color for the office. I blended the edges with the beige brush (I didn't add anymore shadow) then added just a tiny bit of a brown eyeliner pencil.

Playing with bronze.

I played with it over the weekend on my arm and built-up the bronze using my finger behind a BH Cosmetics red that I blended out with a brush (see the picture to the right). I created a lovely copper eye that was metallic without being wildly intense. I'm looking forward to experimenting further with these shimmer shades and all my matte colors to see what else I can do.

FYI, Make Believe in Yourself is a special, limited edition line, and at least one of the products in the line is no longer available. I think more of the line will disappear soon since Sephora and a few other sites have put this palette on sale ($30 as opposed to the previous $40).

My final conclusion? Since my only other Tarte eyeshadow is the Tartlette Tease, I'm thrilled with my purchase. If I had other Tarte palettes that had a lot of shimmer shades, I'd have skipped this, even though I would have been pining for the pretty packaging.

This will probably become my daily go-to palette. It's too large to carry in my purse, so if I want to be able to do touch-ups, I'll carry Tease. It compliments the Make Believe colors so well that using it for touch-ups will alter the lookk but not ruin it. However, I haven't been carrying any backup eye shadows for my Tartes, and they have still looked beautiful when I go home. They don't crease using the Too Face Insurance, either (the same can't be said for the Urban Decay primer that seems to work so well for others).

What do you think? Is it different enough from some of the other shimmer palettes they've done to make it a worthwhile addition to your collection?