Greetings from the deafening jungle night, fellow rogues!
As you might imagine, we rogues spend quite a bit of our time in the dark. Calling this the ‘nocturnal rogue’ might seem like stating the obvious, but I couldn’t resist when I set out to write up my review of the Tarte Rainforest After Dark palette, and a recent adventure made it particularly appropriate!
The adventuring party approaches the artefact, excitement and trepidation as thick as the jungle humidity…
I have to admit, Tarte’s really been hitting it out of the park for me, packaging -wise recently. First there was the MATTEnificent palette’s glorious purple geode. Then, I saw the adventure posting for a mysterious wooden artifact, inlaid with a golden, jewelled snake. The jewel was even reputed to be purple, and the artefact to contain glittering purple and golden magic! Well, I mean, I couldn’t tear that adventure posting off the tavern board fast enough, could I? I rounded up as many members of the adventuring party as were willing to go chasing for it, and off we set for the rainforest! Jungle temples are something we don’t usually get to raid, so everyone was quite excited. Even Khael the wizard, whose last experience with artefacts related to purple and venomous things turned out rather differently than he expected, was puffing away eagerly at his pipe.
And lo, the treasure was laid bare. Always send the rogue in first, people. Checking for traps and all that…
By the time we’d hacked our way through the undergrowth, dodged or disarmed all the dart traps and arrived in the treasure chamber, everyone was champing at the bit to get that thing open! Fortunately, I managed to convince them to let the rogue go first, just in case there were any booby traps. Aside from a clear plastic sheet with the shade names on it and a card with a couple of look ideas (not pictured) however, there were no final barriers between adventurers and treasure! The wooden (veneer on plastic ;-)) artefact contains a gloriously large mirror, 6 pans of eyeshadow, and one each of blush, bronzer and highlighter. I was particularly looking forward to the latter two, as this is the first bronzer I’ve ever owned, and the first powder highlighter too (the only other one I have being a tiny sample of Benefit’s High Beam).
Pretty… 😀 Also: no dart traps! Yay!
Let’s dive straight in, shall we? Appropriate to the ‘fall’ (it’s Autumn, people!) season that this is released for, the eyeshadows run along generally cool, purply lines. There’s a mixture of mattes, sparkly satins and metallics, and the shades cover both ‘useful’ and ‘OOH’ areas of the eyeshadow spectrum. General notes: I found most of them to be soft and very blendable, with an adequate wear time (no primer!) of around 8 hours (although eyeshadows don’t tend to migrate too much on me). The names, like those in the MATTEnificent palette, take a leaf from OPI’s book of groan-worthy half-puns, although I tend to find that these make me smile more than roll my eyes. 😉 In terms of specifics:
Bare To Explore is a matte, light pinkish/tan ‘medium skin’ colour. It’s the ‘base’ colour, essentially, although I found that if I used it as an all- over wash and then attempted to put other similar light colours over the top, it muddied them a little bit. It was great for browbone-edge-of-colours blending though, or as a crease shade (for those of us who are very pale!), when you have something like, say, UD Sin over the rest of your lid.
Make A Mauve is, well, mauve! It’s a satin eyeshadow with a sprinkling of fine golden sparkle, and is probably one of my favourites in the palette!
Plum Away With Me is a brown-undertoned plum satin, with excellent pigmentation. It’s worth noting that this shade in particular (along with Make a Mauve), are rather perfect bruise colours for the vampirically pale among us. I say this not as a deterrent, as they are gorgeous, but you do have to be a little bit careful, as the Plum in particular packs a bruisy colour punch (BA-dum TISH!) if you’re not!
Up to No Gold is a pigmented, smooth, metallic gold. It’s not too yellow, it’s not too white. In other words, it’s excellent, and goes so beautifully with the purples here.
The matte, camel colured Tan-gled Up in You is probably the worst shade in the palette for me. Having said that, it’s not *bad*, it was just the stiffest/driest shade, and perhaps the least exciting or useful for me in terms of colour. I found it to be a decent crease shade.
Don’t Turn A-Brown is a cool, dark brown matte. There’s not too much I can say for this one, as dark browns don’t really need much of an introduction. They’re brown. You can use ’em as a liner, you can use ’em for a smokey eye, you can use ’em for your eyebrows if the colour’s right! 😀
Eyeshadow swatches!
Next up are the cheek products! Here things get a bit harder to explain for me (at this point anyway) as I’m not really used to either bronzer or highlighter! I’ll be experimenting more with these as time goes by, so updates may be forthcoming! In purely technical terms, though, I can definitely give you the scoop 😉
Unleashed is a nice, slightly beige-based light pink blush. I say beige-based because (as you can see in my unblended swatch), the pinkness of it doesn’t stand out as much as you might expect on my vampire skin. It’s quite a nice, natural flush kind of colour, and I found it to blend easily enough and last the whole day. The only thing you might say against it is typical of my experience with Tarte blushes, which is that you have to rub a bit at the surface of the new blush to get the colour going, as it feels quite hard and smooth to start. After that though, you’re fine!
Park Ave Princess is probably the best I could have hoped for in terms of a ‘comes in a palette’ bronzer. It’s not extremely dark (which is a pro for me, but may be a ‘meh’ for darker skinned rogues), and not extremely orange, and it doesn’t have any glitter or shimmer. I’m in the process of trying to find ways to use this, but I’m still quite chuffed about owning my first bronzer anyway. I did read that the colour is different to that of other Park Ave Princesses that Tarte has released. 😉
Champagne is a VERY SHIMMERY pale gold highlighter. Highlighters are another thing that are a bit of a mystery to me. Because I already glow in the dark, I don’t tend to feel like I need one, but I do like some sparkle in my life. This highlighter blends out nicely enough, and doesn’t make you look like an absolute disco ball, but it is quite yellow-based and I feel like there are probably better powder highlighters out there. Still, a welcome addition to my hoard, as it’s the first of its kind!
let’s get Cheeky! See, I can do the pun thing too…no? No? OK…
Right! So that’s the lowdown on this rather lovely palette artefact from Tarte! All in all, I think it was worth hacking our way through miles of hostile jungle – the packaging is good fun, and great if you’re a collector, the eyeshadows are nice quality, and purple, and I enjoyed having my first foray into bronzer and highlighter territory. Is this palette going to change your life? Probably not. But it will make it that much more beautiful, and what else can you ask of a makeup product? 😀
Here’s a random look I did with the palette – you can see that the colours really do make a statement on pale skin, as I was working with a veeeeeery light hand here! I wanted a kind of sorceress look, with ‘gilding’ on the lid in the way that you see old gilding on statues; kind of worn and ‘antique’. For comparison, the actual colour of my skin is what you can see in the bottom leftish sort of area of each photo. I took the pictures looking into natural daylight, so my natural, uh, fluorescence makes the bare skin areas quite bright! Do click the picture to enlarge everything if you need more detail 🙂
Gildy. Purply. Sorceressy?
Finally, it occurred to me as I was looking at this palette that the colour scheme reminded me in some ways of both my Tarte MATTEnificent palette (review) and some shades from my Urban Decay Naked 2 palette (review). I thought I’d swatch them together for comparison, and although you can see that there are some similarities, I think there are more than enough differences to warrant owning all 3 palettes (*shifty eyes*). 😉
Palettes! Can anyone say ‘addiction to cool toned purply things?’
Comparison of some of the light shades that looked similar to my eye in the pan.
…aaaand the dark shades!
*Phew!* Thank you so much for sticking with me through this long jungle temple raid of a review 😉 I want to mention here that this palette swatches up quite differently on different skintones (well, I think so anyway), and I wanted to highlight some lovely reviews and gorgeous looks that others have done of this palette – might help you decide if you’re not a vampire like this rogue! The beautiful Izzie at Izzique has you covered with a *gorgeous* eye look to boot, and as always you can’t go past Christine of Temptalia’s experience and staggering dupe powers. 😀
What do you think, fellow adventurers? Do you like Tarte’s stuff? Do you also have a crippling addiction to purple things? Who do you think has the best packaging?
The practicalities: The Tarte Rainforest After Dark Eye and Cheek Palette costs US$38 for 0.7 oz / 20 g of total stuff, is limited edition, and may be acquired from www.tartecosmetics.com or www.sephora.com. (These links aren’t affiliate, just here for your convenience!). If you are a Rogue of Middle Earth, sadly Tarte requires a US billing address, so you will need to use Ship It To, or hijack a charming US friend to buy it and ship it to you. I did the latter! ❤ ❤ you, Jaa!
Until next time, fellow adventurers, don’t forget to check for traps!
Syl
I am an adventuring rogue, not a mercenary for hire, and as such, all opinions expressed here are my own, based on a genuine fondness for/interest in this product. If you have any queries or suggestions, please do not hesitate to pin your parchment to the board (contact me) at thepaintedrogue [at] gmail [dot] com., or use the contact form provided! All images and text on this blog are the property of The Painted Rogue unless otherwise stated. If you nick off with any of it, be prepared to find that your morning hot beverage tastes a little…different than usual. Didn’t the rogue say something the other day about that new poison that makes your innear ear itch maddeningly for the rest of your life? I think she did…
The Painted Rogue 