not my own....(Love the taupue-plum color) =D

Wet n Wild Walking on Eggshells & Silent Treatment Review & Swatches

Eyeshadow

Jan 242011

The last few days of January are winding down, and I have a feeling that we’ll be seeing some exciting things released in February.  For now, I have a few things from the Spring collections to review for you, but also letting  a few collections pass me by.  Armani, Clinique and Estee Lauder have released things over the past week or two, but I haven’t seen anything very exciting that is a “must have” from a number of lines for me this time around.
Am I the only one that thinks that some of these lavenders are going to start looking a little tired by May?  I don’t know, maybe on some they will keep going.  I have to keep lavenders and violets  either very sheer, or very greyed-down, or they look over the top.
And if I’m not excited looking at it, my view is that it’s not for me.  Makeup should be fun.
In the meantime, I’m playing with some of my current products, going to the gym and taking care of some interesting things I’m doing outside of the blogsphere.
With a few exceptions–and one of them is the subject of this post.  Over the past few months, drugstore beauty company Wet n Wild been busy reformulating new eyeshadow palettes, including two for neutral lovers–Walking on Eggshells ($2.99) and Silent Treatment ($2.99).
According to one of my favorite drugstore beauty experts, Noveau Cheap, Silent Treatment looks like a drugstore “must have”:

Attention all taupe fanatics! You NEED Silent Treatment. I could just stop there, but I’ll go on. My pics do NOT capture the beauty of this taupe. It’s got a rose-gold sheen to it that you must see in person.

Well, when a fellow beauty blogger writes something like that, how can you ignore it?  I’ll tell you how–you can’t! Plus, she’s been giving very high praise for Wet n Wild’s new 8-pan palettes that sell for around $5 (are these octo-pans? for $5? what?).  It sounded exciting enough to investigate, so I did.
My local Rite Aid had none of the 8-pans/octo-pans, but it did have the three-pan beauties in stock so I thought I’d take them out for a spin.  Shall we?
Here’s Walking on Eggshells, which I believe was released before the holidays.  It includes a creamy white highlighter, a medium soft brown-gold and a peach that has a tendency to go frosty.
Certainly, Wet n Wild saves some money by providing bare-bones packaging and tiny sponge-applicators.  All of the focus is on the quality of the powder. Wet n Wild gets extra points for having stickers that peel off without leaving a mess, or breaking a nail, yet keep the product sanitary and untested:

Open, the shadows surface look a little tossed around but since they’ve been sealed we know they’re clean:

Wet n Wild Walking on Eggshells was pretty impressive for a $2.99 trio.  The browbone highlighter was soft, pigmented and usable.  The golden crease color evokes some of the soft camel colors that we saw from higher-end brands last fall.  My only complaint was the peach, which was not very finely milled and so had to be very carefully/lightly applied to avoid frosting up.  Even so, it’s pretty frosty.

All shades are shimmey, without any glittery bits.  With the paint-by-numbers direction, this is an extremely easy and fun little palette.

Swatches (take in sunlight):

Wet n Wild’s Silent Treatment is newly released, and includes a rather unique plummy light taupe that’s worth a look.  Although Noveau Cheap described her palette as including a rose gold, I found mine to have a purple-gray tinge that predominated.  Sometimes I wonder if companies release slightly different colors in different batches–in the years before beauty blogging, who would know?  Joeybunny and I had a conversation about this last Fall about a MAC pigment–the color was literally different in New York City than it was at my counter in California.  So when you look at Nouveau Cheap’s pictures and at mine, keep in mind that there does seem to be a color difference but that I’m not entirely sure why.

Noveau Cheap and I do completely agree on one thing–the taupe in Silent Treatment is very different from the small taupe Wet n Wild single eyeshadow in Nutty, which has a silver-brown-champagne cast.

Here’s Silent Treatment, with its taupe in the bottom pan:

Like the Walking on Eggshells palette, Silent Treatment’s Peachy color (marked “Browbone”) tended to get frosty, especially when I applied it to my lid (rather than my browbone, as suggested) with a MAC 217 (I was never very good at following rules in paint by numbers either).  The middle deep brown/black was soft and pigmented, although infused with sparkle.

But the taupe…. the taupe!! It applied like the dreamy, dreamy taupe of my dreams. Dreamily.

Here’s an overly ambitious effort at swatching everything before my moment of sunshine went away.  The top three shades are the three pans of Silent Treatment.  The one on the furthest right top is the taupe.  As you can see, it swatches quite a bit more plum than the other’s that I’ve swatched with it.  Here, Silent Treatment’s taupe is compared to Chanel Vega, Chanel Safari, Cargo Yukon and Wet n Wild Nutty on the second/bottom row.  These are all heavy swatches:

As you can see, Silent Treatment’s taupe looked much cooler, and more rose-plum, than any of the other taupes.  When applied on the lid, the Silent Treatment taupe looked more gray but retained its plummy tone.  It was really gorgeous, lighter in tone than MAC’s Moth Brown or MAC’s Unflappable.

Wet n Wild major gets major points for putting together some nice shadows at a very nice price point. As if $2.99 weren’t low enough, I believe that these go on sale occasionally.  Although not as finely milled as some shadows, and without the luxurious packaging, these shadows deliver some pretty decent quality for the price. There is a complexity and sheen that’s very pretty.  I can not think of another drugstore shadow that is this good, and we know those drugstore palette prices are creeping up over $10.  Wet n Wild’s comparatively stress-free $2.99 each makes these an easy, fun choice for those inclined.