Let the holiday beauty products begin – Fly money, fly! In addition to peppermint, snowflakes, and hot chocolate, the best thing about the holidays for beauty lovers around the world is holiday collections. Every year, brands release limited-edition products that I always hope will end up being given to me, wrapped in a big bow.
If you’ve paid attention to Instagram, you know that MAC plans to big for this holiday season. The Nutcracker Sweet Collection contains 40 (yes, forty!) pieces.
Eyeshadows, highlighter-blush duos, mini lipstick sets, and more!
Meet the Nutcracker Sweet Smoky Eye Compact Eye Shadow x 9. A mixture of cool and warm toned nude eyeshadows with different finishes (mostly matte).
The palette includes eyeshadows:
- Too-dle-oo (Frost) – light beige shimmer
- Deception (Frost) – cool medium brown
- Sweet Dreams (Matte) – warm mid-tone stone
- Kid (Veluxe) – soft beige
- Dewdrop (Lustre) – bright apricot
- Cake & Biscuits (Matte) – peachy brown
- Swiss Chocolate (Matte) – muted red-brown
- Dance in the Dark (Matte) – brown-toned dark grey
- Licorice Lane (Matte) – deep blackened brown
The packaging is a festive design, featuring a maroon base, with pink polka dots, and a filigree-style design, stitched in gold coloured thread.
The palette contains nine shadows, a mirror, and a dual-ended brush – one end being a 213 Fluff Brush, and the other end being a 214 Short Shader Brush. Each shadow contains 1.10 g of product, compared to a MAC single eyeshadow pan, which contains 1.5 g of product.
For the look below, I applied ‘Kid’ to my crease, followed by ‘Too-dle-oo’ in the inner corner of my lid, ‘Cake & Biscuits’ in the centre, ‘Swiss Chocolate’ in the outer third of my lid and blended into the crease, and topped the inner two thirds of my lid with ‘Dewdrop’. Then I added a mixture of ‘Dance in the Dark’ and ‘Licorice Lane’ in the very outer corner of my lid. I also applied ‘Too-dle-oo’ to my browbone, and a mixture of ‘Sweet Dreams’ and ‘Cake & Biscuits’ to my lower lash line.
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| Also wearing Colourpop Lippie Stix in ‘Grunge‘. |
This palette comes in two other versions (‘Warm Eye’ which has more browns and yellows, and ‘Cool Eye’ which has more rosy pinks), and I would say that this one has the most universally neutral colours, which is very much my cup of tea. I would say that this palette is similar to an Urban Decay Naked palette, but with more matte options. And the fact that this palette is mostly mattes with a few shimmery finishes makes it one palette that I’ll be keeping close by on my vanity.
Rumor has it that the Nutcracker Sweet Collection will be available online on October 20th, 2016, and in-store October 27th, 2016 through December 8th, 2016.
Press samples featured
Beautiful palette!