Too Faced Clover Eyeshadow Palette Review & Swatches
Too Faced Clover Eyeshadow Palette ($49) is a new 18 pan eyeshadow palette inspired by Jerrod Blandino’s chihuahua, Clover. This is one of Too Faced’s cutest launches to date not to mention it supports a very good cause with Too Faced donating $250,000 of the sales of the palettes to the Best Friends Animal Society.
I personally purchased it for a few reasons one of which is I have and had chihuahuas in my life. It’s sort of my dog of choice ;-D Some people think of them as ankle biters but they are actually quite lovable animals with unique personalities. You probably already met my girl Kia if you follow me on Instagram. She’s a sweetheart! Not like any chihuahua I’ve met or owned in the past. She has an incredibly loving personality to everyone she meets.
Anyway, it’s one of the reasons I purchased the Clover Eyeshadow Palette. Secondly, I purchased it because it supports an excellent cause. And lastly, this packaging. Who’s the artist? The kawaii art work is very Japanese in style and awfully sweet. Oddly enough, I felt like the Totally Cute Palette was quite juvenile and I guess Clover’s Palette might fall into the same realms for some people. But I love it! I think it’s adorable. Clover’s anime is quite cute and his cast of friends remind me of something straight out of Sanrio!
Sadly, the packaging is sort of the only thing I loved about this palette.
Too Faced Clover Eyeshadow Palette holds 18 shades of eyeshadow all of which are the same size and weight in at 0.03 oz each. I’m happy that each shade is consistent in size as I’m really not a fond fan of how Too Faced occasionally throws in random larger base shades. It just throws the look of the palette off for me.
The tin compact has a generously sized mirror located inside and the artwork on the outer box has a raised design on the actual palette with some of the graphics also appearing around the mirror located inside. It took me way back to third or fourth grade when I used to have a Hello Kitty Pencil Box with all the cool bells and whistles like a drawer that held paper clips (why I’d need paper clips in third grade is beyond me but it was cool!) and a sharpener that popped in and out with the press of a button. My curiosity got the better of me so I took a smallish knife and wriggled it under the shadow tray and low and behold it can be easily popped out should you like to use this to store gel pens (because I’m over the age of collecting gel pens but I still do! Sorry not sorry!) or little dodads once you use up all the shadows inside.
I don’t love the palette for a few reasons one of the main ones being the formula is hit or miss. I felt like the shades were quite dry and didn’t adhere well to my lid. For example, I did a look using TF Mascot. I gently patted it on my lid with my shadow brush and I went back in to blend another shade but it kept dusting away to reveal the skin of my lid during the blending process. They also swatched patchy, dry, and easily dusted away if I blow on them. A few of the mattes stood up well like Fur Baby and Cuddle Buddy but others were drier and patchier like Daddies Heart Me. Pigmentation was hit or miss here with some colors having decent buildable pay off and others being quite sheer. The quality and performance was sketchy over all in this palette and not near what I’ve become accustomed to from Too Faced in the past. It is made in the USA for those curious.
The second thing I disliked about the palette was the shade assortment but first a word on the finishes in here! Mattes appear to dominate the palette but actually there is an even amount of mattes vs shimmer/satin shades with a total of nine mattes and nine shimmers/satins. There’s axctually one duochrome as well if you want to be technical.
There’s really no rhythm or reason here. It’s not a cohesive selection of shades and you might struggle a little bit pairing up looks. I mean you have a strip of warmer browns and suddenly there’s a light, pale green in the mix along with an aqua. It’s a lot of mismatched shades that looked nice together in the palette but try applying them together into a look and you might struggle. I know I did. I was cool with some of the nudes but when it came to injecting Good Boy (mustard yellow) into my look I was like, “Wait, what would this pair up well with!?” There are a few stand out shades that look great in theory but performed badly like Daddies Love Me is such a great cranberry but the shade applies sheerer and has a very dry, chalky formula that blends away during application. #SaveThemAll is a deep, warm gorgeous bark brown but again it was dry and blended away.
There are also a host of shades I hated like Puppy Eyes (I can never use white anything in my look! It doesn’t even really work as a high brow highlighter for me), Lucky Clover which is just a gross light green that looks chalky (a deeper forest green would have been easier to pair up with some of the darker browns), and yes, I’ll go there to say there’s another solid matte black here that I’ll likely never use.
You could say I’m not creative enough to create a look using these shades and you’d be right. But I do believe the average makeup user might find the shades challenging in this palette.
I am very, very curious how others will feel about this palette once it becomes available in a more mainstream market. The reviews haven’t quite hit the blog world yet but I’m mostly curious what all of you think if you tried this yet. And I’m highly curious what the rest of the makeup world will feel about it.
For me it was a fail. The quality isn’t really here and cute packaging can’t make up for that.
The Too Faced Clover Eyeshadow Palette available now at ulta.com.
Did you haul it?
Do share your thoughts if you did!