The Chocolate Shop

2 Reviews

1. 

   peskySausage5

   Reply

   I had SUCH high hopes for this product, because I know how amazing other Too Faced shadows are. True to Too Faced form, the shadows in this palette are smooth and easy to blend, however, the pigmentation is severely lacking amongst the matte shades.

   I was excited at first to see so many neutral mattes in this palette, but the mattes are actually very tedious to work with. It takes SO long to build up any kind of color. I was surprised because this is nothing at all like my Bon Bons palette. With this palette, once you get some kind of color build-up going, it blends away to almost nothingness quite easily, and then you have to try to get the pigment to show up all over again. In my opinion an eyeshadow palette shouldn’t require so much effort to work properly. The beautiful black with plum glitter, “Huckleberry”, is quite dusty and powdery in addition to the aforementioned issues. Even more difficult to use than the others, which is a shame because the color looks so gorgeous in the pan.

   The shimmer/glitter colors are quite nice (“Sugared Raisin” is especially breathtaking) but they don’t pick up well on brushes at ALL. You’ll have a similar scenario as I described with the mattes if you try to use brushes. They work very well when you use your fingertips to apply them. I don’t know if this would be a deal breaker to some.

   Other than that, the face highlight came off as VERY chunky and glittery when I swatched it. I didn’t even try to use it on my face because I feared it would ruin my makeup. The bronzer is amazing, the blush is a great color, a bit powdery but not bad. The lipstick is just my kind of nude, and we all know how great the BTS mascara is. As for Shadow Insurance, this was my first time testing it out, but it didn’t work for me at all. I have oily eyelids and by the end of the day (wear time around 6 hours) my eyeshadow was completely destroyed, barely a hint left that it had ever been applied at all. I’ll stick to my WnW, ELF, and Urban Decay primers.

   I decided I had to return this item because it just wasn’t doing it for me, especially for the price. I don’t know where Too Faced went wrong here.

2. 

   goofyLapwing3

   Reply

   The Chocolate Shop is exclusive to Sephora (I’ve not seen it anywhere in the UK) – you can order it overseas on their site. It is one of three palette options in the Christmas In New York holiday 2016 range; the Grande Hotel Cafe is the easiest to find and is sold on the Too Faced site and any store Too Faced is stocked, and Merry Macarons is exclusive to Ulta in the US and Debenhams here in the UK.

   I appreciate that the colour combination used is mostly ‘safer’ very wearable neutral shades – this is the most expensive palette in the Christmas In New York range, so it’s appropriate that the shades are mainly suited to wear in everyday places e.g. work or school, so we can get our monies worth of wear. The cocoa-scented shadows come in a nice mix of matte and shimmers, the formula is nicely pigmented in the vast majority of product and the shadows apply and wear well. I always expect Too Faced’s card packaged shadow palettes to be of a slightly lower quality than their tin ones as the formula is a bit different, so I can’t really complain that several of the lighter shadows in the mix need a bit of building; there are no total duds in the palette though, I’ve found that I just need to spend a bit more time working with them, rather then them being one-swipe-on-and-go softer shadows. The three cheek products surprised me with their high quality – much softer-feeling than the hardish shadows.

   Like I said above, I think the shade selections make a good all year round palette – nothing shouts “I’m a Christmas product” here. My neutral skin can lean a bit towards the cooler side, but I find the warmer colours still look nice on. My only real issue is how a few of the shades look similar – The Chocolate Shop has the most eyeshadows in, but as the light-medium shades look close to each other on my skintone, most looks I’ve come up with look same, so it doesn’t feel like the palette has a bigger selection. And when the palette does venture out of the more neutral zone, we get purple, teal and black. Sigh. Too Faced always rely on purple, teal and black, as seen in their last big pre-xmas palette The Power Of Makeup, Vegas Nay, Bon Bons, and the majority of the other holiday palettes over the years…

   I do have all three palettes; I ordered The Chocolate Shop from Sephora as soon as it went on sale for VIB Rouge members and was just going to stick with that one, but the packaging and theme screamed “buy me now” when I saw the Grande Hotel Cafe and the Merry Macarons palettes in Debenhams. I do think that the Merry Macarons one is the best in terms of shadow quality, but that palette has no cheek products in. The Grande Hotel Cafe also is slightly better quality-wise, has two blushes, a bronzer, some nice metallic eyeshadow shades, and the shadows are nicely configured to make it easier to create eye looks with. The Chocolate Shop is the palette that doesn’t have anything unique on offer (extra samples in it doesn’t count), except maybe highlight? We’ve seen this selection of mainly neutral eyeshadow shades and the same few shades of colour pops from Too Faced many times before. Now I’ve got the other two easier-to-get-for-UKers palettes to play with, I have hardly reached for this palette, as I think that the shadow shades in The Chocolate Shop are the most unoriginal and basic – it’s not a bad palette by any means as the quality is decent, and I do appreciate having a good mix of neutral shades to hand – but it’s not as fun and inspiring as I find Merry Macarons or Grande Hotel Cafe.

   If you wanted one of the Chocolate Bar palettes but haven’t pulled the trigger yet, then you might want to check The Chocolate Shop out; the selection of shadow shades on offer here may satisfy your lemming, plus you’ll also get blush, bronzer, highlight, mascara, liquid lipstick and eyeshadow primer too. The packaging is gorgeous, so this will also make a lovely gift option – the colours would be great for a teenager, someone who needs a more subdued/conservative look for work, or tends to lean towards a more natural look with occasional pop of colour.