Laura Mercier Baked Eye Colour Palette Holiday Review & Swatches

As we've come to expect, Laura Mercier has released a baked eyeshadow palette for the holidays. This year, it's a collection of five shades in a mirrored compact that range from milk chocolate to baby pink. Since the shadows are baked, you can use them wet or dry, and a mini double-ended brush is included (one side is the eye colour brush, and the other is the creme eye detail brush) that's actually high quality. Not at all like the crappy, sheds-like-a-German-Shepherd mini brushes MAC tends to dump into their holiday kits.

 
The shades are (from left to right):
Sienna - a milk chocolate with shimmer 
Terracotta - shimmering copper-bronze
Ballet Pink -a frosty champange (not really pink at all) along the lines of NARS All About Eve, Stila Kitten, etc
Pink Petal - an icy, shimmery baby pink
Lilac - a beyond gorgeous shimmering lilac

Yeah, yeah... the box says you can use the shades dry, but it's pretty pointless. While Sienna, Terracotta, and Ballet Pink have good pigmentation dry, Pink Petal and Lilac are an enormous let down. And I think that like me, most people will be purchasing this set mainly for those two shade. However, all of the colors look amazing when you apply them wet, when the shadows take on an almost paint-like consistency.

When I went to photograph these, I swatched them in a row in four different ways: dry on bare skin, wet on bare skin, dry over Urban Decay Primer Potion, and wet over UDPP. as we all know, UDPP (or any primer, for that matter) is an eyeshadow game-changer. It can take pretty much the sheerest, most insipid eyeshadow and make it bloom. I found it interesting, and thought I should note that applying these shadows wet over bare skin and dry over UDPP yielded the same result, but for the truest color it was best to apply wet over UDPP. This was especially true for Pink Petal and Lilac. Lilac, whether wet on bare skin or over UDPP on dry skin, had a hint of pink. But when applied wet over UDPP, its bluer tones came through. Pink Petal appeared whitish when applied wet over bare skin or dry over UDPP; when applied wet over UDPP, it shined in all its icy, pure pink glory. I did swatches on both hands, and although I did the ones on my left hand "backwards", I captioned pics to make it easy for everyone, rather than give readers instructions like, "for Sienna and Ballet Pink, it goes like this... ", lol. I also shot them in different lighting for accuracy.

First up is Sienna. I seriously could not believe the difference primer and wet application made in this one:

Right to left: dry over bare skin, wet over bare skin, dry over UDPP, wet over UDPP

Right to left: dry over bare skin, wet over bare skin, dry over UDPP, wet over UDPP

Terracotta (hehe, I swatched this after Lilac. you can still see a couple of purple sparkles here and there on my hand):

Left to right: dry over bare skin, wet over bare skin, dry over UDPP, wet over UDPP

Left to right: dry over bare skin, wet over bare skin, dry over UDPP, wet over UDPP

Ballet Pink (this one seemed to look pretty much the same no matter how I applied it. And it's NOT pink!):

Right to left: dry over bare skin, wet over bare skin, dry over UDPP, wet over UDPP

Right to left: dry over bare skin, wet over bare skin, dry over UDPP, wet over UDPP

Pink Petal (tilt your head slightly to the left for swatch order):

Left to right: dry over bare skin, wet over bare skin, dry over UDPP, wet over UDPP

Left to right: dry over bare skin, wet over bare skin, dry over UDPP, wet over UDP

And last but not least, my favorite of all, Lilac *oohs and ahhs*. you can really see the difference UDPP makes in bringing out the truer blue tones in the second picture, which was taken without flash. It almost looks like I swatched four different shadows:

Left to right: dry over bare skin, wet over bare skin, dry over UDPP, wet over UDPP

Left to right: dry over bare skin, wet over bare skin, dry over UDPP, wet over UDPP

 I really like the mix of shades in this palette. You can play with Sienna and Terracotta for a bronzey look; mix Sienna, Ballet Pink and Pink Petal for a pink chocolate look; or just wear Lilac and Pink Petal together for a gorgeous, icy pastel eye that would be perfect for holiday parties (New Year's, anyone? ;)