My favourite eyeshadow palette of 2013 is without question THREE Star Guitar. It's become such a key part of my makeup wardrobe -- I wear it as a palette at least once a week, and integrate its four separate pans into other looks often (e.g. see the plum in action here) -- that I only realised I never actually blogged about it as I was putting together a 'best of 2013' round-up. D:
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So starting 2014 as I mean to go on, here's a disorganised spam post full of ooooold pics in dodgy lighting from last autumn, all totally failing to do a product I love any justice at all. Woot :D
Firstly, a little packaging detail: THREE's sleek grey cases are uniform, but the lettering on each quad is in a different colour to help differentiate each one without opening -- Star Guitar's 'THREE' comes in a cool matte silver.
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Inside? Ohhhhhh lawdy. *fans self* A few closeups, all taken in natural light.
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Even in the pan, I think the textural variety is clear:
The plum is a dense dry cream, packed with warmer ruby and gold glitter, and sparse cool cornflower sparkle, as well as tonal microshimmer.
The taupewter topcoat contains several sizes, shapes, and tones of sparkle, the largest flecks icy blue-white, and includes some black glitter for surprising depth. It's loosely packed disparate glitter but not gritty in feel -- actually there's almost a gel-suspension glide to its taupe base -- and on my dry lids it is prone to fallout without some kind of product underneath (either cream or powder). This shade shifts quite a bit from warm mid-toned taupe when sheered out (so that the base reads most strongly) to a much lighter almost silvery pewter when packed on with a dense brush so that the sparkle predominates.
The two powders are slightly trickier to differentiate, but I think you can just tell that the brown is, while still complex in its balance of warm and cool, more tightly packed and an understated satin-matte in finish (it's the workhorse transition/shader/deepener of this lineup), while the pink combines a warmer mauve-rose base with a dense, cool silvery-white sheen. The pink also feels creamier and changes finish significantly when layered over another shade (powders as well as creams): its rosy base seems to integrate into and subtly warm up that product, letting its shimmer function function more as a scattered-sparkler topcoat.
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Finally a lookdump! I chose some FOTD pictures I'd taken over the past season to try and showcase this quad's versatility, despite its neutrality.
1 ALL TEH PANS
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2. Plum + Brown
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3. Pink + Brown + Taupeweter
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4. Brown + Plum + Taupewter (+ COBALT)
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5. Rose + plum
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6. Plum + Taupewter
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So starting 2014 as I mean to go on, here's a disorganised spam post full of ooooold pics in dodgy lighting from last autumn, all totally failing to do a product I love any justice at all. Woot :D
Firstly, a little packaging detail: THREE's sleek grey cases are uniform, but the lettering on each quad is in a different colour to help differentiate each one without opening -- Star Guitar's 'THREE' comes in a cool matte silver.
Inside? Ohhhhhh lawdy. *fans self* A few closeups, all taken in natural light.
The plum is a dense dry cream, packed with warmer ruby and gold glitter, and sparse cool cornflower sparkle, as well as tonal microshimmer.
The taupewter topcoat contains several sizes, shapes, and tones of sparkle, the largest flecks icy blue-white, and includes some black glitter for surprising depth. It's loosely packed disparate glitter but not gritty in feel -- actually there's almost a gel-suspension glide to its taupe base -- and on my dry lids it is prone to fallout without some kind of product underneath (either cream or powder). This shade shifts quite a bit from warm mid-toned taupe when sheered out (so that the base reads most strongly) to a much lighter almost silvery pewter when packed on with a dense brush so that the sparkle predominates.
The two powders are slightly trickier to differentiate, but I think you can just tell that the brown is, while still complex in its balance of warm and cool, more tightly packed and an understated satin-matte in finish (it's the workhorse transition/shader/deepener of this lineup), while the pink combines a warmer mauve-rose base with a dense, cool silvery-white sheen. The pink also feels creamier and changes finish significantly when layered over another shade (powders as well as creams): its rosy base seems to integrate into and subtly warm up that product, letting its shimmer function function more as a scattered-sparkler topcoat.
Swatches
(from here, where you can also see my other THREE 4D Eye Palettes)
Comparisons
I have most comparables for the plum, and good thing too, for you can see I've already hit pan on that shade, and on the purple cream from Shu Uemura x Karl Lagerfeld Prestigious Bordeaux (my 'Star Guitar' of 2012 -- looks here and here) too. The other products are Charlotte Tilbury Amethyst Aphrodisiac Colour Chameleon pencil (review) and my first acquisition of 2014, Chanel Illusion D'Ombre Diapason (review/swoonage forthcoming).
Note the pattern here? I am a sucker for warmer-toned purple creams filled with blue shimmer. The THREE plum sits in the middle -- with a reddened base in common with Amethyst Aphrodisiac/Diapason, a similar combination and dispersion of multitonal sparkle as the Prestigious Bordeaux purple, and texturally it is slightly creamier than the Shu or CT, but slightly less so than the Chanel.
The rose satin, which swatches (and functions) as a definite pink note alongside the other pans in Star Guitar as a whole, looks like a non-colour next to the mauve from Shu Uemura Prestigious Bordeaux (yep, that palette again :P), which shares its muted mauve base-with-silver shimmer, and even the warm pink 'shader' from Suqqu 08 Mizuaoi.
I keep saying that Star Guitar's brown is perfectly balanced between warm and cool but I think that's just relative to my wardrobe -- in the grand scheme of eyeshadows it's decidedly cool. Here it is in between two of my beloved RBR neutral mattes -- Blackpepper Jay and Sweet Dust Seriema, and texturally too, the Star Guitar shade is closer to the demi-matte BPJ than the creamy matte SDS.
As for the taupewter topcoat, that really is so unusually warm-cool of a shade that I have no real analogues, just some randoms in a seriously dodgy pic: Rouge Bunny Rouge Wishing for Wings pigment (a much cooler lavender taupe with a smooth shimmery finish), THREE Shimmering Colour Veil (loose glitter pigment) 20 Ziggy (warmer toned, with larger glitter particles less tightly packed) and Fyrinnae Newcastle (much darker and more 'solid' in feel).
1 ALL TEH PANS
Star Guitar's plum as a base all over lid and smudged under the eye, the brown to add depth at outer and inner 'v', rose to blend and extended outwards at the outer corner, taupewter glitter blended up from inner corner to brow. Lip and cheek: Etude House Rosy Tint Lips 8 After Blossom.
2. Plum + Brown
A soft, warm eye: a rounded wash of the brown on lid and under the eye with plum as smudgy liner. Paired with translucent peachy pinks on lips (Coffret D'Or Bright Up Rouge Creamy Liquid PK270) and cheeks (Chicca Flush Blush 09 Feels Love).
3. Pink + Brown + Taupeweter
The brown works sheered out as a lid wash in the last look, but pushed into the lashline with a dense push-brush, it has enough heft to define a look, even without the plum cream. The rose as a wash on the upper lid, and the taupewter glitter layered over the brown on the inner half of the lower lashline. Lip: Diego Dalla Palma 104 Cyalamen. Cheek: Addiction Rose Bar cheekstick.
4. Brown + Plum + Taupewter (+ COBALT)
The cobalt is By Terry Royal Navy from whose review post this looks comes -- it blocks off the THREE brown on the lid, with a dab of pewter in the centre, from the plum, taken under the eye.
As the rose's silver shimmer works well to add dimension even in a simple one-shade wash, why complicate matters further? Er, unless you feel like adding a baby split wing with the plum. Lip is complimentary warm rose Guerlain Chamade Rouge Auto, cheek Canmake Clear CL04 Clear Pink Joy.
6. Plum + Taupewter
This one is look no. 1 redux. As you can probably guess from my product pics, I wear the plum from this quad most often as a one-shade already-complex haze. Accented with the taupewter glitter at the centre of lid and lower lashline, it makes for a deceptively intricate dark-and-bright look that takes all of a minute to slap on. Lip: Etude House Rosy Tint Lip 3 Rose Petal (mixed with balm). Cheek: Diego Dalla Palma Creamy Blush 60 Glow Baby Pink.
Phew, well that's a weight off my chest :D I hope to do a big corral-y post on my other THREE quads throughout the year, so stay tuned :D Any votes on which one you'd like to see next?