MAC Magic, Mirth, and Mischief! – the palettes

With holiday comes a plethora of palettes. This year’s offering includes the usual six-shade eye palettes with 213SE brush (warm, cool, smoky, and “other”) and lip trios (each including two lipsticks and a gloss, plus a 316SE brush), but also introduces a new “face” palette. More on these beauties in a minute.

The eye palettes are $36 each, and normally I’d be raving about the warm eyes and smoky palettes by now… but I found them both a little disappointing. They’re both a little chalky, particularly Sorcery and Devilishly Dark in Devil May Dare, and Black Magique in Smoke and Mirrors. It seems strange that a nearly defunct eyeshadow finish (Veluxe) would be so heavily represented in the holiday palettes.
But if I was losing my faith with the first two palettes, the second two restored me. I never thought I’d say it, but Mystic Cool Eyes is the best eye palette this year. It is so richly pigmented and soft and smooth. It reminded me of the Shu Uemura Mika palettes from last year. Cool Incantation is a fabulous white-gold, sort of like Solar White. Blue Enchantment is a fabulous turquoise and Deep Secret is an amazing, rich reflective sapphire.
I think it’s worth noting where I disagree with MAC’s descriptions of their eyeshadow shades. They call Deception (Smoke and Mirrors) “golden brown” — I would have called it a rose-purple-gold duochrome. It’s a fascinating color. They call Wide-Eyed Wonder “grey taupe,” and I suppose that’s accurate, but I think “grey-purple” would have been a more accurate description. It is warmed, so we could call it purple taupe.

Okay, about those marvelous face palettes. Somehow the things I love most from the MAC collections are always the ones I didn’t see coming. These palettes offer three different powders for face; two in the top part of the compact, and the third in a slide-out drawer.
Hocus Focus Colourful Face Kit includes Peachykeen blush, Sunsparked Pearl beauty powder (highlight), and Pretty Baby beauty powder (all over face powder). As soon as I swatched Sunsparked Pearl, I mentally crossed Bobbi Brown’s Nude Shimmerbrick off my wishlist. Fab-racadabra Bronze Face Kit includes Sunbasque blush, Buffed and Polished iridescent pressed powder (highlight), and Golden bronzing powder. I love them both, but I have to have Hocus Focus. The face palettes are $38 each.

There are three lip palettes ($22.50 each): two “regular” and one Viva Glam. And (just like with all Viva Glam lipsticks and glosses) 100% of the Viva Glam palette’s purchase price goes to charity.