Mediterranean Nights contains four unnamed eyeshadows: shimmery yellow-brown, shimmery, pale apple green, a shimmery tawny gold, and a matte pale pink with gold sparkles — though the sparkles didn’t seem to stick at all.

The palette is $34, probably because it includes two blushes (Rome and The Big Easy) and Cargo’s Medium bronzer. The bronzer forms a ring around the blushes, and it looks like it might be difficult to get your brush in bronzer alone.

So between Mediterranean Nights and Hands of Hope, which do you like better?

Cargo Mediterranean Nights Palette: Rome, The Big Easy, Medium Bronzer

I feel like I’m going to repeat a lot of my Cargo Runway Palette review. The shadows are excellent: great texture, very smooth and pigmented. They’re all shimmery, except for that first purple, which is more like a luminous satin. The palette itself is very large and flat — though if Cargo keeps producing palettes like this, you could buy an Ikea wall-mount bookshelf for them and store them upright together.

The Hands of Hope Palette is $29, and, despite its name, is not a charity palette. Most people (myself included) are most excited about that cool brown (taupe!) third shade — luckyredlisa wisely observed that you could easily pay $29 for that shade alone. Unfortunately, the shades do not have individual names and are not sold separately.

I found the palette academically interesting. It’s an amazing value if the eyeshadow colors appeal to you (and I think the blush choices are one-size-fits-most). All the powders have a magnificent texture, though the new essential quad is too cool and steely for my tastes. The blue shadow also reminded me somewhat recent Starflash release Strike a Pose. But the palette is quite large, which seems onerous for travel or storage (do you lay it flat on your vanity? Store it upright on a bookshelf?).

Anyway, I think this won’t be the palette for everybody, but it will be an excellent purchase for some.

Cargo single eyeshadows are $16 ($18.50 CDN), and their duos are $20 ($23 CDN), but they also make a pack of carded, single-use samples ($28 for 24 cards), which I thought would be a good way to check out the colors.

The shadows are softly pigmented (similar to older Clinique shadows and many Bobbi Brown shades), and for the most part, I don’t think I love them as much as I love those neutral palettes. However — though it may not look like much in this picture — I really liked Corsica. The sparkly champagne was surprisingly beautiful — it made my eyes look subtly more awake.

This touched off a search for Corsica… it turns out it’s not a single eyeshadow. What I swatched was the champagne half of an eyeshadow duo. The other half is blue — Cargo, you’re killing me! Readers, if you know of an eyeshadow from another brand that looks exactly like this one, I’d love to hear it.

So where can you buy Cargo eyeshadow? Sephora online stopped carrying them — if you’ve seen them in your local brick-and-mortar Sephora, I wouldn’t wait too much longer to make your purchase decision. Some shades are carried by beauty.com, and Cargo’s websites lists locations in the U.S., Canada, and Europe/Middle East/Australia that carry the line.

Okay, now the big news. I’ve lamented before how impossible it is to capture sparkle in a photograph (I felt this most acutely when swatching the NARS holiday palette). But in a moment of blinding inspiration, I realized my digital camera had a video setting. So, in a historic first for TNBTTGSY, I bring you… swatch video.

Corsica and Yukon are the sparkliest shades (and hopefully I’ll get better at this as time goes on).

Cargo Eyeshadow: Aegean, Mojave, Bermuda, Corsica, Green Bay, Yukon, Costa Rica

If you (makeup guru) do gift this palette to a relative novice, be sure to tell them that the labels on the shadows are only suggestions — they don’t have to use all four shadows to “work” the palette correctly, and they can definitely change the placement or combinations of colors to make different looks. (“Browbone” can become lid and “lid” can become crease. “Browbone” could be used at inner corner, or “outer corner” can be a liner.) Likewise, if you, makeup guru, receive one of these beauties as a gift for your preferred winter holiday, don’t be offended because there are instructions printed on the powder.

Cargo Essential Eyeshadow Palettes: Warm Neutral, Warm/Neutral, Cool Neutral, Cool/Neutral, Dark Neutral, Dark/Neutral