Happy Wednesday! The month is almost over and my favourite time of the year is coming up – Halloween! Halloween is my weakest month, as its the month where I make an incredible amount of unnecessary purchases simply because I cannot resist anything Halloween-themed. Etude House is no exception, and as one of the only Korean brands that releases a Halloween collection every year, I couldn’t help but be excited for what they had in store for the season! Let’s take a look at the main cast of this year’s “Witch and the City” collection…
Originally I had meant to only purchase the Hello Pumpqueen palette, as it has the most interesting colours and I had yet to own a matte orange. However once I saw the packaging I knew I had to own them both! So weak…・(/Д`)・
The packaging was the main reason I couldn’t resist. Using simple line design for the art and compact, portable casing, as a graphic design major I would never let this chance go! It seems that Etude House is really trying to change their concept to a more mature and modern look, and distance themselves from releasing only pink, princess-y type things.
Both palettes come with a standard applicator. I personally never use these, but good to have for those who do!
Hello Pumpqueen
The first palette up is Hello Pumpqueen, the warmer toned palette of the two. I was pleasantly surprised to see that Etude House has stepped up their English game when it comes to product descriptions, as you can see on the back! Now onto the inside…
On the inside the package is matte, with raised gloss designs in black. I’m a huge fan of matte packaging so Etude House releasing all of these matte products lately has me very excited!
The palette comes with 3 shimmer shades, 1 glitter, 1 matte, and 1 cream colour. The cream colour can be used as an eyeshadow base, a blending colour, or as a liner when applied with the right brush.
Honey Pumpkin was the colour that sparked my interest the most, and was the main reason I bought this palette as I do not own any matte oranges otherwise. Both palettes also come with adorable plastic sleeves with colour names and representative icons for each shade! Etude is definitely making a huge effort to focus on all the right details.
With flash you can see the complex colours that are in Pearl Lantern. At first it seems like a basic warm tone glitter shade, but light brings out purple and green glitter! I consider orange, black, purple, and green to be the ultimate Halloween colours so Pearl Lantern fits in this palette perfectly.
Flash photography is where this palette truly shines (pun not intended). My favourite shade by FAR is Caramelizing, as it has a gorgeous copper sheen and is the most pigmented shadow out of both palettes. Unfortunately Cacao Fondue didn’t deliver the pigment I had been hoping for, and its cream counterpart in the Hallowinner palette serves its purpose as an eyeliner much better. Pearl Lantern works great layered on top of any of these shadows or on its own on your full lid. As all of the shadows in Hello Pumpqueen are warm toned, they work well together and can be used in numerous combinations!
My look
I decided to go with a more dramatic wing to keep with the “Halloween” theme of October! I used Hello Pumpqueen for most of this look, but used Hallowinner’s Jealousy all over the lid as a base. Pumpqueen’s Brown Sugar was used as the crease colour, blended out with A Piece of Pie, and Honey Pumpkin was used to blend out the lower lid. I used Pearl Lantern as a (gorgeous!!) brow highlight but I always find it difficult to capture highlights with my camera! The black shadow is from Kat Von D’s Shade & Light Eye palette and the eyeliner is Tony Moly’s gel liner, as usual. The full face look will be at the bottom of this post 🙂
Hallowinner
Hallowinner (which I still think they should have named Halloqueen!) is Hello Pumpqueen’s cool toned, vampy counterpart. While Pumpqueen followed more of a “foody” theme with its colour names, Hallowinner follows the collection’s “Witch and the City” (which I assume is a parody of Sex and the City) theme more closely.
There’s a reason I couldn’t take a picture of this palette from the front like I did with Pumpqueen…
…And that’s because the palette is totally mirrored! I don’t own any palettes with a mirrored finish like this, so I thought it was a fun idea. I even use it to get a quick look at my face throughout the day 🙂
For some reason, the sole cream shade, Abracadabra, isn’t placed on the far left like it was in Pumpqueen…Either way, like Pumpqueen, this palette contains 3 shimmer shades, 1 matte, 1 glitter, and 1 cream.
There are several things that intrigued me about this palette. First was the matte pink, Jealousy, as those who read my blog know from my pink post that I love matte pink eyeshadow! The second was Witch Soup, which has a matte brown base with purple/blue glitter on top – very unique. With the inclusion of a liner and a wide range of colours, I found this palette to be great to throw in my pouch for simple daily looks!
I wanted to talk about two of the more complex colours in detail, so took some closeup shots. Halloween Fantasy is a colour that despite looking like a plain shimmer brown at first, when viewed in the light/up-close you can really appreciate the complexity of it! This colour has a red, rusty shimmer base, and is scattered throughout with green, orange, blue, pink, and gold glitter! This makes it a lot more unique than the standard shimmer brown that is generally included in Etude palettes.
Witch Soup, in my opinion, is the most interesting and unique shadow out of both palettes. On a matte brown base, this shadow contains a wide range of glitter on top that give it an almost duochrome effect. As the brown base is not very pigmented, this shadow works great packed on top of other cool-tone shadows, or as an all-over eye glitter.
Despite this palette having a great range of cool toned and warm toned shades, one of my biggest complaints about it when compared with Pumpqueen is the pigmentation. This palette fails in that department, with some of the shadows going on rather patchy – disappointing! Halloween Fantasy, despite my earlier praises, was the hardest one to get to apply evenly, along with the liner shade, Abracadabra. In my look below you will see that I applied it as an eyeliner, but I found it to be slippery and difficult to work with. I’m curious to see how Witch Soup would perform with a glitter glue…
My look
This look was done on the bus, so it is rather simple but it shows the potential of Hallowinner as a great “on the go” palette! For this look I used City Romance all over the lid, and used an eyeliner brush to line the outer half of my eye with Abracadabra. I finished up the look by patting Witch Soup all over my lid to give it more dimension and sparkle!
Final verdict
In the full look you can see why I consider Hallowinner to be a great “on the go” palette. I used the eyeshadow Jealousy as a blush, and it gave a natural flush that I was very satisfied with! For a dramatic effect on my lips I used my favourite Etude House lip colour, Perfect Fit Red from the Colour Lips Fit line.
So which of the two palettes do I prefer?
The winner is Hello Pumpqueen, hands down! With better pigmentation and an INSANE shimmer shade in Caramelizing, as well as the unique Honey Pumpkin, I find myself reaching more for this palette than the other. Hallowinner is great, but the pigmentation leaves much to be desired. Lately I have been taking both around in my pouch to use together, which I find to be the best way to get the most out of them. At 14,000 KRW for 6 shadows, I would say this palette runs a little on the expensive side, but if you are like me and die for Halloween themed / limited edition things, then these are definitely for you! They do contain colours not available at Etude House regularly, so that also might be a selling point for some 🙂 Either way, I’m happy with my purchases!
On a side note, I also picked up these Halloween stickers from the line which I’ve yet to use but look how cute they are! ❤
This post was a little long, but hopefully enjoyable nonetheless! I hope to be getting a “Places to Go” post up soon, but haven’t gone anywhere worth blogging lately 😦 I do have a few short makeup posts lined up, though, so look forward to those soon. Until next time~ヾ(^▽^ヾ)
Jasmineitor & Korea 
I was prepared for a long read, no worry! And as usual, enjoy to read all the descriptions and see the good quality of your photos, this kind of posts are a great help (at least to me) to see the quality of the products, and the swatches. At first I was inlove of Hallowinner, but now I see Pumpqueen it’s best.
Thank you so much! ♥
En serio te maquillaste en el bus? que capa!
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Jeje es un skill que uno aprende viviendo en una sociedad como esta :p I try to make my posts as detailed as possible to cover all the points and questions people will have hehe
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Me encanta esta época del año, sin duda mi favorita. Fui al super con mi mamá y compramos como 15 artículos decorativos y cada vez que íbamos queríamos más xD
Trataré de arreglármelas y copiarte el primer look, si no te molesta 🙂
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Es mi favorita tambien! No puedo resistir todos los productos Halloween que salen jeje compro cualquier cosa >< no me molesta para nada jeje me alegro que te haya gustado! 😀
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