We’re coming to the end of my Etude House post marathon! This is the post I’m most excited about of the four – the Personal Color eye and lip palettes. I will give a brief introduction to the meaning of “personal color”, and share extensive photos of swatches, close-ups of the palettes, and my own makeup looks using them!
Every person falls under at least one of the three categories of skin tone: cool, warm, or neutral. It’s important to know what your undertone is, as it will aid you when buying foundation and other base products, as well as explain why certain lipsticks or blushes clash with your skin tone. Makeup Geek has a very thorough post on how to find your undertone, so I recommend checking it out if you aren’t sure what tone you are!
In Korea, they go even further in depth with personal colour, separating cool and warm tones between seasons. Warm tones can either be Spring type (brighter warm tones), or Autumn type (deeper/duller warm tones). Cool tones are either Summer type (cool pastels), or Winter type (dark cool tones). These are a little harder to determine, but there are many tests online that you can take to determine which season you fall under.
I have naturally dark hair and dark eyes with very pale, pink-toned skin, so I am a Winter Cool Tone!
•○ Eye Palette ○•
A few months ago Etude House asked for our skin undertones, and whether or not we would like to participate in an extra Pink Bird mission. I obviously said yes, and a week or two ago they sent me the cool toned palettes!
“Sassy eye makeup”😂.
The packaging is very minimalist, and reminds me a little of the Kylie Jenner eyeshadow palettes.
Inside are 20 shadows of various finishes, protected by a plastic sheet with the names and number of each shadow.
These shadows have a different print from the regular Etude House shadows, but it quickly disappears with just a few uses. The palette itself is plain cream plastic, with a large mirror. It’s the same size as the contour palette I reviewed here.
There are only 5 mattes, 3 glitter bombs, and the remaining 12 are a mix of glittery shimmers and pearl shimmers. Etude’s palettes tend to be lower in quality than their famous single shadows, but these shadows are surprisingly very pigmented! They go on and blend easily, and last all day. My only issue is that the more glittery shades tend to have fallout when applied with a brush. I prefer to pat them on with my finger and use a brush only with the mattes.
Pale Beige is a matte cream white that I use to set my eye primer since it basically matches my skin colour 😂. I find it to be a more pigmented version of their single shadow “Honey Milk”. Antique Coral is not coral, but more of a cool-toned baby pink. Pure chunky glitter! Pink Mousse is a champagne pink pearl shade. Shiny Rose is a shiny rose (surprise) glittery shimmer. Deep Wine is a slightly reddish brown matte. Layers very prettily on top of the shimmer shades to deepen them!
Tan Brown is a grayish-brown pearl shadow. Chocolate Pudding and Dull Rose are both dusty rose tones, and my favorite colors in the whole palette. As you’ll see in the looks I did below, they are very soft and flattering on cool-tone skin. Not quite brown, but not quite pink – like nothing I own! Dark Maple is a brown I swear Etude releases in every palette ever. It’s a sheer, pale coppery brown with purple, green, and gold glitter. Barrel Brown is a chocolate brown with similar glitter in it as Dark Maple.
There is honestly only a VERY small difference between Greyish and Greyish Velvet. Greyish has some glitter in it, while Greyish Velvet has gold shimmer, as far as I can tell. On the eye I imagine they look identical :(. Cream Soda is a VERY bright sparkly ivory glitter. Autumn Brown is a velvet brown pearl shade. Dark Brown is a matte shadow so dark it’s almost a black – I use it for eyeliner or darkening my lash line.
Sugar Wine is a cool white glitter. Glam Wine is a very pretty pink glittery shimmer. Another favourite, looks much prettier in real life – tons of dimension! Purple Star is the only shade in the palette I thoroughly dislike. In the pan it comes off as a gorgeous multi-dimensional plum shimmer, but as it was made on a black base, when you swatch it all you get is a patchy matte black. The shimmer shows through a bit with my strong ring light, but you can’t see it in real life at all 😦 . Maybe it’d work better on a black or purple cream base? Deep Brown is another gray brown with purple/pink glitter. The last shade, Cold Brown, is exactly what the name suggests! Similar to Deep Brown, but a lighter version.
All the above swatches were done with no primer, but here I did a comparison to show what it’s like to swatch the shadows on a glitter base versus without one. I swatched 09 Dark Maple, 11 Greyish, and 18 Purple Star. You can see that if you want a really intense look you should be using primer, but otherwise I find patting them on with your finger without a glitter base/with a regular eyeshadow primer creates great coverage all the same!
•○ Lip Palette ○•
The lip palette also follows the minimalist approach, with two cute little teeth :B .
Seeing the transparent palette lid and how cute it looks, it makes me wish they did the same with the eye and contour palettes!
There are 9 colours inside, with the 1st, 5th, and 7th colour being glossy/creamy, and the rest matte.
One issue I had with this palette, and I worry I might have with the other two, is that the pans seem to be glued in quite poorly. I had this lip palette in my makeup pouch (as it is quite small – the size of Etude House’s empty quad palettes) and the top right shade fell out! Luckily the plastic sheet inside kept it in until I was able to glue it back, but as you can see, they aren’t stuck into the holes properly 😦 . Big minus considering the price.
These have been swatched from left to right, top to bottom! These are quite subtle colours for the most part, but very buildable when applied with your finger or a lip brush (my preferred method). They feel very smooth and moisturizing, with some of the colours staining your lips a little, giving the illusion of long-wear.
I revamped how I edit my lip swatch photos and I am soooo happy with how they turned out ❤ . (Also praise Etude House’s Honey Cera Lip Oil for how scab-less my lips have been lately!!!!!) Instead of swatching all 9 colours on my lips, I decided to do a few lip looks so you can see how the palette works!
My preferred method, and the method I used for all of the looks, is to pat one of the more sheer colours all over my lips, then use one of the darker ones in the inner parts, blending it out in a gradient.
•○ Makeup Looks ○•
This is the first look I ever did with the palette, which is my go-to look lately – mattes in the crease, dark outer edge, light lid, and a smoked out lash line! I always finish off this kind of simple look by patting glitter all over the lid, and this palette is great in that it provides enough variety of shadows to do the job!
The second look I did was a light halo eye with a hot pink lip.
One thing I wish this palette had more of was mattes. There are a few shadows in the palette I find to be a little too similar to each other, and I think those could be replaced with one or two more matte shades. I find myself using the two rose shades as transition/crease colours every single time because I have no other choice!
This is a progress shot of the 3rd look I did, and I liked how the soft matte roses looked so much that I decided to take a picture of it to show that you can get also get a pretty matte look out of this palette.
The finished eye look…
Since I wanted the eyes to be the focus of this look, I did a much more subtle lip. The lip I did for this look is the first lip swatch photo I posted above!
•○ Final Thoughts ○•
The eye palette retails for 35,000 KRW for 1g x 20, which when divided is 1,750 KRW per shadow. This sounds expensive, but Etude House singles are both 3,500 / 5,500 KRW each for 2g, so it evens out perfectly. If you were to buy 20 of the 3,500 KRW single shadows, it’d run you 70,000 KRW, and that’s not including the 5,500 KRW Jewel shadows, of which this palette contains quite a few. So I’d say it’s quite a good deal! I really like this palette a lot, which is quite surprising because once they revealed it I thought it looked uninteresting with too many similar shades. While there are a few shadows that are a little too similar, once you swatch many of them you’ll find they have a lot of dimension and versatility to what you can do with them!
The lip palette goes for 22,000 KRW for 1g x 9. Whether this is a good deal or not, I cannot be sure, as I have no similar Etude product to compare it to! However if you are the type who likes to blend/mix and match lip colours then this product is perfect. I find it great as a permanent pouch item since I can get a number of looks out of just this one product when I’m doing makeup on the run.
PHEW what a post!! 😅 There was no WAY I could keep this one short, but I hope the pictures were at least fun to look at! I congratulate you if you managed to read the whole thing…Next post will definitely be a cafe one as I need to take a LONG relaxing break after this madness 😂. I’m still working on improving my content (swatch photos are still my biggest struggle) to see what works best, so any feedback is appreciated! Until next time…( ･ω･)ﾉ
Jasmineitor & Korea 
I don’t like big palettes cause they always have colours in that I don’t like and wouldn’t use and this one is no different unfortuantely. Eyeshadows 7&8 look amazing! I wish they were sold separately.
As with all East Asian cosmetics, even limited edition palettes are meant to be de-pottable which is why the lip palette pans feel like they are going to fall off. They put that gooey soft glue at the back instead of stronger glue. I always appreciate that cause I like keeping things in larger palettes instead of having a million singles, but this one sounds too gooey if the pan actually fell off!
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I totally agree! Mamonde carries two dusty rose shades that are very similar to those two and great quality. 🙂
I had no idea – I almost want to edit the post to add that in because it makes total sense! I always depot my singles into Z-palettes but didn’t know they did the same for these large ones too 😮 great to know! Thanks for commenting ❤
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