Holiday Anti-Haul

It feels like holiday releases start earlier and earlier each year, and there are more and more products to salivate over. However, I've tried to become more conscious of my makeup collection, not to mention my makeup spending. I know Anti-Hauls are super popular, but I still wanted to do my own. The fall sale season has mostly passed, but there are still a few Sephora and Ulta coupons around, so this list isn't too too late!

Urban Decay Palettes - Don't get me wrong, I'm a big Urban Decay fan. Some of my favorite products are UD products - De-Slick Spray, Sin eyeshadow, Heavy Metal glitter liners. However, Urban Decay went and dropped way too many palettes in a really short period of time.They also released a bunch of other stuff, but this is just the palettes!

Heavy Metals palette - photo thanks to Sephora

• Heavy Metals Metallic Eyeshadow palette - UD has a great eyeshadow formula. Their shimmer shadows may run a bit glittery, but their satins and metallics are beautiful. This palette comes with some wonderful shades, and it fits in with the all shimmer palette trend. However, this palette's design is just bad. Huge mirror in the middle, and the lid fully lifts off the palette. It's bulky and looks awkward to hold and use. I wouldn't trust taking this palette while traveling. Although some of the colors are gorgeous, the poor design just doesn't make this appealing to me. This palette was just recently released and is already marked down to $39 from $55, so others might be sharing my sentiments as well and passing over this palette.
• Troublemaker eyeshadow palette - UD also released a new mascara recently, and this palette was released with the same name. Each palette comes with a mini Troublemaker mascara. However, the palette is just boring. Warm neutrals, an olive green, and a split black and white pan which is just going to get muddied up all too quickly. At least the design is much more palatable (sorry...) than the Heavy Metal palette.
• Vice Metal Meets Matte lipstick palette - I am just not a lipstick palette person. They seem cumbersome to carry around to reapply, so this is an easy pass for me. I also need more lipstick like I need a hole in my head on top of that.
• Afterglow highlighter palette - I am so, so tired of highlighter palettes. How many highlighters do you need? (Coming from the person with too many single highlighters...but not a single highlighting palette!) I've swatched some previous UD highlighters and found them very glittery, I don't know if these are like previous highlights but I would not be surprised. One of the shades would be far too dark for me, so I would only use 3 out of 4 shades. Only one of the shades in the palette is close to what I usually reach for, so this isn't something I need.

Distortion palette - photo thanks to Sephora

• Distortion eyeshadow palette - The concept for this palette is pretty cool - five of the shades are "transformer" shades to layer on top of the other shades in the palette. Kat von D's Alchemist palette earlier this year already did this, but it was only the transformer shades. The other ten shades in the palette are pretty uninspired - a lot of them are muted neutral shades. The palette design has lines showing suggested color combos which is also neat. None of the colors jump out at me, and I might have been interested in just the transformer shades, but the entire palette is just too much for me.

Fenty Beauty - I fell in love with some of the products from Fenty's launch earlier this year, but their holiday releases just didn't speak to me at all.

Galaxy palette - photo thanks to Sephora

• Galaxy eyeshadow palette - At the time of writing, this palette has already been marked down to $39 from the initial price of $59, less than a month after release. Another all-shimmer palette, with 14 shades, a mix of neutrals and color. The packaging is super pretty, but overall the palette just didn't jump out at me. I prefer a palette with a mix of matte and shimmer, or an all-matte palette - I find them easier to create full looks with. I don't know why it was already marked down, but even the discounted price isn't intriguing me to try this palette.
• Stunna Lip Paint - I really like the packaging, but I am not a big red lipstick person. So the fact that it only comes in one red shade already didn't make me really want to give it a try. I swatched this in store to check out the formula - it was thin, and smeared a lot. With so many liquid lipsticks on the market, I just wasn't impressed.

Kat von D - Another brand I really enjoy using, some of KvD's holiday releases just didn't pull me in. I say some, because I do want that mini MetalMatte palette...it also doesn't help that KvD is one of the worst limited edition hype brands that always inevitably brings back products. If I really, really get fomo about these, they will probably pop back up sometime in 2018. (Looking at you, MetalMatte, Serpentina, Lolita eyeshadow, literally every product that has had LE slapped on it...)

• Metal Crush Extreme highlighter palette - Another highlighter palette! I'm a big fan of the Metal Crush eyeshadow formula (hence my wanting that new mini palette!) but I just can't get behind a highlighter palette. I'm also not really big on ~weird~ highlighter shades, and the swatches of these look more true to pan than a hint of color (think Becca highlighters.) These also look super intense right off the bat, and I prefer a subtle highlighter that can be built up if need be. This palette just wouldn't fit in with my makeup aesthetic (at least in terms of highlight), so that's a pass for  me.

Saint and Sinner palette - photo thanks to Sephora

• Saint and Sinner eyeshadow palette - I really had to sit down with myself and reiterate that I don't need another huge, cumbersome eyeshadow palette anywhere in my house. I already own last year's MetalMatte. I was only torn on this one after seeing a Reddit post where someone depotted the entire thing and put it in a magnetic palette and rearranged all the shades in a more pleasing order. Which means if I bought this, I would also need to buy an extra palette and go through the work of depotting it. So it would be even MORE expensive than the pretty hefty price tag of $62. The added cost on top of not needing more eyeshadow that I will neglect half of makes this something I don't need to be buying.

Kylie Cosmetics Brush Kit - There is no way I would spend $360 on some no name makeup brush set, you are out of your goddamn mind.

Too Faced - Too Faced is another brand that is dropping collection after collection this holiday season. Thankfully, they have given the peach theme a rest (although I really liked both peach collections), but chocolate bar and unicorns are back with a vengeance. 

• Boss Lady Beauty Agenda, Best Year Ever, Pretty Little Planner palettes - Too Faced is notorious for releasing holiday and end of year themed palettes that are not of the same quality of their regular palettes. These are not worth it, and are an easy pass.

White Chocolate Bar - photo thanks to Sephora

• White Chocolate Bar palette - This palette was "inspired by the success of the White Chocolate Chip palette," but I only seem to remember people saying it wasn't that great. Either way, this is a chocolate bar palette loaded with pastel shades, which Too Faced hasn't done very well lately. The only shade I'd want is the mint shade, and it would be much cheaper to go get a single shade of that.

Chocolate Gold palette - photo thanks to Ulta

• Chocolate Gold palette - Another chocolate bar, and this one seems to be apart of the permanent lineup, so there's no rush to get it if you're intrigued. This palette also jumped on the shimmer palette train, but it contains a couple of matte shades as well. The shades just don't really jump out at me, and I'm a little over the yearly Chocolate Bar releases as well.
• Unicorn Survival Kit - I'm not really into the whole transformer shade/topper products gimmick, so this is something that wasn't on my immediate radar. It also contains a mini blue tinted highlighter, another thing I'm not really about. The only positive is that these are all minis in a nice bundle, so if you wanted to give things a try, this would be your best bet.

Hidden Treasures palette - photo thanks to Ulta

Dose of Colors Hidden Treasures palette - This palette is back again this year at Ulta. It was ugly last year, it's still ugly this year. There is no way anyone should be able to justify $50 on a palette where you get more cardboard than product simply because of the way the pans are haphazardly strewn about.

Pat McGrath Labs Mothership palettes - I know Pat McGrath is an amazingly talented trailblazing makeup artist, but I am not paying $125 for ten eyeshadows. The shade names aren't even included anywhere on the palette, which I would hope for that high price tag. The quality looks really nice, but that price tag is way too high for me.

This is by no means a comprehensive review of this year's holiday releases. It barely scratches the surface, and the surface of mostly very popular mid-end brands to boot. Palettes upon palettes, no one needs them all. However, this is just how I feel about these releases, and writing this helped me realized I reallllly don't need to get so excited over holiday releases, as I end up not wanting or needing most of them!