Kat von D Shade + Light Plum Quad and Two Looks

I had had my eye on the Shade + Light Plum Quad by Kat von D for some time, but since I didn't come across any lightly used previously owned ones, I picked one up from Debenhams at London. They had a wonderful counter with shiny black antique furniture and lovely sales reps.

I didn't catch that the the palette has actual bevelled letters on the cover until I took it out of the cardboard box. I love it!
I really like the shape of the palette and the lettering is gorgeous.

Plum shades usually work very well on my eyes, bringing out the green in them. For some reason this palette is quite tricky to get to show correctly in photos. I think it looks too red in my pictures, when IRL the two middle shades, especially the darker one, lean more towards purple.

The shades don't seem to have names, so I'll call them by their use. Base is a pinkish beige, a bit darker than my skin but not much. Define is a deep plum, less red than in my pictures, but still with red undertones to make it nicely bring out green eyes. Contour is much like a darker version of base, but slightly more taupe and cool. Highlight is a very light warm pink. All of the are matte.

I did two different looks with the palette so far. All of the shadows are very pigmented but are still easy to blend. With so much pigment you really need the base shade to use as help when blending out the edges of the darker shades. I often use the same brush and just lightly brush off the pigment to switch to another shade, but with these shades you really need to grab a new brush if you go for a lighter shade. The two middle ones are intense and dark.

Highlight on inner corner and brow bone, define at the crease and outer edge, contour on the lid and blended up. I blended the edges of contour with the base shade. The liner is Urban Decay Delinquent, a dark purple with some glitter.

 I'm still learning how to do make-up after the eye lift, but I'm pretty happy with my lids now! I don't have to bring the crease shadow as high up as I used to, so I have much more space for blending it out towards the brows. Also my lids is more visible, so it allows better use of light shades on the lid, instead of everything looking like a smoky eye when the hooded part of the lid fell over the moving lid to hide anything I put there.

Naturally I wanted to try a smoky eye next!

For the smoky eye look, I put higlight on the inner corner and brow bone. The I added countour on the whole lid and blended up with the help of base. I then put define on the lash line on both upper and lower lid, and just a touch in the crease. The lipstick is a metallic liquid-to-matte from Milani. The look is quite dark, but that's just how I like it!

Look how the scar is almost invisible already! It's been a little over three weeks since the operation.

I would have wished for the shades to be even more red, to have a more stunning effect on my eyes. I have one ancient pressed eyeshadow that is just the right shade of plum to make my eyes look vividly green, but I have not been able to find anything that does the same. I still do like the Kat von D quad, it's easy to use, the highlight shade is good (I mention this because for some reason palettes rarely have light enough highlight shades for my pale skin) and you can do many kinds of looks with the four shades. The pigment is amazing and the texture of the shades is great, they are easy to blend and all the shades work well together. While this palette may not be the one I pick up for party looks, it is a very nice palette for sculpted matte looks and matte smoky eyes.