Review! Kat Von D True Romance Palette in Ladybird

This is the brand-new True Romance Palette by Kat Von D, and she named this one Ladybird.

The compact is metal, with a raised design of Kat's face, and her hair is drawn to resemble bird feathers.  The base is black, with the colors of the raised portions shading from purple on the left, transitioning to orange on the right.

It comes in the same type of boxes her other True Romance palettes come in, which is a cardboard box that opens very similarly to a vintage evening bag.  I really like these boxes to keep the palettes in so they don't get scratched up.

The interior of the palette has an end-to-end mirror, which is very handy for applying eye makeup.  It's pretty easy for me to get my eyeshadow lopsided, so being able to see both eyes as you go along makes it a bit more fool-proof to get a good outcome.  The colors below were taken with flash, and are not true to shade.

These colors ARE true to shade.  You will notice one purple, then 2 light nudes, then 2 taupes, two orangy-browns, and one black (not in that order).  This is supposed to be an all-matte palette, but the black does have some sparkle to it.  However, the sparkle is so sparse that it gives a very random flash when worn.  They could have just left the sparkle out, but I personally am glad they did not.  Matte blacks are pretty darn common, so if there wasn't something special about this black, it would have felt like a wasted color choice.

The colors, left to right, are: Fur Elise, Vespertine, Renholder, Soiuxsie-Sioux, Unrequited, Harlow, Wolf, Cleopatra.  The eyeliner is Immortal Love (brown).

When I first saw this palette online, I really didn't think I was going to like it very much.  It looks kind of boring.  In person, though, I was a bit transfixed.  Really, I thought this palette might get returned.  It is not in stores yet, so I bought it without having seen the colors in person.  Speaking of it not being in stores yet, Sephora's first shipment sold out really fast.  They are back in stock now, though.

"Ladybird" was a perfect choice to name this palette.  All of the colors are colors you would see on female songbirds (who tend to be far less brilliantly colored than their male counterparts), and gives the feel of a natural, captivating beauty, that doesn't have to try hard to be pretty.  I always thought that was pretty unique about humans... how females are gussied up and painted brightly to impress the males, while in the rest of the animal kingdom, it's the males who are brightly colored, falling over themselves to attract a female.  Anyway, I really enjoy wearing these colors (and you know how much I dislike mattes!), because it does take away some of that usual sparkle and spackle, and replaces it with a more demure, yet dominate kind of... superiority.  It's hard to explain, but I feel sexy.

Ok, so what does it look like on, right?

Vespertine - All over lid, up to browbone, around inner corner of eye, and undereye lid.
Renholder - In crease and outer V.
Harlow - in center lid, and on lower lid.
Eyeliner - Immortal Love (the pencil)

A word about the eyeliner.  There is not a good, dark brown shade to go over the pencil.  None of the eyeshadows come close, and it you go over it with the black, it will deter the look away from a soft brown color scheme (although dark brown does tend to photograph black, so that is why the liner looks black in the photo).  I sat there, disappointed, and then it dawned on me, Charcoal Brown Sormeh!  So that is what I used to set the eyeliner pencil.

Eye closed:

Both eyes!

Now here is a look I've been playing around with a for a while now. Have you ever looked at your natural eyelid color and tried to mimic it, just a bit more intense?  If you look at mine, you'll see that I'm darker in the inner corner, orange-tan out from there a bit, and then the ends lighten to my face color.  Also, there is a stark stop in darkening in the inner V, right above my eyelid seams.  So, I used this palette to mimic this, but intensify the look, for a truly natural eye.  I didn't nail it this time, but I do like the way it turned out.

Here we go, bare eye, no makeup, no primer:

 

And here is the finished look; although it looks a bit lighter up close (in other words, in the photos of just one eye, it looks less intense):

Unrequited - All over upper lid, to brow bone.

Wolf - Inner corner.

Cleopatra - Just after Wolf, blending out in a sideways W, towards the center lid.

I used a bright white glitter eyeshadow in my inner corner, trailing it down to my under eye, about even with my pupil.  It's a discontinued color, so any high-shimmer, bright white will work.

 Eye open

 

And, both eyes together.

 

 Full face:

This is an extremely natural look.  I think it is perfect for just about any occasion, and for any age.

I highly recommend this palette.  So much, in fact, that I'm giving away two of them!  Click on the link below to see how easy it is to enter!