Pur Cosmetics Soiree Diaries and Contour Diaries Palettes | Swatches, Review & Demo

Hi beauties! Hope all is well with you. The past few days have been challenging for us Houstonians because of the disaster the city has faced due to hurricane Harvey. However, it has brought all the people together in unimaginable ways, showing the world how people of different races, ages, genders and religions standing shoulder by shoulder, helping one another to get through hardships one day at a time. #HoustonStrong !

In today's post I've prepared a thorough review of new PUR cosmetics palettes: Soiree Diaries eyeshadow palette and Contour Diaries ultra matte contour kit.

When I first received these palettes, the packaging caught my attention right away. It was a beauty blogger's dream: marble patterns on the outer packaging and on actual packaging of the palettes too! I mean, how more beautiful it can get?

The inside of the palettes are just as beautiful too. I've been using both palettes for the past month not only for testing purposes, but also for a reason that you can achieve almost any look with them, be it a simple daily look or dramatic evening makeup. 

Let's start with Contour Diaries Palette Ultimate Matte Contour Kit, shall we? It retails for $32 and consists of 6 universal matte powder shades. This is how my palette looked after the first week of continuous use. I thought I'd share the progressive photo of palette to show the approximate "durability" of the use:

I haven't used much of the darkest shades on the bottom row, but I used charm to brighten my under eyes, mix of dream and charm to set my face, secret to contour my nose and add shadow under the cheekbones, and passion to add warmth to the perimeter of my face. Here is how the palette swatches (swatches were applied with finger on primed skin, swiped 3 times each):

PROs: 

- Texture/formula of powders: super blendable, creamy and buttery, pigmented, very easy to mix and create custom shade.

- Versatility in shade selection: works for every under tone of skin: cool, warm or neutral; lighter shades are perfect to highlight the face as well as add brightness with slight color correction; darker shades are great to add warm bronzy tan or sculpt the facial features by adding shadows for defined look. 

- Pigmentation: high pigmentation allows to skip cream contouring and still create photogenic contoured look, that doesn't appear to be washed out in the photo, neither give a bright flashback.

- Great for both professionals and beginners: wide range of shade selection and convenience of mixing colors easily makes it a perfect addition to a makeup kit, whereas smooth texture and blendability makes it simple enough to be used by beginners.

- Longevity: once set on top of creams, powders prevent them from creasing, extending the creams' wear time throughout the day.

- I personally also like that the palette consists of only matte shades, makes mix and matching easy when using a big face brush without getting shimmers on the way.

CONs:

- While Pur Cosmetics claims the palette is targeted for every skin tone, it might not be feasible for deep dark skin tones and they might not end up using majority of shades in the palette. 

My personal favorite feature about this palette is its blendability. I like to use "buffing technique" to create more natural sculpted look, which involves applying powder in circular motions while working it into the skin (I demonstrated it in this video). Some powders won't give desired results due to dry or coarse texture, while sliding the cream product underneath and creating porous "caked" look. This entire kit on the other hand, is perfect to add dimension to facial features by creating seamless contoured look. Here is an example of natural looking contour I achieved using the Contour Diaries palette with buffing technique. I like how it leaves no harsh lines, yet the cheekbones are defined, as well as overall complexion of the face looks balanced:

I used Secret under the cheekbones, Passion on my cheeks and temples, charm to set under eyes and around mouth. Then using flat top brush, buffed dream all over the face. I also added little bit of Tarte blush and highlighter to complete the look. The lip color is by Jouer in creme brûlée and the eye look is created using Soiree Diaries eyeshadow palette, which I'm going to talk about next. 

Pur Cosmetics' best seller Soiree Diaries eyeshadow palette retails for $34 and consists of 12 beautiful shades that include shadows with satin, matte and shimmery finishes. Here is again, the palette after a week of use:

Can you tell which shade is my favorite? Glitzy for the win! I used it as a main color in the eye look posted above, which also incorporates stunner and gala on the crease and epic on the outer corner of the lid. Here are all the swatches of colors, applied on primed skin with finger and swiped twice each:

PROs:

- Formula: Smooth, creamy and luxurious feeling eyeshadows that are rich in pigmentation and easily blendable.

- Minimal fall out: I was actually surprised to see almost no fall out around my eyes even after a dramatic eye makeup application. Also, there is not much of a kick back when picking up shadows with brush.

- No patchiness, especially in matte shades, smooth and even application. 

- Shade selection: pretty popular selection of essential shades, that include both warm and cool tones with nice range of matching shimmer shades. All skin tones and undertones friendly. Vibrant colors.

- Shimmers: very pigmented if applied with fingers or wet. I didn't see big difference between wet application and pressing with fingers, so I mostly applied shadows dry with my fingers.

- Longevity: the eye makeup lasts very long without any creasing and colors stay put throughout the whole day.

- Versatility of looks that can be achieved with this palette is only limited by one's imagination.

CONs:

- Common in all shimmer shadows, the application by dry brush might not result in bright shimmer outcome. 

- It's a personal preference, but for me, I'd love for one of the lighter satin shades to be a shimmer color, so that I could use it to add highlight to tear ducts and brow bone. The shimmery shades are too dark for this purpose and satin shades are too opaque to pop up in an eye look. 

When I first opened the palette, I noticed how 3 shades in each vertical column complement each other creating a perfect look: shimmer shade as a main color on the mobile lid, matte shade on the crease and lighter shades to highlight the brow bone. First two columns create a subtle day time look, whereas the second two are perfect evening look. I decided to create one look using that sequence of shades (I mainly used three shadows from the third vertical column of the palette): 

The eyelashes used in all looks today are 3d Silk lashes by Pur, which I use on my Youtube videos all the time (make sure to subscribe to my channel) and here I'm using the style in Diva. I also added a little bit of eyeshadow in twinkle on the tear ducts to brighten up the look. 

While swatching the palette the colors of the shadows reminded me so much of Pur eye polishes (I did a video on them a while back on my channel). The shimmers are indeed very similar to some eye polish colors, which makes those eye polishes a perfect base to create looks with this palette. I went ahead and tested out the shadows using Pur Eye polishes in Satin and Velvet as a base for the following eyeshadow look, as well as eye liner: 

I used Epic, Snazzy, Gala on the crease and Private party on my browbone; Twinkle on the lid with a Satin eye polish as a base. The liner is drawn with both Satin and Velvet eye polishes and set on top with eye shadows in Snazzy and Twinkle. Honestly, I'm obsessed with the way this look turned out. The lip color is by Jouer in Rayanne and for the face I used Contour Diaries palette. 

When writing pros and cons of the palettes, I thought a lot about other cons that I could possibly include and all I could come up were just small things that some people don't find as a shortcoming at all. For example, shimmers applied dry with a brush will result in less pigmented shadow payoff, but it will create a very subtle day time look, like the one below:

I applied both Twinkle (main lid color) and Cosmo (outer corner) shimmers using a dry brush to achieve this subtle eye look. You can also see on this close up how Contour Diaries palette set my concealer in place, causing it a minimal creasing, that is not even visible to the naked eye. Here is how it looks as a full picture:

If you'd like to see a tutorial of this soft romantic makeup look and the palettes in action, I got you covered: 

My final thought on the both Soiree and Contour Diaries palettes: you are getting such great quality palettes for the price lower than other similar products in the market - totally worth it! Their luxurious feel, look and performance will surely add them to your favorites in no time. 

I hope you find this review and demonstration of the palettes useful. Please, leave your questions and requests in the comments below or connect with me on other social media platforms. I'll talk to you in my next post, until then, Stay Blessed! xoxo

FTC: This is a sponsored blog post. All opinions expressed are my honest opinions based on my personal experiences.