BE Beautifully Brillant Holiday Collection A/D #3 from QVC

Note: I apologize in advance for the poor lighting in these photos. It's been raining for at least some part of the day here all week, so I had to contend with dark, cloudy skies every time that I wanted to take pictures. You know, it wasn't until I started this blog that I realized just how terrible the lighting in my house is... I really should do something about that. I'm planning on getting a photo tent and light kit so if anyone has suggestions, feel free to share.

I’m always happy when the UPS man shows up at my door with the latest installment of a QVC TSV. 

This week, he delivered the latest kit in the bareMinerals Beautifully Brilliant Holiday Collection, which is called Fortune Found. While I get a lot of beauty-related TSVs, it always seems like the bareMinerals (and Tarte) ones are my favorites.  This one is another hit for me, though I do have a somewhat serious problem with it that I mentioned in my review of the second installment.

But let’s get on to the good stuff first, namely what’s in this kit.

The Fortune Found installment contains 8 items:

·        Perfect Light Mineral Veil Finishing Powder

·        Ready Eyeshadow 4.0 in The Discovery

·        Ready Liner Shadow 2.0 in The Hide & Seek

·        Marvelous Mauve Blush

·        Marvelous Moxie Gloss in Future Star

·        Feather Light Brush

·        Double-Ended Long Tapered Shadow & Liner Brush

·        Bronze Clutch

Double-Ended Long Tapered Shadow & Liner Brush, Feather Light Brush, & Perfect Light Mineral Veil

 The Perfect Light Mineral Veil is the constant in all the installments of this TSV, and it’s a perfectly nice finishing powder. I haven’t used the brushes, but BE’s brushes are nice enough, though definitely not the softest I’ve ever used. I actually like the bronze clutch (which I somehow forgot to take a photo of; sorry!) quite a bit, and think you could honestly use it for an evening out.

bareMinerals Ready Shadow 4.0 in The Discovery & Ready Shadow Liner 2.0 in The Hide & Seek

bareMinerals Ready Shadow 4.0 in The Discovery & Ready Shadow Liner 2.0 in The Hide & Seek

 The Ready Shadow 4.0 in The Discovery is absolutely beautiful. It contains four colors: Spotlight, a shimmery ivory; Fortune, a matte seashell pink; Truffle, a metallic brown; and Eureka, a metallic moss green.

(Please allow me to get a little PSA on you now – if you haven’t tried the BE Ready Shadows, please do.  They are absolutely lovely – the texture, the pigmentation, the staying power, all of it is just perfect. In the past couple of years, they’ve definitely become one of my favorite high end shadows (along with The Balm's) without question.)

Ready Eyeshadow 4.0 in The Discovery: top row (l to r): Spotlight & Fortune; bottom row (l. to r.): Truffle & Eureka

I really like this combination of shades, but once again, BE has taken shades from previous palettes and reused them here. I mentioned this practice in my review of the TSV’s second installment, but it still bugs me. I actually already have Spotlight, which was in one of the holiday palettes that came out last year, and Truffle, which is in the Ready Eyeshadow 8.0 in The Finer Things which came out last year

Now, as far as repeats go, these are the worst shades for me to have duplicates of – Spotlight is an ideal shimmery inner corner or brow bone highlight so I use it plenty, and Truffle is a bronze-y brown that really makes my blue eyes pop so I reach for that plenty too.

It’s the principle of the matter, though. 

The Ready Liner Shadow 2.0 in The Hide & Seek features Quest, a rich dark brown with extremely subtle shimmer; and Query, a matte blackened eggplant. 

They’re both nice as liners, but for me, Query is the real standout – a pretty, soft alternative to standard black. 

Ready Shadow Liner 2.0 in The Hide & Seek (l. to r.): Quest & Query

 The Marvelous Mauve Blush is a lovely shade but somewhat difficult to describe. It definitely has mauve undertones as its name indicates, but it’s also somewhat rosy.  It’s gorgeous and looks really natural on the cheeks. I’m not sure that it would show up well on darker skin tones, though you could probably layer it for a more intense look. 

bareMinerals Blush in Marvelous Mauve

bareMinerals Blush in Marvelous Mauve

 The Marvelous Moxie Lipgloss in Future Star is a creamy melon shade. While it’s somewhat sheer, it definitely shows up on my lips and is a nice pop of color when paired with the other darker/muted shades in the collection. 

bareMinerals Marvelous Moxie Lipgloss in Future Star

bareMinerals Marvelous Moxie Lipgloss in Future Star

As with the previous kits, BE also includes instructions for two different looks using the colors in the kit. I always find these little tutorials helpful since I can sometimes lack creativity when it comes to pairing shades (I almost always just go lightest shade on lid, mid-tone in crease, and darkest shade in outer V). 

BE Suggested Look #1

BE Suggested Look #2

All in all, I think the shades in this kit are a winner. I just wish BE hadn’t gone the duplicate route with half of the shades in the shadow quad. 

FYI -- There is a fourth (and final) kit in this TSV series that will ship out in October.

What do you think of the colors in this kit? Are you as crazy as the Ready shadows as I am?