tarte 2013 Friends & Family Sale Haul {Unboxing}

Pros: Order was well packed, nice packaging
Cons: Some pigmentation issues with the eyeshadow

My first tarte haul is here!

I am super excited about receiving my order.

Since this is my first time blogging tarte cosmetics and because I think it will be better if I review each product individually, I will do a quick post here that focuses mostly on the unboxing.

Products Ordered

My tarte Friends & Family Sale goodies

Ordering

I’ve wanted to try tarte cosmetics for awhile, but I suppose it was never the right time. After finding the Call of the Wild eyeshadow palette on tarte’s vegan list, I knew I was going to order it. This order was part of my late birthday present, actually (it’s in June).

I found the palette in July, and after some googling, realized that there would probably be a Friends & Family Sale in late July/early August. I’m so glad I held out, because I was able to pick up a few other products I wanted to try.

Checkout was smooth. I only ran into a problem right before I ordered when I was told to check my cart before finalizing the order and whereupon discovered I had a BB cream in shade 14. Geh! That was close. I’m a 02, so…

tarte says they won’t change an order once it’s been placed, so that was a close one. I probably could have gotten them to switch out the shade, but I’m glad I caught the error before dealing with all that.

I paid about $65 USD for the whole order. I got 30% off for the Friends & Family Sale and free shipping because the order was over $40.

Speaking of which….

Before I decided to get the BB cream, I had only planned to get the Call of the Wild eyeshadow palette and the Beauty & the Box eyeshadow/smolderEYES liner set. The eye set is on closeout and subsequently a dollar less for both items than buying the Beauty & the Box eyeshadow individually. Due to the Friends & Family Sale, the Call of the Wild palette and the Beauty in the Box/SmolderEYES liner put me literally ten cents under under $40 ($39.90 with 30% discount), meaning I didn’t qualify for free shipping and would actually cost me more than if I bought the individual eyeshadow box. It was around that point I decided I should get the BB cream after all and that way I could get the eye set.

Packaging

The packaging for tarte products is really nice. Mostly simple and clean lines. The boxes the products come in are especially understated. The Beauty and the Box eyeshadow had additional foam padding inside the box for protection. For some reason I expected this palette to be wood, but it’s actually printed paper or plastic or something. Probably paper.

The best is the Call of the Wild palette packaging. It’s sleek and shiny, padded, and has a nice big mirror. Not too fond of the animal print, but it’s the eyeshadows that count. I think I like this packaging over the Urban Decay Vegan Palette, though the latter is more environmentally friendly.

I super-duper appreciate that the eyeshadows have their names printed on the plastic overlays. It bugs me when palettes don’t label their shades.

The smolderEYES eye liner and BB cream packaging are fairly typical for those products. I will mention that the smolderEYES box features a picture of beeswax, along with a couple other botanicals, on the side of the box. That had me worried, so I checked the ingredients on the box, checked the tarte vegan list again, and re-checked the product description again. There is no beeswax on the ingredients list and the eye liner is both on the vegan list and has a vegan logo for each shade of the smolderEYES eye liner. So I have no idea what’s up with that.

Deluxe Sample

Since my order was over $40, I qualified for a deluxe sample. I was really hoping for a mini tube of the BB Tinted Treatment 12-hour Primer, but I could not trigger it.

Instead I chose the Hotel Heiress Mineral Powder Bronzer. I think it might be vegan, but I’m still not sure. That bronzer doesn’t seem to be available anymore on the site so I’ll have to do a bit more recent.

The bronzer is really nice. It’s a good sized paper compact with a magnetic closure. Hotel Heiress has a shimmer finish and is not nearly as dark as I expected from the image online, though I noticed tarte recommends this shade for medium to dark complexions, via the Sephora website:

Dear Tarte Product Users,

We recommend Park Avenue Princess for anyone with a fair to light complexion. If you are medium or darker in complexion, choose Hotel Heiress!

Images

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The Nitty-Gritty

So far I’ve been pleased with my first tarte order. I’m most excited by the Amazonian Clay BB Tinted Moisturizer and Call of the Wild eyeshadow palette.

Expect reviews in their future for all items I purchased (possibly not the bronzer sample).