Christmas and NYE are the perfect opportunities to go full glam to the parties and I’m loving that! I feel like Christmas is the holidays that is perfect to make themed collections for with snow, ginger bread man, Santa, Christmas trees etc. and NYE usually is the Holiday for the over the top glitter & glam make-up products. I came across this Countdown Palette for NYE by Maybelline New York and I liked what I saw, so here’s the review on the palette! Welcome to Blogmas Day 17! 

The design of this palette is how Maybelline have been making their palettes in Europe recently. In the USA the Lemonade Craze palette was square and in the Netherlands it had the same horizontal layout as this Countdown Palette.

It’s nice when you can see the shades through the front, however for an eyeshadow palette I always prefer having a mirror inside.

The palette contains twelve shades: four are cool toned berries/mauves, four are warm toned browns/golds and in the middle are two inner corner highlighting shades and two glittery eyelid shades. Or at least, that’s how I would use them :).

For a special NYE palette I feel like there are not much special shades and the glitters look very shy for a glam look. However, for a regular party or every day look, I think this palette has my two make-up moods included: mauves/berries or golds/browns!

The swatches look pretty promising! The shimmers are smooth and pigmented. 3…2…1… is a gorgeous duochrome pink/light gold shade. The two glittery shimmers (Big Wish and Glass Clink) are a bit chunky a have quite some fall out, yet they look gorgeous when swatched. The mattes are a bit chalky and dry but they work perfectly fine when you press hard enough when swatching.

For this look I used the browns/golds. Stroke of Midnight in the crease, Tick Tock in the outer corner, Till Next Year on the inner third of my eyelid, Resolutions on the outer 2/3 of my eyelid, a little bit of Glass Glink on top and Firework Spark in the inner corner.

The eye look turned out nice but it is definitely nothing special. The mattes from this palette blend together very nicely but they need a lot of layers to actually show of their color. The shimmers look bright and intense when swatched, but on the eyes (applied wet or dry, applied with brush or finger) they look very muted and not too shimmery at all. The glitter shade Glass Glink is hardly visible.

When all the shades are blended together, they almost fade together and the look almost looks like one or two shades.

For this look I used Blushing very lightly in the crease, a tiny bit of Midnight Kiss in the outer corner (these first two shades looked very similar upon application on the eyes), 3…2…1… on the inner third of the eye lid, Bubbly Rosé on the outer 2/3 of the eye lid, a bit of Big Wish on top and Ball Drop in the inner corner.

With the mauves and berries it all went down a little bit better. Again, the mattes were easy to blend together but compared to the other eye look, the color intensity of the mattes did not fade as much. The shimmers did a little more shimmery and being bright.

For this look it was also the case that the glitter hardly showed up and that the intensity of the shimmers faded a bit when blended out, but it was just a little less fading than with the browns and golds.

The Maybelline New York Countdown Palette is a cute palette with a fun theme and a ‘practical’ basic shade selection. You can make a lot of different looks with these 12 shades but unfortunately the shades are not of the greatest quality. They work and it’s nice, but there are a lot of palettes with the same kind of shades, in the same price category (or even cheaper)  but with better quality.

Which palette are you going to use for your NYE look?