Kose Visee Glam Nude Eyes N-2 Brown-Beige and N-5 Smoky-Beige review/ swatches

I've been really slow with color makeup reviews since it requires so many more photos and good lightings for swatches, but here it is finally! Again these are purchased during my holiday in Japan last year, "Kose Visee Glam Nude Eyes" eyeshadow palettes. 

I purchased shades "N-2" which is "Brown-Beige" and N-5 which is "Smoky Beige"

N2 on left and N5 on the right. The compacts are brown plastic with nice wavy designs on surface, there's no mirror inside, however I like the clear window which shows you exactly the shades in the palettes. They retail for 1800 Yen full RRP but you can find them in Japanese drugstores for 30% off RRP quite often, which translates to just 15-16USD per palette.

Back of compacts:

Packaging:

There are some basic instructions behind with recommended application techniques. 

Basically shade A is top right corner color, shade B is top left hand corner, (basically anti-clockwise), shade C is left middle, shade D is bottom middle, shade E is right bottom corner.

Again, N2 Beige Brown on left and N5 Smoky Beige on right.

N2 Brown Beige swatches below:

Swathced from left to right A,B,C,D,E (anti clockwise from top right corner)

A is a dry-ish cream base shade, it feels a bit slippery but still dry to touch. It's meant to be an eye primer. It's a very light vanilla beige. You can see it blends into my skin quite well with just a sheen left behind.

B is a shimmery beige, a tiny bit darker than A but still quite light. 

C is a medium brown wheat shimmer shade, it's a warm shade but not overall warm as to turn red on the eyes, it's almost a brown with a tiny touch of plum.

D is a chocolate brown shimmer, it's just dark enough to be used as a liner, but sometimes I still use a separate dark brown liner to give more depth. It is certainly dark enough for a more dramatic crease shade.

E is meant to be a sheer pale beige shimmer that you "dot" in the middle of the eye to add some dimension and sparkle. It is more shimmery than other shades but essentially it's shimmers and does not have too much base color.

Here's what the palette looks after a few uses already- it is not super soft or loosely pressed so it doesn't "dent" that easily compared to like some of the Majolica Majorca eyeshadow palettes.

N-5 Smoky Beige below:

Again from left to right, shades A B C D E:

A is again an eye primer shade, it has a light sheen which just brightens the eye area a bit.

B is a neutral beige-brown shimmer. It's brown enough and not really 'gold'.

C is a brown taupe, neutral or slightly cool toned.

D is a greyed-black shimmer, the shimmers seem more sparkly and slightly larger compared to other shades.

E is again a sheer sparkly shade to be pressed in the middle of the eye after all other colors.

N2 on left and N5 on right:


N2 on top row, N5 on bottom row.

The N5 "A" shade is more pronounced than N2 and for me it felt a bit more slippery and smoother to touch. N5's A shade has more sheen to it.

N2's B shade is more flesh toned beige while N5's B shade is more browned.

Comparatively N2's C shade is warmer and almost seem a bit redder compared to N5's C shade which is more true taupe.
Shade D between the two are quite different, N2 has a true chocolate brown liner shade while D has a smoky grey black shade and certainly darker.

Shade E in N2 is just a touch pinker than shade E in N5 which is more silvery.

Another angle- left column is N5 and right column is N2.

Overall I LOVE these palettes- for a tiny 15-16USD each they are as good as many other high end Japanese brand eyeshadows I've tried. They have a nice texture that doesn't have much fall-out issues, they are so versatile for everyday use, between these two palettes you are quite complete with all neutral brown based shades. 

I'm now really tempted to collect all the other shades in the collection- the Glam Nude eyes are really worth trying. They have a buildable coverage and medium pigmentation (apart from shade A and E which are meant to be base or topping shades and they don't meant to have much pigmentation), I know a lot of people dislike Japanese eyeshadows since they are generally a bit more sheer compared to like MAC, but I love the versatility of these since I can do a total 'nude' no-makeup look eyes or a more dramatic smoky brown.

They are easy to use on the go, there's a dual ended applicator (1 brush side and 1 sponge side), between this and my fingers I can do my eye makeup for everyday office in about 2 minutes.

Apart from shade E which I certainly don't need both shades of, the rest are all well worthwhile.

5 out of 5 ratings for both of these!

Kose Visee Feat. Smacky Glam Glow Eyes Eyeshadow Palette PK-6 Sweet Pink/ Glossy Nude Rouge PK805 swatch/ review

I've tried a few Visee items over the year but always felt it was the cheaper counterpart of its more expensive sister lines like Kose Esprique. However, the recent 2 years of Visee eyeshadow palettes have received great reviews across a lot of Asian blogs so I decided to try 2 items from their Christmas 2011 limited edition Smacky Glam x Visee range.

They are packed in limited edition floral prints which I think are quite festive and pretty.

The first item is Glam Glow Eyes eyeshadow palette in "PK-6 Sweet Pink".

Eyeshadow has a floral print embossed on top- it's actually embossed quite deep so even though I've been using this for a few weeks now, the flower print is still there (without looking ruined and ugly). 

The double ended sponge applicator does it job, I usually use my fingers for the base colors though.

Swatch of eyeshadow:

PK-6 Sweet Pink contains a soft shimmering pink (it's not so sheer that the pink disappears, there is still some pink base), the pink is rather neutral, however probably quite generic shade among many Japanese drugstore brands.

Then it's a medium mocha brown shade, which is really quite pretty, it's not too warm and not too cool which works really well as my day-to-day go to brown shade. It's shimmery and buttery soft and decently pigmented.

The darkest shade is the dark chocolate shade, it's pigmented enough to be used as eyeliner (but not so dark that you can skip eyeliner all together), works well for a smoky look if you want. It's a slightly cooler bitter chocolate shade.

Lastly it's the common "sparkle" shade a lot of Japanese eyeshadows seems to like to include in a palette. It's not exactly pigmented, rather it will show up as sparkly bits, slightly iridescent / shimmery finish. The shimmers are visibly bigger than all the other shades.

Overall a great palette consider I got it for around 1,200 yen after discount (15USD) when I was in Japan.

PK805 Glossy Nude Rouge- sorry no swatch yet. It's a nice baby pink . The advantage of buying these in person was I was able to swatch them.

The other two items from the same limited edition collection was a warmer brown eyeshadow palette (looked too warm for even my Asian skintone) and a more nude lipgloss in apricot nude. I thought the pink looked prettier. (Swatch to follow later).

Overall thumbs up, if you can still grab there at a reasonable price, would recommend them.