little white truths

Hello all and welcome to April's Pan that Palette update!

It's been a pretty good month for me in terms of progress, and during the month I found a good way to get through the remaining dregs of a few shadows (you know those annoying bits that cling to the edges of the pan?), so I'll touch on that in a moment.

There's my palette above. You will see some new empty pans there, and indeed I've managed to kick out four shadows this month. That's a good month!

You'll also note that some of my powders are on their last legs: I'll talk about those more below.

I've also made some progress on my Stila Custom Contour Duo - which isn't really a 'palette' but I'm including it in my challenge anyway because I want to get through it - so I'm looking forward to showing you comparison shots for that product, too.

Also, if you would like to see last month's full update, it's here.

And here's how it looks now:

Hooray! I've kicked out two of those Stila pans on the left and also those two Nars pans in the middle.

I've enhanced the above shot below so you can see my progress better (so rely on the above shot for colour and the below shot for detail):

This is how I got through those four pans: 

So if you're having trouble getting through anything or you're sick of some of your shadows, it may be worth combining them into a single pan to make a completely new shade. This also helped because the Nars shades didn't have much pigment and the Stila shades kept developing hard-pan, but when I mixed them, the mix had better pigment and it no longer developed hard-pan. Woot woot!

Let's have a look at the rest of the shadows.

Here's how the left side of my palette looked last month:

And here's how it's looking now:

As you can see, I barely touched those top three shades but I might start working on them more often now, since it's getting cooler here and I think these shades are better-suited for autumn and winter.

Middle row, I re-pressed the dusty rose Stila shade - not because it was 'ready' to be re-pressed, but because it was forming hard-pan so often that I thought re-pressing it might help. It hasn't. So I plan to mix this shade in with other shades, in an attempt to stop that happening because I'm really over it. Same goes for the marsala shade beneath it (and you should be able to see in the above shot that it's grainy and developing hard-pan, too.

As for the four remaining Stila pans beside those two, I've used them all a bit but not enough to see real progress. I'll start using them more often now that I've finished so many other shades.

Finally, the two Lancome shadows below those. I've hit pan on the purple and I've also made quite good progress on the white shade, both of which I used a lot throughout April. These are quite old and crumbly - plus they're not large pans - so I don't think they'll be hard to finish.

Here's how the other half of my palette looked last month:

And here's how it looks now:

As you can see, there's been plenty of movement on this side of the palette!

I had to re-press the Bahama Mama Bronzer about halfway through the month, just because it was getting difficult to use. This will be gone by next month's update.

There's not a hell of a lot of visible progress on the Croquis highlighter beside it, and indeed I may choose to move something else into the palette in its place: if I'm not going to finish it this year, then I'd like to try my hand at another product.

I haven't used Stila's Night Sky or Kitten much, but you'll see that I've cleared out a good amount of the blush pan beside it (I mixed this one myself). I'm not surprised because what was left was very thin, and from memory I first hit pan a day or two after March's update. I've been using this as an eyeshadow and a collarbone highlight most days, and I'm getting through it quickly because it's not pigmented and it also falls off my skin so I need to keep reapplying it - plus it's super powdery so I lose a lot whenever I dip my brush into the pan.

The Stila pan beside that has had some use (mainly as a mixer for my brows), and it's another old pan from my Stila Eyes are the Window (Mind) palette so it's got the same issues as the others: it flakes off and also develops hard-pan a lot. I've been using this as a mixer with the brown below it to get my perfect brow shade. That brown is showing more pan and it's starting to annoy me (hard-pan again), so I may throw it into the mix with other shades and hope I get a better result in terms of formula.

The Nars pan beside it is showing more pan but I'll likely put that into my mix, too, since I'm over the shade and I'd like to help create a new colour with it. 

Nars Portobello (beside that) hasn't been used much but you should see some progress in the darker shade (it has also cracked a little) and there's a tiny bit more pan showing in the So Susan lavender shade beside it. Mind you, that shade has also been flattened so it's moving faster than it looks.

Now for my Stila cream contour duo. Here's how it looked last month:

 And here's how it looks now: 

So there's definitely been good progress on the paler shade but it's harder to see progress on the darker shade, which doesn't surprise me because I use less of it each time.

I'm using this to contour my face each day - which isn't something I'd normally do because I'm not big on contouring - and I'm only using a little per application because I don't like a strong contour on me. This palette will last out the year, no question, and I'm not sure I can finish the darker shade by Christmas. We'll see.

In sum

So it's been a good month for me and I've cleared out four more shades. Woot woot!

Just some housekeeping (and I'm sorry if you've seen me say some of this before, but I need to repeat myself for any new readers):

That's all from me for now. If you're doing Pan that Palette, do include a link to your channel or blog in the comments so I can start following your progress : )

Hope all's well with you, and speak soon x