Review: [Tarte] Rainforest After Dark Colored Clay Eye & Cheek Palette (Limited Edition)

So, I'm very happy right now! This is one of the palettes that look too beautiful for me to resist. Because it is a limited edition, I want to post a review as soon as I get it so those who are interested still have the chance to get (it's gone on Tarte's official website and Ulta, only available at Sephora now).

The palette is in the Fall 2014 Collection with a snake design as in the photo below. Ahh, so pretty!

Photo: Tarte Cosmetics

The box with snake-skin texture

Gorgeous disc compact packaging: a golden snake with a purple gem on a wood-textured surface. It's a plastic compact but very sturdy and light.

I like that the mirror can stand on its own so it's functional. This palette contains a blush - Unleashed , a highlighter - Champagne, a bronzer - Park Ave Princess and 6 eye shadows - Bare to Explore, Make A Mauve, Plum Away With Me, Up To No Gold, Tan-gled Up In You and Don't Turn A-Brown.

I think this type of disc packaging is beautiful and very convenient! You can bring it on travel or just use it on days when you want to do your makeup quickly with an all-in-one palette. I've come to realize Tarte also has this disc packaging in their previous limited-edition palettes and the highlighter and the bronzer are repeated.

Left to Right: Romancing the Glow, Coral Crush and Aqualillies for Tarte. These palettes also had beautiful packaging and good reviews when they came out. 

There's a tutorial sheet included showing a day-time and a night-time look.

You can be more creative but I think some combinations easy to see here are any combination of 2 or 3 shadows next to each other. For example, the tutorial shows the first 3 shadows in the first look and the 3 shadows starting from Plum Away With Me in the second look.

 Top to Down: Champagne (highlighter), Park Ave Princess (bronzer), Unleashed (blush), Bare to Explore, Make A Mauve, Plum Away With Me, Up To No Gold, Tan-gled Up In You and Don't Turn A-Brown.

The texture of all cheek and eye colors is not very soft if you're used to LORAC PRO or UD's Naked palettes; however, the colors are more pigmented than it looks in the swatch photo above and on the pan. So I would say pigmentation is decent. They all show up beautifully on my skin!

The blush looks the same as my theBalm Instain Blush in Houndstooth (Review) which is a light purplish pink. Both blush and bronzer are quite light so I doubt that they can be seen on medium to dark skin tone.

The amount of Unleashed is a little more than a Tarte's full-sized blush which is already $26. So with pretty good amounts of a highlight, a bronzer and 6 eye shadows, at $38 this palette is like a steal to me.

Rating kisses (out of 5): 

My final thought: This is a beautiful palette for Fall since most of the colors have the purple/mauve hue and they all go very well together. Packaging is sturdy, functional and very pretty. The palette is worth the price and makes me look forward to the next limited-edition disc compact palettes from Tarte.


I also bought the SMASHBOX Santigolden Age Eye Shadow Collage in the color Apocalypse Now. This is like an impulsive purchase since it's on sale for $18 on Sephora (original price is $36) and looks pretty. Let me know if you want a review/swatch.