Anastasia Beverly Hills Contour Kit

I’ve been using this product off and on for a couple of months now, so I think it’s time to finally write down my thoughts about the Contour Kit by Anastasia Beverly Hills. This review discusses the Light to Medium version, which was the only one available when I made my purchase, but I am happy to see there is now a Medium to Dark version for those with deeper skin tones. Because I am of the very pale Irish/Welsh/English persuasion, the Light to Medium is perfect for me.

I’m going to break this review into simple Pros and Cons and then wrap it up with some final thoughts.

Pros:

-Contains three highlights, two shadows and one slightly shimmery bronzer.

-Good mix of warm and cool tones.

-Pans are big enough that it’s easy to pick up product with a brush, and have enough space between them that there’s not a lot of cross-contamination.

-Pans are removable, so you can take out your favorites and put them in a Z Palette to save space when traveling.

-You can purchase replacement pans as you run out of each color.

-Powders feel nice and smooth and have buildable color, so you can do a light contour for daytime or a heavier look for evening and performances.

-Beauty bloggers are saying that the trend this year is going to be towards softer, powder-based contouring instead of the heavy cream-based Kardashian style, so this is a good option for that style.

Cons:

-Packaging is really lackluster black cardboard. No mirror in the lid, no labels on the inside, no pretty designs. Looks cheap for a $40 product.

-Sand is a pretty shimmery highlighter but leaves “fallout” all around the pan.

-Not sure that I will actually use all 6 colors in this palette, I mostly use Fawn and Sand.

-Seems expensive for the amount of product provided.

-Does not come with any helpful tips or instructions for the contouring newbie.

-Not sure if the colors would be intense enough for actual big-stage style contouring.

Final thoughts:

In general I am glad that I purchased this and I feel like the colors work well for me. However, I bought it with a 20% off Ulta coupon and $9 worth of Ulta points, so it was much cheaper than the MSRP. I would definitely recommend waiting until you have a coupon to pick this one up. It’s great to have a contouring palette that actually has cool browns instead of lots of bronze colors (which are too yellow for my skin), but for the price I wish the packaging had a little more pizzazz.