It’s not terribly groundbreaking to write about the original Too Faced Chocolate Bar palette, since it was released way back in 2013 so I’m sure anything I say has been well and truly covered, but bear with me as this is MY Chocolate Bar journey.

For quite some time, I’d been motoring along just using my two Tarte palettes; Tartelette and the limited edition Poppy Picnic for everyday (and occasionally throwing on some single pot metallics for more extreme evening looks) when I decided I’d like to incorporate some shimmer into my world. As a beauty blogger, you naturally hear a lot about different products on the market and there is a huge temptation to get everything ever but quite frankly, the task of narrowing it down was overwhelming and I naturally didn’t want to spend massive dollars on something unseen in real life, as is the struggle of Adeladies. $70 on a palette is some serious coin. I had been thinking about the Zoeva Rose Golden palette but there was something about it that didn’t feel quite right . . .

ANYHOO, one day I got excited by a blogger review and raced out and got the Natio Natural Shades Golden limited edition palette for $20, featuring matte neutrals and shimmers. It was . . . nice . . . . I guess, but . . . I don’t really know why I wasn’t more excited about it and only used it a couple of times.


Then I bought the Morphe 35F Fall Into Frost palette from Beauty Bay, along with some nice Zoeva goodies that are no longer available to be shipped to Australia thanks to the colluding non-compete power of Sephora Australia. ANGRY. FACE. The 35F was lovely, with a huge range of gorgeous highly pigmented shimmer shades and a row of matte neutrals . . . and I used four shades precisely twice before shelving (and recently selling) it. Why? It was too much. Overwhelmed with choice (and the size of the thing meant it had to be kept in a drawer, not in front of my face in my make-up cabinet) meant I never used it, I couldn't open it one-handed and I have no time for mucking around and experimenting.



So the mission remained uncompleted. When I was in Sydney I had a swatch and sniff around the Too Faced stand (buying the Born This Way foundation) and started strongly considering a palette from the Chocolate Bar family - whether the OG or the Semi-Sweet. Now, as I mentioned, 70 bones is a lot to drop on a palette and it wasn’t something I was keen to do online. When I was in Melbourne earlier this year, I had it in mind to pop into Sephora (because it's there) and maybe, MAYBE, suss out a Tarte palette with shimmer shades. I was literally on the way there from my hotel when I passed Myer. Then I concurrently remembered a) Mecca Maxima was a thing in Myer Melbourne AND b) I had a $100 Myer gift card as a farewell present from my old work, so before I knew it, I was in and out with a Chocolate Bar palette to call my own, essentially free. Problem solvered.

or was it?

In the excitement of my whirlwind Melbourne trip which included buying a pretty special handbag, I didn’t have time to open the box before I returned home to Adelaide, whereupon I prepared a backdrop for a flatlay, opened the box and was greeted with this:


TEARS WERE NEARLY SHED, I can tell you. I wondered what to do, whether to blast out the crumbled shade with a hairdryer and get on with life or see if I could possibly get some kind of restitution. Almost Posh's guest contributor Bridie informed me Mecca had really good customer service so I decided to give it a shot, despite the nagging feeling that I may have lost my receipt (I hadn’t, as it turned out) or that I’d be told the breakage may have happened in flight and wasn’t their problem. Well, happily I was wrong and after a pleasant phone call and an email of the photo above (and sending the old one back), I had a perfectly perfect replacement in hand with zero dramas. Yay!

So when I finally got to actually USE it, I didn’t stop and haven’t yet. There is such a good variety of shades that I’ve been able to team to several themes, especially as I don more autumnal colours, and create a range of different eye looks which is great as I’d got into a massive rut with my Tartelette palette. The cocoa scent is divine, the shades are buttery and blendy and I love the overall look of the packaging. I’m using different brushes and overall enjoying my eye make-up situation.

Naturally, literally days after I bought the Chocolate Bar, Too Faced dropped the limited edition Natural Love eyeshadow collection. Which of course, I want.

Have you got a Too Faced palette in your life or any on your wishlist? How do you feel about it?