REVIEW: Three Stila Travel Girl Palettes for Autumn/Winter 2011

Over the past couple of months, I've been collecting the non-Beach Girl Stila Travel Girl Palettes.  Not including the two for BCA, I have:
love and empower (The Help movie tie-in)
stila loves ROXY (presumably for the Fashion Week show)
find your magic (Holiday 2011)

Love and Empower retailed at $29 ($75 value, they claim) in a set with Lip Glaze in Apricot (not pictured here).  Stila Loves Roxy and Find Your Magic are both the regular price of these palettes at $14 each.

love and empower shades (clockwise from top left): love, empower cherish, dignity
Cheek Colors (from top): hope cheek color, joy bronzing powder

Love is a nice brow highlight in the vein of MAC Brule; empower is a subtle golden beige; cherish is a sparkly, cool brown that I think would make a better crease shade blended with love, rather than as liner as the face chart suggests; dignity is a really lovely rose color similar to the one in NARS Grand Palais duo.

Stila loves Roxy shades (clockwise from top left): beach, bikini, water, bronzed
Cheek Colors (from top): gold coast cheek color, swim bronzing powder

The Stila Loves Roxy palette shades are different from the Love and Empower palette shades because they are a gradient of peaches capped off with a cool, almost purpley blue.
I personally wouldn't follow the recommendation of the face chart and try to line my upper lashline with water, the cool blue shade.  Though it's the most aptly named of the four shadows, it's got some of actual water's transparency and it just won't work as liner.  I think it would be better used to create a subtle blue smokey eye, or along the lower lash line with a gradient peach look up top using beach, bikini, and bronzed (more like "peached!").  I think this palette wouldn't show up on a girl with a tan, which is odd.  I bet it would look really lovely on girls with fair or translucent skin.

find your magic shades (clockwise from top left): shine, twinkle, starry, magic
Cheek Colors (from top): love cheek color, shimmer bronzing powder

The shadow called "magic" in this palette, is anything but: I think it may be the biggest dud of all the palettes released this year!  It basically just doesn't show up at all.  The other three cool shades (shine, an icy white-lavender; twinkle, a charcoal blue; starry, an ashy plum) aren't exactly my cup of tea but I bet this would look great on dark-haired, cool-toned ladies with brown eyes.  On me these shades look a bit sickly or disappear, but I think a deep-skinned woman might see magic as a highlight/blending color and the ashen shades could make an unexpected-color smokey eye.

Note: all swatches of eye shadows in this post over Too Faced Shadow Insurance

The value and quality of these is akin to the rest of the Stila Travel Girl Beach Palettes of Summer 2011.  I've done looks with some of the Beach palettes here, here, and here. 
The products all kick up quite a bit of powder and are a little dry, but smooth and fairly pigmented for what amounts to a "bargain price" for the Stila brand.  This is not a luxury experience, but they are superior to several similarly-priced eyeshadows and blushers from the likes of Maybelline (not eye studio), Revlon, or CoverGirl.  Lasting power is solid over a primer.

I swatched the blushes over Boscia BB Cream:

Left to Right: Love and Empower palette hope & joy; Stila Loves Roxy palette gold coast & swim; Find Your Magic palette love & shimmer. Gold Coast and Love are sparkliest.

I don't think joy or shimmer are bronzers at all! Swim might be, if you like your bronzers orange!

Joy is more of a highlighter or light blush, Gold Coast is more of a shimmery gold bronzer than a blush, and Shimmer is most definitely a highlighter.
Misleading product descriptions aside, I think these are all lovely, blendable colors with no repeats!

The packaging of these is very cute, in my opinion.  It's not over-the-top adorable or childish.  Stila girls look a little bit like fashion sketches.
I don't think these are must-haves by any stretch, but it's fun to collect them and the colors are well-coordinated and quite wearable!  If you like no-brainer looks (as I do at 6AM before work) these are handy and I recommend them highly if you don't mind the compulsion to collect them all. You can't have just one!