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Before Étendu, there was Petits Fours. Last fall, Viseart released a collection of mini quads in a brand new pan size. If you’ve been reading here, you’ve already seen one of the more recent palettes using this pan size – Violette Étendu. But now we’re traveling backwards in time because who doesn’t love time travel?! — and because collections always take me a bit longer to finish than single palettes.
Viseart sent me these palettes in PR but, being the Viseart lover that I am, I would have immediately run to the website for the full collection if they had not. I’ve got some more thoughts below regarding these color stories, but I love these little neutral quads!
Inspired by pastries and sweet treats, the Petits Fours eyeshadow collection is a collection of four “bite-sized” quads with eyeshadows in Viseart’s new midi pan size. The pans are magnetized and can easily be removed.
The color stories are generally neutral, with a little bit of work-appropriate color coming through in Framboise. The formulas are Viseart’s usuals — easy to work with, buildable mattes, and soft shimmers.
Chocolat is the richest of the Petits Fours quads. As Viseart describes it, it is a “decadently rich melange of cocoa and honeycomb hues.”
This is, without a doubt, my favorite Petits Fours quad. Ganache is the deepest matte in the collection and the only one I can use for to deepen my outer corner in my preferred manner. (The darkest matte in Framboise can also deepen somewhat but it won’t give me the depth I desire from an outer corner matte shadow.)
Pêches is a gorgeous rose-gold shimmer with pink hues that actually show up well on my skin.
For a dark skinned neutral lover, I think this quad is perfect. There’s nothing I would change.
- Café Crème: Terracotta nude with a matte finish
- Pêches: Rose-gold nude with a shimmer finish
- Orange Sanguine: Orange-copper with gold reflectivity
- Ganache: Milk chocolate brown with a matte finish
Framboise is the berry option of the Petits Fours collection. Described by Viseart as a “delicately sweet shuffle of luscious berries and creams,” it contains two mattes and two shimmers.
Crème blends into the lighter part of my arm quite a bit, so it might be a little hard to see in the swatches below.
Glaçage reads as more of a silver than a pink champagne on me. Like many icy pink shadows before it, the pink in the pan does not translate on my skin.
- Crème: Light beige-pink with a matte finish
- Glaçage: Pink champagne with a shimmer finish
- Confiture: Medium pink-red with a shimmer finish
- Framboise: Soft dusty rose with a matte finish
Lilas and Tiramisu are both light mattes, but not so light that half the palette becomes completely useless on dark skin. For those not averse to cool mattes, these shadows will work for blending into deeper mattes.
- Fondant: Iced silver rose with a shimmer finish
- Lilas: Light muted mauve with a matte finish
- Tiramisu: Light cool taupe with a matte finish
- Argentée: Silver with a shimmer finish
Praline is a Petits Fours quad described by Viseart as a “chic confection of almond caramel and cream shades.” It is the only one of the Petit Fours with only one matte.
Pecan blends into my skin quite a bit but can very subtly deepen a look for me. I prefer to use this shadow to softly define my crease, but I would reach outside of the palette for more mattes.
The shimmers are golden and work well for neutral and/or work-appropriate looks.
- Sucré: Warm brown with a shimmer finish
- Caramélisé: Warm champagne with a shimmer finish
- Praline: Antiqued gold with a shimmer finish
- Pecan: Sienna brown with a matte finish
It’s no surprise that the deepest quad, Chocolat, is my favorite of the Petits Fours collection. As I stated above, that quad is utter perfection. I highly recommend picking it up if you have dark skin or are just craving a chocolatey treat without the calories.
I like the other quads and thier color stories and will use them all the time once life gets closer to the old normal. But, as I was going through these photos, all that I could think about was the lack of depth. If you’re the type of person who doesn’t care to use just the four shadows in a quad, this is probably not a strike against the collection for you. But if you do want to treat (no pun intended) the quads as standalone quads for complete eyeshadow looks, you will probably be disappointed in the lack of blending and deepening mattes in most of the quads. This is true regardless of your skin tone, as some quads like Praline don’t contain blending shadows for light skin and Lilas, Framboise, and Praline don’t contain deepening shadows for dark skin. If that last statement didn’t make it clear enough, dark skinned makeup lovers definitely got the shorter end of the stick when it comes to the ability to use any of these quads by themselves.
I don’t know whether it is out of necessity or preference, but I rarely use palettes by themselves. So the lack of deepening shades don’t rule these quads out of my rotation of palettes. However, I do wish that there was more of an effort to balance the representation of dark mattes relative to light mattes. Same with light shimmers — even though I could use light shimmers like Glaçage in Framboise or Caramélise in Praline, I don’t love those kinds of shimmers on my skin. I pretty much only use them in my inner corner and even that limited use can get ashy sometimes. I don’t think this collection is unfriendly to dark skin tones per se. In fact, I would use every shadow in this collection for some purpose, although some like Pecan in Praline would not be the most noticeable or impactful on me. But I would have loved to see Viseart take a more balanced approach to neutral shadows.
One more note — Viseart shadows are not high-impact. If you’re looking for impactful shimmers and mattes, there are plenty of indie brands that offer that. Viseart opts for buildable and soft shadows which allow for more control over the “Gasp! That’s soooo pigmented!” types of shadows that other brands offer. You can see this with the mattes in Framboise and Praline, for example — they almost blend into my skin and can look more like tints than layers of pigments. This is something I enjoy about Viseart, because I enjoy soft, more “natural” looks on occasion, but I know not everyone likes that kind of formula.