Venus XL 2 Eyeshadow Palette by Lime Crime (review, swatches, and depotting)

The Venus XL 2 palette is absolutely fantastic. It’s a rare combination of unique, colorful, and wearable for everyday. I often gravitate towards neutral and subtly colorful shades because I can wear them on the five days of the work week. I purchased this palette over a year ago, and I still love it.

Some of the shades have a sorta squishy texture that gets compacted when you use them and they are difficult to pick up on a brush. I find that using a very stiff brush helps and also using your fingers for application helps too. Most of the shades have a smooth, buttery texture that’s beautifully pigmented and blendable.

Is it a stand-alone palette? Yes and no. You can certainly get complete looks out of this palette. However, you may benefit from bringing in some additional blending shades depending on your skin tone. I prefer to bring in a darker shade for eyeliner. But really, there is a fantastic selection of shades that compliment eachother in lovely mixy-matchy ways. Glitter primer recommended for the sparkly shades, as always!

Shades included in the palette (shade descriptions provided by LimeCrime):

• In Bloom (muted rose matte)
• Crown (icy champagne foil)
• Sage (sage green matte)
• Thorn (cocoa w/ blue sparkle shimmer)
• Ripe (warm terracotta matte)
• Forbidden (peachy copper shimmer)
• Stella (pink champagne shimmer)
• Myth (silvery green foil)
• Eve (mauve rose w/ multi color sparkle foil)
• Laurel (olive gold shimmer)
• Radiant (peach pearl sheer iridescent)
• Ivy (glazed green w/ pink sparkle shimmer)
• West (warm brown shimmer)
• Obscure (soft neon green sheer iridescent)
• Mystic (soft blush shimmer)
• Phoenix (rust shimmer)
• Locust (green-brown shift shimmer)
• Classical (plummy brown matte)

If you’re interested in dupes available as single eyeshadows, you should check out the following post by @angelamarytanner on her blog ourbeautycult.com: Lime Crime Venus XL2 Palette Dupes!! Her collection of single shadows is seriously impressive! It’s what eyeshadow dreams are made of.

This palette can be purchased at Ulta for $58. Link to the palette on Ulta’s site. https://www.ulta.com/venus-xl-2-pressed-powder-eyeshadow-palette?productId=pimprod2003026

Swatches

Palette Photos

Depotting

I actually ended up depotting this palette, mostly because I’m obsessed with arranging my eyeshadow in magnetic palettes. It was a bit of a challenge, and it took me a few hours. The worst part was removing the glue from the back of each pan using rubbing alcohol. The pans turned out to be magnetic, so I didn’t have to apply magnetic stickers to them. The following pictures summarize that process. Let me know if you have any questions about how to depot.

Thank you for reading! I hope you found this post helpful. Please consider subscribing to this blog via email. You can also follow me on Instagram (@stefsedge), and even Pinterest (also Stef’s Edge)! You can even bookmark my site in your browser to make it easy to return. Using my affiliate links to shop or pinning images from this post to Pinterest is a great way to help support my blog!