Clockwise from top left: Vanilla, Banana, Sand, Havana, Fawn, Java

For those of you that have read my review of the Anastasia Beverley Hills Cream Contour Kit, I had mentioned how I wished that I had bought the powder kit instead - and that's exactly what I did. However, after experimenting with the cream kit, it has become part of my daily routine. I'd decided to ditch the foundation and found that the creams works great on their own, giving great coverage and easy to work into the skin with a beauty blender. Both kits retail at the same price, £39, and again I bought from the trustworthy UK website Cult Beauty.

Available in shades 'Light to Medium', 'Medium to Dark', and 'Dark to Very Dark'

Being quite pale I opted for Light to Medium, and like the cream kit, it comes with 6 different shades - 3 highlighting powders and 3 for contouring. Unlike the cream shades, I was able to find magnetic refills on Cult Beauty costing £14 each, and taking all palettes into account, there are 28 shades to choose from. I've seen many makeup artists combining shades from different sets into empty palettes - useful if you're working with lots of different skin tones.

As I normally contour with powder, I found this palette easier to work with than the cream. Powder is more forgiving - the product is buildable and easy to blend and control. As I mentioned in my previous post, I found the cream shades to be warm and a little on the orange side, even for the light palette. These powder shades seem cooler and appear more natural, suitable for part of your everyday makeup routine. I'm currently using both palettes daily - I've dyed my hair darker and the cream is especially useful for when I'm looking for a little more colour and wearing fake tan. I'll use the lighter shades to highlight the centre of my face, and gradually get darker the closer I get to the hairline (full diagram here). If you're on the super pale side, since buying this palette, Anastasia have brought out a new 'Fair' shade with lighter creams.

One problem that I have with this palette, is that the lighter shades don't show well enough on my skin for a dramatic highlight. I'll normally use banana as it's more yellow based, and I find it compliments my skin tone, but it's hard to achieve a very highlighted look with this kit. A palette that I did find worked well for this is the Kat Von D Shade + Light Contour Palette. I had the opportunity to try it recently and found the lighter shades to be super pigmented and great for cleaning up contour lines. Unfortunately, also being an American product, I can't find it at any UK stores, and although many are showing up on eBay I'd be wary of fakes. If anyone knows of any reputable websites selling the palette, please share.