Holiday 2009 Gift Guide: Best Gifts for the Newly Addicted

Whether you’re shopping for a gift to give a younger sister, a darling niece, maturing daughter, or your newly-turned-beauty-addict best friend… these are some of my favorites to give to someone who’s just beginning their journey into the realm of beauty.

These are the types of gifts and products I look out for when I’m giving beauty products to someone who is just starting out:

• Palettes/sets — particularly if they come with explanations or obvious color combinations
• Sheerer lip color, easy to work into any look
• Affordable, products with more bang for your buck
• Color — particularly if I’m giving to someone younger, I always try to give gifts with lots of color, so they can experiment

NARS Love Me Set ($49.00) is a great introduce-yourself-to-NARS set with a blush/highlighting duo featuring Orgasm (yes, the famous shade!) and Albatross, along with Orgasm lipgloss. I also find NARS Cosmetics Palettes make great gifts with their sleek, no frills packaging and the shades included. Just in time for the holidays, NARS launched two to celebrate their 15th anniversary (Everlasting Love and Wild at Heart–each retailing for $75). However, my top palette pick for the newly addicted is their Essential Eye Palette ($55.00), which includes eyeshadows in Unconditional Love, Night Star, Galapagos, Nepal, Ondine, and Thunderball. You can find NARS’ palettes at NARS Cosmetics and Nordstrom, and Sephora.

CARGO Essential Eye Shadow Palette ($32.00) is totally makeup-made-easy. These palettes include four shades of eyeshadows, and they’re set-up in a way that’s pretty much paint-by-numbers… just with eyeshadow instead. It contains a shade for the brow, lid, crease, and outer corner.  The palette is available in three variations: Warm, Cool, and Dark.

Stila Barbie Loves Stila Palette ($28.00) is one of the most amazing eyeshadow palettes I’ve had the pleasure to come across. It’s vibrant, has a good variety of shades housed inside of it, and the quality is superb. They’re ultra soft, smooth shadows with incredible pigmentation that blend seamlessly.

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Trish McEvoy The Voyager Set ($65.00) is a really great starter-kit for any new-to-beauty buff in your life. It comes with Trish’s gorgeous All Over Face Color Quad, as well as Iced Bordeaux Gilded Lip Color, Golden Glaze Lip Color, White Peach Glaze Eye Shadow, and Deep Aubergine Eye Definer housed in a sleek, slim “Emergency Card” palette. The palette fits easily in a cute case that also includes four short-handled brushes. A great all-in-one kit!

Stila Lip Glaze Collection ($25.00) is a great way to put a smile on your favorite Stila girl or introduce a pal to the world of Stila on warp speed! This set includes eight miniature-sized Lip Glazes: Blackberry, Candy, Cranberry, Kitten, Marmalade, Pinkle Twinkle, Plum Fairy, and Starfruit. You may also want to peep the Stila Kitten Collection ($18.00), because it includes their best-selling Kitten eyeshadow as well as their Kitten Lip Glaze.

Urban Decay Show Pony Shadow Box ($30.00) contains six shades of eyeshadow – a good mix of funky, brighter shades with more neutral toned shadows, plus a miniature-sized 24/7 Eye Pencil in Zero and Eyeshadow Primer Potion. The shades included in this palette are Snatch, Mildew, Flash, Painkiller, Smog, and Toasted.  (You can read my full review here.)

Urban Decay Book of Shadows Vol. II ($48.00) is a palette that’s big on value and big on color. For the person who’s been extra good this year, you may find yourself wanting to give this collection of sixteen eyeshadows to them. It includes new/exclusive shades: AC/DC, Nylon, Mushroom, Sphynx, Jinx, Homegrown, Misdemeanor, and Perversion; as well as existing/best-selling shades: Sellout, Gunmetal, Ecstasy, Midnight Cowboy Rides Again, Twice Baked, Half Baked, Flipside, and YDK. Also included are miniature-sized Zero and Bourbon 24/7 Eyeliner Pencils and a travel-size Eyeshadow Primer Potion–all three fit nicely within the palette to boot.  (You can read my full review here.)

Urban Decay 24/7 Super Stash ($36.00) is a superb collection of miniature-size eyeliners in a variety of bold shades. If you’ve been reading the blog for a bit, you’ll know that I favor these liners quite a bit–they’re often my go-to liner. I absolutely adore their holiday sets, because practically speaking, most of us won’t finish an entire pencil of blue, but half the size and cheaper? Yes, count me in! The set contains nine different shades:  Binge, Corrupt, Eldorado, Graffiti, Oil Slick, Ransom, Rockstar, Stash, and Zero. (You can read my full review here.)

Philosophy’s “A Kiss and a Wish” Set ($15.00) is a cute, easy-to-give gift that’s compact and affordable. It includes four miniature lip shines in the following scents: Raspberry Sorbet, Red Licorice, Pink Bubbly, and Candy Cane. You can find this set at Nordstrom, Philosophy.com, and Sephora

MAC Eyeshadow Palettes ($36.00) are the latest holiday palettes to debut from MAC for the 2009 holiday season. They put out four variations: Devil May Dare, Mystic, Smoke and Mirrors, and Sorceress. (You can see my full reviews here.)  For someone with more natural taste, try Smoke and Mirrors; while Devil May Dare has great earth-tones and Sorceress has lots of fun, cool-toned shades. Mystic is kind of a mixed bag, so it may fit for that person you can’t decide on whether they’re about color or about the natural. You may also like to give (or receive, of course) MAC’s Pigment Sets ($32.50) or their Lipgloss Sets ($29.50).

What gifts have you found that are just perfect for those new to beauty?