In honor of the Christmas season, many brands come out with a Christmas collection in the United States. Well, this desire for holiday collections also expands to the K-Beauty market, as a number of brands come out with product that are exclusive to the holiday season. Keep reading to learn more about the collection, my and the Koreans’ thoughts, and where you can find it you yourself.
Full Collection in Boxes 
Full Colletion 
Palette Kit 
Mini Play Color Eyes and Winter Checkered Bag 
Mini Play Color Eyes and Winter Checkered Bag 
Mini Play Color Eyes in Winter Checkered 
Mini Play Color Eyes in Winter Checkered 
Syrup Glossy Balm in Packaging 
Syrup Glossy Balm 
Syrup Glossy Balm in Pink Gleam 
Syrup Glossy Balm in Red Checkered 
Winter Checkered Cheek – Blush and Highlighter 
Winter Checkered Cheek – Blush and Highlighter 
Winter Checkered Cheek – Blush and Highlighter 
Winter Checkered Cheek – Blush and Highlighter 
Winter Checkered Blusher in Mellow Pink 
WInter Checkered Highlighter in Champagne
Things to know about the ETUDE Winter Checkered Collection:
The ETUDE Winter Checkered collection was released at the end of October 2021, prior to the Christmas season. The premise of this collection is that it is supposed to be cozy and festive. You can watch ETUDE’s little promotional video for the collection below:
There are 5 products total:
- Wintered Checkered Highlighter in Champagne
- Winter Checkered Blush in Mellow Pink
- Play Color Eyes Mini in Winter Checkered
- Syrup Glossy Balm in Red Checkered
- Syrup Glossy Balm in Pink Gleam
What Complexions Do They Suit?
Cool tones:
- Syrup Glossy Balm in Red Checkered
- Syrup Glossy Balm in Pink Gleam
Warm Tones:
- Play Color Eyes Mini in Winter Checkered
- Winter Checkered Blush in Mellow Pink
All Skin Tones:
- Wintered Checkered Highlighter in Champagne
What are the Undertones?
Orange Toned:
- Play Color Eyes Mini in Winter Checkered
Brown Toned:
- Wintered Checkered Highlighter in Champagne (this is a very neutral brown)
Pink Toned:
- Winter Checkered Blush in Mellow Pink
- Syrup Glossy Balm in Pink Gleam
- Syrup Glossy Balm in Red Checkered
K-Points: 8/10
So, for beauty reviews, unlike my album unboxings, I will be much harsher because this can directly impact your health, where buying K-Pop albums does not. It just impacts your wallet. As such, all of my beauty reviews will be out of 10 points. I will not be going over that number.
Overall, I think this collection is very cute, perfect for travel since the palette is mini, but I have one complaint: the undertones on the whole collection don’t match, and that is mainly because of the eye shadow palette. Everything in the collection, the Syrup Glossy Balms and the Cheek Products, are all more cool tone. The Play Color Eyes Mini is far more warm toned in comparison to the rest of the collection.
That being said, I do really like the formulation on all of the products in this collection. The lip products are comfortable on the lips. They are hydrating, and have good payoff for just being balms. The highlighter and blush are incredibly flattering on pale skin tones. That being said, if you are darker completed, they may make you look a bit ashy. Overall, I really do enjoy the collection. I am just a little upset that they didn’t match all of the undertones.
What are the Koreans saying?
I was digging through reviews on 화해 (Hwahae)*, a Korean skincare app that lists out the ingredients of products from many brands for people to look through as well as post reviews, and from what I can see none of these products are in there. This is probably due to the fact that they are a limited edition item. Instead, I went onto the ETUDE Korea website to look through reviews there. On there, all of the products have a couple of 5 star reviews (10 or less). All of which are just talking about how pretty the collection is. I didn’t see any that talked negatively of the products.
Where Can I Buy It?
Whenever I buy K-Beauty, I do shop at a couple of different places. If you want to see all of the places that I shop at, you can check them all out here. I picked my products up at a number of different places, including Style Korean and Olive Young. With a number of the places I shop for cosmetics at, you can also use Rakuten for cash back off of your purchases on their site. This collection in particular, since I wanted the full collection, I ordered it directly from the ETUDE website.
What is Rakuten?
Rakuten is a cashback site that gives you money for purchases you may have already made. They even have an extension for multiple browsers so when you go to a website that uses Rakuten, it will automatically pop up the cashback button to make sure you are saving money. I use this all the time, and I got over $80 back from them for purchases I was going to make anyway. That’s about 3 more albums I can buy!
If you’ve never used Rakuten before, you can use this link to get $10 when making a qualified purchase of $25 when using Rakuten. You will also get whatever percent cashback is being offered from the site you are purchasing from. Sephora, typically has 4% cashback, through here. Ulta typically has 3%. These are just some of the companies on the website, but there are other major retailers on there as well!
Rakuten also has a Google Chrome extension that will tell you as soon as you log onto a site that has cashback with a little pop-up in the corner so that you can ensure you are saving money!
What products do you enjoy from this collection, K-Nuggets? Let me know in the comments down below!
사랑합니다!
–Rachel
*Note: 화해 still only exists in Korean, but some of the products can be searched for in English.
