The Corvus Anthology is a collection of eyeshadows based on British poetry! It includes a great mix of neutrals and nudes, as well as some more colorful shades for the more adventurous among us. I bought the loose minis, but you can also buy all of the shadows in their pressed forms, as with any other Corvus shadow available on the site.
Swatches are over TFSI and PE respectively, in artificial lighting. I decided to do them with corvid stencils based on the Corvus logo, because, well, I had to!
I Love Thee
I Love Thee is inspired by "Sonnet 43" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. It's a sweet pastel lilac with gold and silver shimmer.
Tranquility
Tranquility is inspired by William Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey". It's a minty green with a bit of gold shimmer. It reminds me a bit of Corvus's He Was No Frog, but with less shimmer.
Flushed
Flushed, a soft but surprisingly deep pastel rose with a pearly satin finish, is inspired by Robert Downing's "My Last Duchess". It gets much deeper and pearlier over glitter glue.
Goblin Fruits
Goblin Fruits is inspired by Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market". It's a bright, warm metallic yellow gold.
King of Kings
King of Kings, inspired by Percy Shelley's "Ozymandias", is a highly blendable satin beige leaning yellow. I think it's edged out Corvus Skin Walker as my new favorite blending shade.
Albatross
Albatross is inspired by "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Coleridge. It's a creamy pale ivory that looks like a satin-matte at first but has an interesting copper shimmer in it.
Asphodel
Asphodel is inspired by Alfred Tennyson's "The Lotos-Eaters". I found it to be a shimmery, complex deep brown with a warmer base and a cooler shimmer. It reminds me of Urban Decay's Busted, which is one of my favorite shades from the Naked 2 palette.
Onyx Eyes
Onyx Eyes is inspired by "The Mountain Tome" by William Butler Yeats. It's a plain matte black—no sparkles or frills. The shimmer you see in the first picture was left over on my brush from Jabberwock, which I unwisely chose to swatch first. Onyx Eyes is a true matte black.
Jabberwock
Inspired by Lewis Carroll's "The Jabberwocky", Jabberwock is a charcoal grey filled with, as far as I can tell, ALL of the shimmers!
Senses Five
Senses Five is a metallic, warm copper that leans red. It's inspired by William Blake's "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell".
Proserpine
Proserpine is inspired by John Keats's "Ode on Melancholy". It's a deep raspberry base with an incredible shimmer with a purple to violet-red shift. It looks significantly more purple over sticky primer due to the shimmer coming out more, but I also found that the shimmer itself likes to shift a little bit!
The Old Lie
The Old Lie, inspired by Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est", has a coppery red-brown base and a very determined green shimmer. Funny story, when I first got this collection and I looked at all the jars, I was extremely confused because I remembered there being a darker green, but I only saw one minty green jar. Then I actually swatched the shadows, and realised, OH it was just The Old Lie lying to me! Seriously. In the jar, it looks pretty similar to Senses Five. Swatched, it does NOT.
Royalty
Royalty was the GWP for Corvus Nest members! It's a bright, shimmery red with a deeper red base. I love how velvety it looks. Since it's darker blended out than it is over a sticky base, I think it'll make a great one-shadow look.
Holiday Spirit
Holiday Spirit was the Black Friday GWP! I'm honestly not sure what color I think the base is, maybe some sort of compromise between white, silver, and green, but it definitely has a million sparkles in all the colors! Of course, now that I look at my swatches, it seems that my camera didn't really pick up the sparkles or the complexity of the color.
Full arm shots
Finally, I have all the full arm shots for you guys, mostly since I forgot to work them in above. Oops. I tried to group them somewhat based on similarity by what I saw in the jar, which as you'll see, only kind of worked. Here you go!
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| I Love Thee, Tranquility, Flushed over TFSI |
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| I Love Thee, Tranquility, Flushed over PE |
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| Goblin Fruit, King of Kings, Albatross over TFSI |
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| Goblin Fruit, King of Kings, Albatross over PE |
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| Asphodel, Onyx Eyes, Jabberwock over TFSI |
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| Asphodel, Onyx Eyes, Jabberwock over PE |
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| Senses Five, Proserpine, The Old Lie over TFSI |
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| Senses Five, Proserpine, The Old Lie over PE |
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| Holiday Spirit, Royalty over TFSI |
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| Royalty, Holiday Spirit over TFSI |
That's it! I think my favorites from this order are probably Royalty, Proserpine, and King of Kings. I haven't gotten to use Proserpine yet, but I did try out King of Kings, Royalty, and Onyx Eyes for a red smokey eye and I loved the results! ...But I forgot to take pictures, because I had to run out the door to Hoppy Hour and meet some bunnies.
The full collection is available here, and you can peruse the loose and pressed versions of the individual shadows here. Thank you for reading!
The full collection is available here, and you can peruse the loose and pressed versions of the individual shadows here. Thank you for reading!
Did you order from Corvus for Black Friday? What were your favorites? Be sure to tell me!
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