I don't really have much to say about this palette except the usual stuff I write about animal-themed pieces by Chantecaille, which is that 1. Five percent of the proceeds will go to a cause that helps the animal or their habitat (in this case, the Xerces Society); and 2. I'm getting REALLY sick of these 4-pan palettes. Please, Chantecaille, come up with something that rivals your old stuff. It's almost like they told some intern, "This is easy – just copy the design from the horses/sharks/ elephants/turtles/tigers/ dolphins palettes." Meh.
The bee design is nice, but why not make each one a different color instead of all of them being gold? Or if you want to get really intricate, make the colors of the wings different from the bodies on each, a la the butterfly eye shadows. I'm also puzzled as to why the neat little honeycomb pattern on the palette case isn't repeated in the backgrounds of the individual pans. It's not even a flower either, at least none that I can recognize – just a strange, jagged abstraction.
While I'm bored with the 4-pan format, I bought this because it's good for rounding out a spring exhibition (for some reason I associate bees/honey with spring – see last year's exhibition poster) and also because the idea of having a whole menagerie in palette form is appealing to the collector in me.
Have you gotten stung by Chantecaille's bees or are you keeping your distance?