Auntie Haul talks you out of the Urban Decay Gwen Stefani blush palette. Or maybe in.

Nouveau Cheap has alerted me to the fact that the Ulta 21 Days of Beauty sale has dropped the price of the Urban Decay Gwen Stefani blush palette. For today only, the price drops from $45 to $22.50.

So half price. Is it worth it? That depends.

How much does it cost?

If you're judging simply by price, yes, of course. You get six blushes for $22.50, or less than $4/each. That's cheaper than most drugstore blushes. For example, my beloved Milani Baked Powder blush in Dolce Pink is currently available at Wal*Mart for $6.62.

How much does it cost per ounce?

The Urban Decay palette contains .54 ounces of product. If you pay retail for the Urban Decay palette, you'd be getting .54 ounces for $45, which is $83.33/oz. If you buy the palette today from Ulta, you'd be paying $41.66/oz.

As a point of comparison, if you were to buy a Chanel Joues Contraste blush, you'd be paying $214.28 an ounce.

From the Sephora website. The colors look MUCH better, don't they?

Is it worth it?

Milani Baked Powder blush contains .12 oz. of product, or exactly twice as much as a single pan of the Gwen Stefani palette. For an equivalent amount of product, you'd have to buy three Milani blushes. That would set you back $19.86, assuming you were shopping at Wal*Mart.

However, the retail price for the Milani blushes is $7.29 at Target, $8.29 at Walgreen's. It's $9.29 at CVS. The shifting prices can make you crazy, but the fact remains that for today, this palette is cheaper than three full-sized drugstore blushes.

So the easy answer is hell, yes, snap up that palette while Ulta still has them in stock!!11!!!

Another glimpse from Sephora.

Auntie Haul speaks

Here's the thing about blush palettes. They're very useful ... for makeup artists. If, for example, you were a makeup artist and you were doing an entire bridal party, I can't imagine anything more handy than a palette of pink, peach, rose, and neutral blush colors.

Palettes are also useful learning tools. They help teach you which colors work on you and which don't. The problem is that you do end up with a few colors that don't work, and if you're New England-bred like me, looking at the colors that don't work depresses you about the money you wasted on them.

So, if you, like me, already own a butt-ton of blush, don't buy the Urban Decay blush palette. You will never use it all. You will never use it all up. YOU DON'T NEED IT.

If, on the other hand, you're a blush newbie, either because you're new to makeup in general or you're very young (and if you are, let me tell you about the time I saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show--wait, where are you going? Come back!) maybe this is just the palette for you.

TL:DR--A couple of final points

If you're in the market for a variety of blush shades (as well as bronzers and highlighters) this could be a good buy, but only if you have a fair complexion. The Internet Beauty Water Cooler™ informs me that these shades will not show up if you are Kardashian-colored or darker.

Also, except for LoFi, the matte bronzer, all the shades have glitter or some kind of sheen. All of them. So that's something to think about, too. #discocheeks