Neutral Palette Showdown! Part Three

Coastal Scents, Makeup Geek & Lorac Pro 

This is the final post for the Neutral Palette Showdown Review series. If you haven't already, check out part one and two where I review the Urban Decay Naked palettes, my MAC neutral palette, the Victoria's Secret Nakeds palette and the Balms Nude'tude palette. 

This is the start of the end - of this series I mean.
I'm going to start with the Coastal Scents 28 Neutral Palette. I ordered mine from amazon about 2-2.5 years ago. The price on the website is $12.95. Yes, that is correct, I said $12.95. This has to be the cheapest palette that I own.  

This palette comes with, you guessed it, 28 neutral eyeshadow colors. There are matte shadows, shimmery shadows, light and dark. The colors don't have names but here are some photos and swatches.

This was one of the first palettes that I bought way back when I started getting into makeup. I used it all the time, and I have to say I really liked it. I haven't used this palette in a long time because of all the other palettes that I have now. But that doesn't mean it's not amazing. The colors are pigmented and the quality is pretty good. There are so many colors in this palette that you can make a lot of different looks with it. It is definitely a one-stop-shop. The only thing I will say about this palette that I didn't like is that the eyeshadows are a little powdery and so there is some fallout when I apply them. I usually try to tap off as much eyeshadow as I can to minimize the fallout. That is really annoying, especially when using the darker colors.
Over all I really like this palette. It is super affordable and you get a lot of product for your money. I would recommend this to anyone, especially if you are a beginner and are building up your collection. It is also really good to practice with when you don't want to use up your more expensive eyeshadows.

The next palette I'm going to talk about is my Makeup Geek palette. I made this palette myself, just like my Mac palette. I purchased the Makeup Geek eyeshadows from their website, and the palette I put them in is the Z Palette - which is awesome all on its own. Ill talk about that in a future post.
Each eyeshadow pan is $5.99 and I purchased six eyeshadows. The colors that I have are the following:
Cocoa Bear, Taupe Notch, Twilight, Beaches & Cream, Shimma Shimma, & Vanilla Bean.

I got introduced to the Makeup Geek brand from the creator of the makeup line, Marlena. Her Youtube username is Makeup Geek TV. Her tutorials are really nicely made and real easy to follow and to create the same looks. So when I heard she made her own makeup line I was really excited to try them out.
I really like that Makeup Geek sells their eyeshadows in pan form as well as in a compact because you can build your very own custom palette. I have been using these eyshadows for about a month now, so they are still a little new to me. But I am really enjoying them. These eyeshadows are comparable to the Mac eyeshadows. The quality is very nice, they are pigmented and the color payoff on the eyes is amazing. Even though the texture of the eyeshadows is pretty smooth, there is a little bit of fallout with the more shimmery shades. The fallout is very very minimal.
I am really excited about these eyeshadows. I can't wait to try out all the different colors. These eyeshadows are pretty much dupes for the Mac shadows. So if you like good quality products but don't like spending $12 for one eyeshadow, I recommend you try out the Makeup Geek ones, these are only $5.99.

The very last palette that I will be reviewing for this series is the oh-so-famous Lorac Pro Palette. I purchased this palette from the Sephora website. It retails for $42 and you get 16 eyeshadows and a mini Behind the Scenes eyeshadow primer. The top row of shadows are all matte colors, and the bottom row is all shimmery colors. The names are the following:
Top row: White, Cream, Taupe, Light Pink, Mauve, Sable, Espresso & Black
Bottom row: Nude, Champagne, Gold, Lt. Bronze, Pewter, Garnet, Deep Purple & Slate

I purchased this palette about 2-3 weeks ago, so it is still pretty new to me, but I wanted to include this palette in the Nuetral Palette Showdown series because this has been raved and ranted about all over the internet. I think the first person I saw talking about this palette was Kayleigh, check out her Youtube channel ForeverYours0727. She really liked this palette. But that was a really long time ago when the palette actually launched. Fast forward to the present, and I finally took the plunge and bought it.
This palette is different than any other neutral palette I have. What makes it unique to me is that half the eyeshadows are matte, and the other half of the eyeshadows are shimmery. No other palette has ever been this balanced. This is great because the amount of different looks you can make are endless. You have so many options to choose from. I really like this palette. The eyeshdows are really pigmented and the payoff is really good. You really don't need much product to get the color to show up of your eyes.
The only think I didn't like about this palette is that the eyeshadow pans are really small. So you aren't getting a lot of product.
This palette is more of a splurge item, but I think it was worth it. The quality is amazing and the colors are very versatile. So far I am really enjoying coming up with different looks with this palette.


To finish the Neutral Palette Showdown, I'm going to list my favorite neutral palette to least favorite neutral palettes from this series.

1. Mac neutral palette
2. Naked palette - Urban Decay
3. Naked 2 palette - Urban Decay
4. Lorac Pro palette
5. Nude'tude palette - The Balm
6. Makeup Geek neutral palette
7. Coastal Scents 28 Neutral palette
8. Naked Basics palette - Urban Decay
9. Nakeds palette - Victoria secret

I hope you enjoyed this series, I definitely enjoyed writing it.
Hopefully this can help you with what neutral palette you should choose, and if you should splurge or save.

:)

Neutral Palette Showdown! Part Two

MAC, The Naked's & Nude'tude Palettes Review 

Continuing the neutral palette showdown with my reviews of some more neutral eyeshadow palettes. If you haven't already check out part one of this series, I reviewed all of the Urban Decay Naked palettes, so check it out!

So getting right into it, I'm going to start with my custom MAC palette. I purchased all of the eyeshadows and the palette itself off of the MAC website. I picked out all of the eyeshadows over the past year and a half. Each pro palette refill pan costs $12 and I have 19 eyeshadows in my palette. The colors that I have are the following (from top left to bottom right):

Satellite Dreams, Copperplate, Wedge, Twinks, Swiss Chocolate, Folie, Sketch, Satin Taupe, All that Glitters, Mystery, Cork, Soft Brown, Cranberry, Print, Naked Lunch, Brule, Ricepaper, Gesso & Carbon. 

Okay, so on to the actual review now.
This is my favorite palette, part of that is that I chose the colors myself. Mac products in general are extremely good quality and the eyeshadows are amazing. I love all of the colors that I have. I don't always use all of the colors though, but this is my most used palette hands down. When I get ready in the mornings this is the palette I reach for every time. Even if I use a different palette I always add a little Mac eyeshadow to my looks.
The matte shades are by far my favorite finish but I don't have complaints about the pearl/satin finish. My absolute favorite eyeshadows in this palette are Mystery, Cork, Wedge, Satin Taupe, and Naked Lunch. I also use Mystery as my eyebrow powder, at it works perfectly.
I would absolutely recommend MAC eyeshadows for everyone. They are a bit pricey but it is definitely worth it. The eyeshadows are pretty decently sized and they last a long time. I have hit pan on three of my eyeshadows (you can see in the picture) because I use them every single day, and I will be repurchasing them when I run out.

Next on my list to review us Victoria's Secret the Naked's palette.
I purchased this at Victoria's Secret for $28. I think if you wanted to buy this you would have to go into the store because I couldn't find it on the website. There are 10 eyeshadow's in this palette. It also comes with a black pencil liner and a dua-ended brush. The colors in the palette are the following:
Barely Pink, Copper Sand, Graystone, Brown Sable, Sparkling Black, Warm Vanilla, Tawny Pink, Smoky Lilac, Sparkling Brown and Charcoal Black.

This palette was very disappointing. I love the Victoria's Secret bath and lotion products so I thought I would give their cosmetics a try. Needless to say this palette made me change my mind. The colors in the palette are really pretty, but the inside of the palette just looked cheap. The dual-ended brush was the same on both ends, and the quality was pretty much garbage. Also the eyeliner was really hard to use, if I wanted the color to show up I would have to press really hard. So the eyeliner wasn't good either.
Now onto the eyeshadow itself, like I said the colors in the palette looked really good. But then I started using them. They eyeshadows are not pigmented at all, and when I tried to pack it on to try and get some color payoff there was so much fallout it was ridiculous. The light colors were all the same on my skin tone and the darker shadows were not pigmented. There was also way too much shimmer/glitter in the shadows, which just made more fallout.
I really tried to give this palette a chance but it just didn't work for me. I would not recommend this palette just from my experience with it. I think it was just a waste of money to be honest. The only thing that I like about it is the outside packaging.

The last palette that I'm going to review for this post is The Balms Nude'tude palette. I purchased this from their website and it was $36. This palette comes with 12 eyeshadows the colors are the following with the finish in parenthesis:
Top row-Sassy (satin), Selfish (satin), Sophisticated (satin), Sexy (matte), Serious (matte).
Bottom row-Snobby (frost), Standoffish (frost), Sultry (matte), Schitzo (satin), Silly (matte), Sleek (matte)

I really like this palette. It is much slimmer than some of the other palettes I have talked about mainly the Naked palettes. It has a magnetic closure so its nice for traveling. The actual eyeshadow pans are a bit smaller than most other eyeshadow pans.
The colors in the palette are very impressive. Before I purchased this palette, I had never tried any products from The Balm. So i wasn't really expecting much. But like I said I was really impressed, the eyeshadows are very nicely pigmented and the payoff on the eyes is amazing. I would definitely say that these eyeshadows compare very well to higher end shadows. There is a nice range of colors too, there are a bunch of different lighter shades that are great for highlighting. Then there are some bronze colors in there that are perfect for an everyday look. And lastly the darker sexier shades that are great for a smokey eye. There are a few colors that are a little glittery which causes some fallout but its not too bad. I usually tap off the brush so I minimize the fallout.
Overall I really like this palette. Its also a nice cheaper neutral palette when you don't want to spend $50 plus on a palette. I would highly recommend this palette because the quality is pretty close to higher end products.

So this is the end for part two of the neutral palette showdown. I hope these reviews are helpful.
In the next blog post I'm going to review some drugstore and more inexpensive palettes. They are the wet'n wild palette, a Coastal Sense palette, and the Makeupgeek eyeshadows.

:)