Coastal Scents 88 Piece Makeup Palette: Too Much for Too Little

Hi ladies,

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I placed an order from Coastal Scents the day after Thanksgiving, aka Black Friday. CS shipped my order a little bit slower than I expected, although we are located in the same state. This is probably because of the high volume of orders placed through their website during the sales. The 88 eyeshadow palette that I got was a part of the order as I thought it was time for me to get this palette. After all, every single beauty blogger owns at least one of these babies. In fact, I wanted to get them for a very long time, since the price was still around the $19.99 USD neighborhood. The 25% off on Black Friday just gave me a push that I needed to get this palette.

This palette has 88 eyeshadows (duh!), two sponge tip applicators, and a mirror.
The version that I bought has a matte case which looks classier than the shiny case in my opinion.

Close up of the colors
Most of them are matte and about 10 colors are shimmery.

This palette has all the colors that you can think of, from neutrals to greens, blues, purples, pinks, and reds. If you expect the eyeshadows to be really big, you are dead wrong. Each eyeshadow is about the size of a dime and my MAC 239 brush can cover it nicely.

It is almost as big as a magazine and the matte case makes fingerprints look very pronounced!


A quick swatch on 3 random colors (you don't expect me to swatch all 88 eye shadows, do you?!)

Pigment-wise, the colors are highly pigmented. I barely touched the eye shadows and got a lot of pigments on my fingers. The dark colors are very pigmented and some of them are very familiar, almost MAC-like. However, the light colors are quite chalky as they are matte eye shadows. Although I bought this palette because of the mattes as I don't have a lot of them, I kicked myself in the butt for not getting the shimmering palette, which is $3 USD more expensive! I think this is more about the preference as I look better with shimmering eye shadows. The palette by itself is nice and fun to use. Moreover, it can potentially save you a lot of money on MAC.


Let's do some math, shall we?

• 1 MAC eyeshadow = $14.50 USD;
• 88 MAC eye shadows = $14.50 USD x 88 = $1276.00 USD (Holy cow!)
• Since a CS eyeshadow is about 1/4 the size of a MAC single eyeshadow, the price for this palette if it was from MAC is $1276.00 USD/4 = $319.00 USD (still a lot of money!)
• So you actually save 14.5 times when you buy this palette instead of buying MAC eyeshadows and that's a lot of moolah in your pocket, my beauties!

Now is this crucial question: Should you get it?


The answer is yes if you wear a lot of mattes and satin shadows. This palette consists mostly of colors in those categories and only about 10 eyeshadows are shimmering. However, if you are like me who prefers her eyeshadows with more bling, I would suggest to get the 88 ultra shimmer palette, which is priced at $24.95 USD. And if you are extra extra wealthy, getting both of them eventually will save you mucho dinero. You can skip a whole lot of MAC LEs, I'm telling you! (I can hear som MAC SAs crying somewhere on the interwebz!)

Ingredients:
Talc, Mica, Mineral Oil, Kaolin, Titanium Dioxide, Magnesium Stearate, Isopropyl Palmitate, Lanolin, Methylparaben, Propylparaben.
May contain: Mica and titanium Dioxide, Iron Oxides, Ultramarine Blue, Manganese Violet, Ferric Ammonium ferrocyanide, Chrome Oxide Green, Hydrated Chrome Oxide Green. FD&C Red #40/ak Kajem /fd&/c Tekkiw #5 Al Lake, FD&C Blue #1 Al Lake

The ingredients mostly do not give me a big surprise except one: mineral oil! This is the reason for the affordability of the palette, as mineral oil is cheaper to purchase and easier to formulate. However, mineral oil is a non-renewable source and may be comedogenic if it is not a cosmetic grade product. Other ingredients are standard for makeup and the colorants are FD&C dyes which can be toxic in large quantity.


So again, should you buy it?


From the health stand point, only if you have very sensitive skin and are proned to acne on your eyelids that you should not buy this palette. Also, it is definitely not to be used on young children because of the dyes (and I am against putting makeup on kids anyways!)


The Coastal Scents 88 piece makeup palette is definitely a must-have for all makeup lovers. I think this is something you need to get for yourself to play and get familiarized with makeup. It saves you a lot of money on expensive makeup while give you a lot of fun. I have been playing with it for weeks and find it easy to blend and really pigmented. Hopefully Coastal Scents will have another sale after Christmas for all of us to get their palettes!


That's all for today, my lovelies. Take care and stay gorgeous!


Lots of love,
Your Makeup Blogger

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