Creating my MUG Z-palette - with swatches!

The first thing I did after Christmas was order from Makeup Geek. Over the past few months, I've been bookmarking swatches of single eyeshadows so I could eventually narrow down what colours I would order for myself. I made a wishlist on the website a couple months ago, but something was always out of stock. I checked on my list on the holidays (mmm, Christmas money) and noticed everything was available. Perfect timing, right? 

This was an expensive endeavour. You can say "$5.99 for a single is so cheap compared to MAC!" but it doesn't feel cheap when you order 20 things at once. My order was around $130CAD with shipping. With that said, I still think the price it right when you take into consideration the fact that this is 100% customized to have colours I want and will use. I can spend $70 on a Naked palette and have half the colours be relatively unused, or I can shell out a bit more for something where I'm in love with everything because it's hand chosen by me. Totally worth it. 

All of my swatches are without primer, just a couple swipes of my fingertip.

L-R: Shimma Shimma, Peach Smoothie, Chickadee, Cupcake, Unexpected, Twilight, Last Dance
Row 2: Mango Tango, Latte, Cocoa Bear, Bitten, Moondust, Prom Night, Mercury
ALL BY HIMSELF: Razzleberry

Same order as above, but I threw Razzleberry over to the end (red with gold sparkles).  

Okay. My first impression with everything: I still have space in the large Z-palette I ordered, and I won't have to stare at the blank space for all-time because I will be ordering again. I already know for a fact that I need Envy, Cinderella, and Bada Bing. The pigments are amazing and I'm already reeling with ideas to go insane for my birthday face in a couple weeks.

The palettes are magnetic and come in 3 sizes. The large fits 27 singles - I currently have 15, which would fill up the medium sized palette. Makeup Geek's single eyeshadows come in pans that adhere to the magnet without any effort on my part. They also send you some magnets you can use if you choose to depot other brands. The Z-palettes are nice, though they're made of cardboard and don't seem to snap shut very securely, so I can see some people not being impressed with the construction. It's okay, you can use MAC palettes because the singles are the same size and their design is sleek and secure! I have no qualms with the cardboard design myself. The large one that I have is about the size of two Naked palettes, one on top of the other. There are dozens of colours to choose from, enhancing this customizing experience. I went with pink because it's my favourite, but orange and silver glitter were also super appealing to me!

I didn't really have any sort of theme with the colours I chose, I mostly tried to pick out things I didn't really have anywhere else. A highlight shade (Shimma Shimma) and matte brown (Latte, Cocoa Bear) aren't too unique, but are staples in most of my looks. I also wanted to have everything I would need in one palette. I like having lots of palettes, but some days I have 6 different ones out on my bed and I'm using one colour from each; it just isn't very efficient.

Some of the mattes are difficult to build up with and without primer. I don't know if I would call them chalky, they just take a bit of work to actually get picked up on the brush. I had the most trouble with Peach Smoothie and Unexpected. The shimmery shades, on the other hand, had great texture and pigmentation. No complaints for any of those ones. Prom Night, Last Dance, and Bitten are my favourite colours out of all of these because they feel like unique colours and they perform really well. I clearly like everything or else I would have picked different colours, but these ones are the cream of the crop to me.

The pigments are just amazing and beautiful and photography cannot do them justice. I have been lusting over Insomnia for months and months, it's one of the more popular shades that fans of MUG are always raving about. Utopia is a gold with purple/pink sparkles, and Insomnia is a blue/brown duochrome. Unffff.

Overall, I'm really happy with my purchase. To anyone thinking about purchasing from MUG, you should definitely give them a try. If you feel paralyzed with choice, read more reviews and look at swatches. When I was narrowing down my choices for one order, I wrote down the name of each shade I liked. I looked them up on the website one after another and re-ordered the list from "most wanted" to "I want this, but not as much as anything above it." It was hard, but really thinking about what I wanted to have was a good move!

Do you have any Makeup Geek products?