I'm Never Buying Another Eyeshadow Palette Again.

How's that for a click-baity post title, my dear readers? But hear me out, I think I'm onto something here. I will freely admit that I'm a neutral eyeshadow palette lover. After getting my greedy little paws on the Urban Decay Naked palette all those years ago, I fell down the rabbit hole of finding THE PERFECT neutral eyeshadow palette. There's just something about palettes as a make-up item that ticks all the right boxes for me: the packaging and design is often beautiful and well thought-out, they're wearable and practical for every day, they have variety for creating different looks, they often contain Limited Edition 'unique' shades, and the value for money is hard to beat. What's not to love?

I did manage to contain my initial purchasing craze quite a bit in the past year and a half, but still. In this wishlist post back in 2014, I talked about lemming after the Naked Basics palette, which in the end I did manage to resist, but instead purchased a Physicians Formula matte quad in Canyon Classics (here) - all because I was convinced I needed more basic mattes to compliment my neutral eye looks. Last year, I bought bareMinerals READY 8.0 palette in The Posh Neutrals (here), because somehow bareMinerals' pressed eyeshadows became 'my thing'. And then I also got Makeup Revolution's Death By Chocolate large neutral palette (here), because I didn't own any of the original Too Faced Chocolate Bars and thought that this drugstore version suited my color preferences much better.

ANYWAY - right now, I own 4 premade eyeshadow palettes (the two mentioned above + discontinued Stila E! On The Red Carpet and the currently panned theBalm Nude'Tude), and 3 larger magnetic palettes (two Z-Palettes, one old MAC 15 Pan) filled with singles and depots from other premade eyeshadow palettes I used to own. I also have one small Z-Palette and just a couple quads and quints. It doesn't seem like an excessive amount for a palette junkie like me (especially when you compare it to my Eyeshadow Palette Collection post from 2014), and I can honestly say that one of my reasons for embarking on Pan That Palette 2016 challenge was to get as much use out of my Nude'Tude as possible within a year, and then promptly replace it with a shiny brand new palette. But now, I don't think that's gonna happen.

After using theBalm Nude'Tude almost daily for 4.5 months, I have a lot of thoughts and feels about eyeshadows in general and palettes in particular. Even though I've been blogging about beauty for 7 years now and have always loved wearing eyeshadow, I don't think I have ever had such a clear understanding of what works for me and what doesn't. You may remember me saying at the last Pan That Palette update (here) that I wasn't happy with how three of the darkest shades (marked with an 'X' in the photo above) - Sophisticated, Silly and Sleek - would all end up looking the same shade of muddy charcoal once blended out on my eyes. In a palette with 5 dark shades (which I wear as either outer corner or lash line definition colors), I'm down to just 2 that I enjoy working with: Sexy mostly in the outer corner, Serious to line the eyes.

Clockwise from top: Too Faced Sexpresso (from the old Natural Eye palette), Stila Captivate from the d/c In The Moment palette, theBalm Serious, theBalm Sleek, bareMinerals Apropos from The Truth quad, Inglot Matte 326.

That discovery was quite interesting to me, because to the naked eye, Sophisticated, Silly and Sleek are all very different in the pan. That in turn got me thinking how I'm rarely very excited about any of those dark browns (or greys, or khakis, or plums...) in any of my neutral palettes, and I was hard pressed to come up with a favorite outer corner shade from the top of my head. I sat down at my vanity and laid out all my larger palettes, and decided to swatch some - not all - of those dark matte (or semi matte) shades to compare.

L-R: theBalm Sleek, theBalm Serious, Inglot Matte 326, Too Faced Sexpresso, Stila Captivate, bareMinerals Apropos. Stila Captivate was the driest, least pigmented and most fall-out prone, and I've decided to declutter it.

And SURPRISE SURPRISE: they're almost all the same. Even if they appear quite dissimilar in the pan, or even in my heavy, packed on swatch, once blended out on the eyes, they're virtually identical. But you know, maybe I could just ignore all the dark defining shades in the different eyeshadow palettes on the market, and instead concentrate on those shadows that I use a lot more - let's say, matte highlighting shades. Everyone agrees they're an absolute staple and a must-have in a well-balanced palette, am I right? Back to swatchy swatching, then.

Counterclockwise from the top: bareMinerals Five Star (from d/c The Finer Things palette), Too Faced Heaven (from the old Natural Eye palette), matte ivory from Physicians' Formula Canyon Classics quad, bareMinerals Seredipitous from The Truth quad, Stila Cinema (from d/c E! On The Red Carpet), Stila Desire (from d/c In The Moment palette).

So yeah, okay, they're not all the same - with the exception of Too Faced Heaven and the lightest shade from Physicians' Formula Canyon Classics quad, which clearly are dupes. But again - once I blend them out on my eyes, the end result is pretty much the same. And before you guys say that matte off-white shades and matte dark browns don't make a palette, that often constitutes half of the shades provided. And I could easily continue this exercise with matte transition/ crease shades (except I'd have to split my comparison into cool, neutral and warm-toned; idea for another post, perhaps?) AS WELL AS any of the shimmery lid shades. Champagne, taupe, gold, bronze - you name it, I already have it (as evidenced in this and this swatch post, for example).

L-R: bareMinerals Five Star, Too Faced Heaven, Physicians' Formula Canyon Classics, bareMinerals Serendipitous, Stila Cinema, Stila Desire. All swatched better with a finger than a brush, the Stila shade from In The Moment palette was again the worst formula - but I'm keeping it for now.

I guess you could always decide to simply collect these neutral eyeshadow palettes as pretty toys to take out once in a while and admire, but that's not the reason why I personally love and use make-up. Or you could just treat every palette as a completely separate being, without worrying about overlap between them and having multiple dupes of basic shades. But I value variety - I don't want to feel like I just spent my hard-earned money on the same thing all over again. And AGAIN.

I don't think I'll ever go back to purchasing those premade palettes; as you can see, I usually end up ripping them apart anyway, giving away shadows I don't like or have plenty of dupes for and keeping the remaining depots in my freeform magnetic palettes. With the amount of eyeshadow I own, I hardly see how a just-released neutral palette can possibly bring anything new to my collection.

Let's consider two eyeshadow palettes I've been lemming for a while: the Kat Von D Shade and Light Eye palette and the Tarte Tartelette in Bloom. As demonstrated above, I don't need any more matte highlighting or defining shades - that's already about 50-70% (depending on their actual depth on my fair skintone) of those palettes proven superfluous. Now for the lid/ medium depth shadows in between, I was mostly excited about playing with a matte warm rusty peach transition shade, and a rich reddish chocolate brown for the outer corner. A quick search on Temptalia, and I could easily get those two new-to-me shades of eyeshadow via MAC's single pans in Soft Brown, and maybe Swiss Chocolate. Or something from Makeup Geek. Or Inglot. Or Anastasia Beverly Hills.

But in the meantime, armed with my newly flexed swatchy critical analysis skill, I'm actually going to sit down and fish out some shades from my existing palettes that may fill that lemming before blindly ordering two more shadows for my already brimming collection. Like with my three most recent palette purchases - I actually already owned similar shades in other palettes in my stash. I had had dupes for all the four shades in PF Canyon Classics, and dupes for about 70% of the bareMinerals Posh Neutrals and Makeup Revolution Death by Chocolate. And judging by how quickly I'm able to use an entire pan up, that's enough eyeshadow for another decade. It really is.

So that's what I've been recently pondering about. I'm not actually vowing to never purchase another eyeshadow palette - some shadows get old and may need to be replaced eventually, or I may find myself a neutrals-only girl no longer and lusting after some colorful blues and greens. But for the foreseeable future, I'm not going to buy another palette, or most likely even a trio, quad or a quint. What is your opinion on neutral eyeshadow palettes? Is it something you love and will always be drawn to, or do you find them boring and repetitive? I'd love to hear your thoughts!