I'm forever on the hunt to find makeup brands that are good quality, and gorgeous, yet also affordable. It's a daunting task when every tutorial and YouTube video features high end prestige brands. It seems like nobody out there wants to recommend affordable options. So I search and comb through websites, and look for reviews and ask other makeup addicts questions.
Recently my searching for purple eyeshadow led me to a company called Coastal Scents. I was pretty excited when I saw their prices, though admittedly I was also sceptical. I know from experience that eyeshadow palettes with a large number of colors are generally not the greatest. They tend to be chalky and low pigment. So I start looking around for reviews, and much to my dismay, the few reviews that exist for Coastal Scents palettes are quite dated. Four or five years can make quite a difference in the quality of a makeup product. Companies learn and grow, or they start taking shortcuts to save money.
The prices were reasonable enough that I decided it was worth it to take the plunge. If the quality wasn't the greatest, I could still use the palette to practice new looks, so it wouldn't be a complete waste. I decided the 120 Eyeshadow Palette Two, because it had several different purple shades. They do have individual shadow pots that I could have just ordered a couple purples, but I liked the larger selection available in the palettes, and the other colors are a bonus.
When I got the palette, I was a bit taken aback by the number of green shadows. I guess I didn't really pay much attention to the other colors in the palette beyond looking at them to see what colors were present. I remember that I looked to see what the brown situation was, since I wear mostly browns and neutrals, and I made a cursory scan for blue and green and pink. There are also quite a few blue shades, but the greens seemed to be present in an absurd number. I probably feel that way because it isn't a color I personally would wear very often. I went through a lime green phase in high school and I think the memories of that turned me off of green eyeshadow permanently. Seriously, I wore lime green eyeshadow for two years... I was a mess. Luckily, Coastal Scents has several different palettes and also single color pots to choose from, so you don't have to deal with the forest of green.
Some people might think the pot sizes are rather small, but with a high volume count, they are the right size. These will last quite a long time, unless I decide to wear one color frequently, which isn't likely.
The colors are a nice mix of mattes, satins, and shimmers. They feel silky, are highly pigmented, and blend quite nicely. I use a primer and a setting spray, and got 12 hours of wear with minimal fading and creasing. I was honestly surprised.
There are some colors that I will never use, but for $17.95, the colors I will use are well worth the money. The extra colors are great for practice and for just playing around. I enlisted my son to present his arms for some swatches, since photographing my own arms wasn't exactly an easy task...
In all, I am very happy with this purchase, and will be revisiting Coastal Scents in the future. They have a brush set that I have my eye on. You can never have too many brushes.
