Rate or Slate #1: MAC Eyeshadow Edition

Having lighted upon an appropriate rhyming pair of words, I give you my version of the up/down, hot/not, in/out feature.

RATE: MAC VEX

Out with the old, in with the new - MAC Vex

This might just be my all-time favourite MAC eyeshadow - and I own thirty-one in total. It's certainly the first  eyeshadow I ever finished.

Questionable swatch photo ahoy!

This is one of the good frosts - applies smoothly, without chunky glitter, just shimmer. MAC describes this as "beige with pink-green pearl" - I agree about the duochrome pearl effect, but I see more silver/grey than beige. (Maybe a very cool-toned beige.) 

This is the perfect all-over lid colour for me, either to wear on its own or with a grey/purple (such as MAC Blackberry or Satin Taupe, or NARS Lhasa) in the crease. I 100% recommend that you give this a swatch next time you're at a MAC counter/store, if you're in the market for a wearable yet unique everyday lid/highlight colour. I am very pinky-pale, with blue/grey eyes, so I definitely favour cool-toned eyeshadows, and this is the best neutral I've found so far!

Which brings me neatly (kind of) on to...

SLATE: MAC ALL THAT GLITTERS & WOODWINKED

L-R: All That Glitters, Woodwinked

These are truly awful on me. As in, they're orange. Now, I know orange-toned eyeshadows are supposed to flatter blue eyes, but who cares if your eyes look bluer if you look distinctly ill/exhausted, with red eyes and grey skin? Bluer eyes be damned!

Top: All That Glitters; bottom: Woodwinked

These are both veluxe pearls, so they're super pigmented and smooth. And, in their own right, they're gorgeous colours, which look great on lots of people - just not generally people with my colouring, I imagine.

Top: All That Glitters; bottom: Woodwinked

These blended-out swatches really show the orange tones, particularly in Woodwinked. The change is actually quite dramatic, from the warm gold of the first swatch, to the fairly strident orange below.

Anyway, All That Glitters is a warm peach which is verrry popular - but on me it's not only too warm, it's too dark to use as a lid colour really. I have tried to wear this a few times in the past, especially since it's such a nice formula, but without much success. I will probably give this another whirl in summer, with peachy blush and some (gasp) bronzer, but it's not my favourite look by a long shot, and I'd always reach for something else in preference to be honest.

Woodwinked can look OK, if not particularly flattering, for a dramatic summer evening eye, if I use a primer (usually Too Faced Shadow Insurance), lots of black liner and mascara, and try not to blend it out too much so it doesn't turn lurid orange. But frankly there's never really a time when I can be bothered to use a product which works against my skin-tone so radically.

I would never repurchase either of these - not that I'll ever use them up. God knows why the sales girls encouraged me to buy these, rather than more suitable cooler-toned colours. These were among the first MAC shadows I ever bought, mainly on the strength of the enormous amount of blogger hype - so many girls listed these two among their favourite colours, that I just had to have them! Sad but true.

As always, these are just my personal opinions based on my experience with the shades mentioned. All That Glitters and Woodwinked suit a lot of people, but they absolutely don't work on my super-pale, cool-toned skin, which is such a shame!

Hopefully this will become a regular feature, since it encourages me to pick two or three products rather than ramble on endlessly about 20 in one post!

Till next time,

Josephine x

PS. It's so very wrong, but I am intermittently tempted by colours like Bronze and Antiqued, even though I know they'd look awful on me in the manner of Woodwinked. Curse you, MAC!