Moral Dilemma

Just forewarning you, this is quite a lengthy post.

Hey guys!  If you've been following me (or if you read some of my older posts), you'll know that recently I made a trip to New York City and during that trip, I was sooo excited to go to the Inglot store there, as there are only a few of their stores in the United States.  But at the store, I received less than good service.  It really frustrated me to the point of not wanting to buy products from them.

Since then, I have seen Amalia (Dear Makeup Diary) use these shadows and LOVE them.  I also have seen QueenofBlendingMUA and Gossmakeupartist on YouTube use them and rave about them as well.  Now, I am not one to hold grudges (sometimes I actually wish I was a little better at staying mad) but I was really peeved about my bad experience. But then I'd look at the swatches for these shadows and want them.  So I was having a bit of a dilemma.  The shadows are reasonably priced and have an excellent reputation but I was mad.  So after asking Amalia her opinion (I trust her opinion because I know she's used high end and low end shadows) and talking to my husband, I decided that it was probably smart business wise (as I plan on becoming a freelance makeup artist and Amalia said that Inglot was going to raise their prices soon) for me to get some of these shadows.

Let me break it down for you.  A 15 pan palette from MAC costs $179 (free shipping over $50).  I bought 3 Freedom System palettes (a 20 pan, a 10 pan, and a 5 pan) and 33 eyeshadows for $163.50 (they have free shipping over $150).  MAC eyeshadows have 1.5 grams of product in each pan, Inglot square pans have 2.7 grams of product.  So let's just say that all of the palettes were free and the price we're paying is just for the eyeshadow, that would make each MAC shadow cost $11.93 and each Inglot eyeshadow cost $4.95.  So MAC shadows are $7.95/gram and Ingot's are $1.83/gram.  MAC's shadows cost 434% more per gram than Inglot's.  And with all of these people saying that they love their Inglot shadows more than their MAC ones, it seemed silly to not get them.

Their website for the Freedom program is COMPLETELY bananas.  It's very hard to keep track of what you're ordering and how many eyeshadows you have picked out.  Also the shadows are numbered and don't have names so it's even more complicated to remember which ones you like.  I even sat down with a list of shadows I had seen swatched and liked and gave up on trying to find them all, I just ordered ones I came across that looked nice.  I ordered primarily matte shadows, some pearl ones, and a few AMC (I don't know what that means) ones.

I submitted my order at about 1:00 a.m. on Tuesday.  Within minutes, I had an e-mail confirming my order.  Now I was planning (after reading makeupbydanisaddiction) for it to maybe take like a week for me to get my order.  So when I received an e-mail on Tuesday afternoon telling me that my order had shipped, I was amazed.  My order arrived at my house today around noon.  So it took 2 days for my order to be placed, shipped, and to get to me.  That's craziness.  I have never in my life received an order for ANYTHING so quickly.

So, on to the pictures!

This is how everything was packaged

everything removed from the box

everything all unwrapped (except the 5 pan palette)

I put the shadows I thought I'd use a lot in the 20 palette and the ones I wouldn't use very much in the 10

you can see how I labeled this palette.  I didn't want to damage the shadows digging them out every time I wanted to see which ones I used

I was so over putting the finish on everything, so for the swatches, I just put the number and left off whether they were matte or pearl or what have you (and yes, there are two 428's)

these are the swatches of the top row

these are very similar, 450 is a bit more purple but I think if you have Rust you could pass on this shadow

this is how I had to label the 20 palette
haha don't mind the shapes of these labels, my daughter was the designated cutter

395 is very similar to "Peanut", actually so is 393 haha.

352 is so close to "Blanc Type" and the texture is soo much smoother

Everybody needs to own 372.  It's AMAZING!!!

61 is not a true black.  It's basically black with navy blue sparkles.  In person, because of the sparkles, it doesn't look black

not quite a dupe, but they're in the same family

I actually used 363 to fill in my brows, I had been using a shadow from my 88 palette and this just was so much smoother, it just glided (is that a word?) on.  Soo nice.

And now here's the look I did using this shadows.  Haha I wanted to use as many as I could in one look so I did a rainbow.  

These colors are like redonkulously pigmented.  They're really quite amazing.  The only shadow that I had a hard time with was the yellow (AMC 60).  The ones called AMC's have glitter (small glitter) in them and I had some glitter in my lashes from it falling down.  But their matte shadows are soooo amazing!  They're like buttah!!  If you're going to order from them, order every matte shadow they make.  Even if I normally wouldn't like the color, I do just because they look so nice and creamy.  I have to say that the fast delivery and amazing product more than make up for the bad experience I had in the store.  

But, Sonja, what about that extra 5 pan palette?  And you said you bought 33 shadows and I only see 28?  

Haha I guess you'll have to wait and see!!!