Review and Swatches
When it first came out, I was drooling over the Limecrime Venus: The Grunge Palette, but reviews seemed to all say that the shadows felt chalky and had lots of fall out and that the red shades even stained your skin. Because for a palette at that price I expect better quality, and because of the controversy surrounding the brand, I decided not to buy the palette.
I was in love with the colour scheme though, so when I saw the idea of making a dupe palette with Inglot Freedom shadows, I was excited. I'd never really considered buying Inglot shadows before but I had heard that the formula was good and that the pans were huge (almost twice the size of Mac!), so it seemed like a good option. I looked at some swatches online and then because there isn't an 8 pan version of the Freedom System Palette, I purchased a 10 pan palette, 8 dupe eyeshadows and 2 other eyeshadows which I thought would fit with the rest of the colours.
The shadows I bought were:
- 450 (Pearl) - Dupe for Venus
- 397 (Pearl)- Dupe for Shell
- 45 (Shine)- Dupe for Aura
- 335 (Matte)- Dupe for Creation
- 329 (Matte)- Dupe for Icon
- 361 (Matte)- Dupe for Rebirth
- 349 (Matte)- Dupe for Divine
- 55 (AMC)- Dupe for Muse
- 382 (Matte)- A bright pinkish red, the Relentlessly Red of the eyeshadow world
- 387 (Matte)- A light warm grey (And a dupe for an FCUK eyeshadow I loved, panned and could never find again)
I love the packaging of the Inlgot Freedom Palettes, they come in two parts, with a black side with slots for the pans to fit in and a clear lid with 'Inglot' printed all over it. The two parts are magnetic and stick together really well, so you don't have to worry about it accidentally coming open and your eyeshadows getting damaged. The black part is also magnetic to hold in the metal eyeshadow pans, they fit really snugly and need to be removed using another magnet to pick them up. Inglot have recently released a tool specifically for removing the pans from the palette but I've heard the corner of the lid or another Freedom work just as well. Because once the pans are in, it's not easy to be removing them all of the time, I wrote the names of the shadows on the edges if the palette in pencil so that I can see what they're called, but I can also rub off the writing easily if I decided to rearrange my palette.
The texture of the 'shine' eyeshadows is my favourite, it feels incredibly smooth and is packed with shimmer with not too many huge chunks of glitter. I love 45 as a colour for my inner corner and brow bone highlight, however its definitely much more yellow than Aura, so I wouldn't consider it a true dupe.
The 'pearl' formula is my second favourite since it feels smooth and soft but needs a couple of swipes to get it to full opacity. Pearl is the perfect description for the finish of these shadows since they're not shimmery or glittery and just have a sheen to them. 450 is a pretty good dupe for Venus while 397 is less pink and more golden than Shell but is still a beautiful lid or highlighting colour.
'AMC' is a strange formula, it is full of gold specks of glitter when in the pan but the glitter doesn't seem to transfer well in swatches or on your eye. This isn't a bad thing as such since Muse is described as a matte shade, so obviously a shadow full of glitter wouldn't be a good dupe. 55 is close to Muse but with less red in it.
I was excited to try the 'matte' formula of these eyeshadows since I had heard good things about it, and matte is such a hard formula to do right. I think maybe my expectations were too high because I found that I was a bit disappointed when i swatched these. They don't feel bad, they aren't too chalky or powdery and don't kick up a lot of powder when you dip your brush in but they aren't as soft as the Lorac PRO shadows, which is what i had heard them compared to. Don't get me wrong, they are good shadows, they're definitely better than drugstore shadows, and i prefer them to urban decay and find them slightly better than Mac, I just over hyped them in my head.
335 is a bit lighter and more orange than Creation and 329 is slightly warmer and lighter than Icon and I think this was my least favourite shadow in my palette, I found it less pigmented than the other matte shades and quite patchy and hard to blend. I really love 361, which is slightly lighter than Rebirth, but I love it as a transition colour for the red shades in the palette, and as a lid colour. 349 is less purple than Divine but is a lovely cooler toned grey, which when used in the crease looks like a shadow and really helps to deepen it. 382 is a beautiful colour but it didn't seem very pigmented and I had to go over it a couple of times to get a solid opaque swatch, while 387 is my favourite shadow which I chose, its very pigmented and soft and its really versatile, it can be used as a lid colour, a crease colour, as a smokey liner.
The swatches were all done over Urban Decay Primer Potion and were either one or two swipes.
Inglot do have shops, including one in London, but since isn't one near me I ordered my shadows from their website. The UK website isnt the nicest or easiest to navigate but it's not too terrible and my order shipped out and arrived quickly. The US website looks much slicker and there's always the option of using beautylish's palette builder to play around and create different combinations.
The 10 pan palette was £12, but they also have 1,2,3,4,5, 20 and 40 pan options. The eyeshadows themselves are £5 each which is incredible considering they have 0.09oz of product in which is almost double the price. So a filled 10 pan palette costs £62 before shipping, which is more than the Venus palette, but is really nice quality, contains a huge amount of product and you get to choose 2 extra colours, so I definitely think that it is worth the price.
To see looks using this palette check out my
post.
