MUA Poptastic Eyeshadow Palette

I often find myself swatching some of the brighter MAC eyeshadows at the counter and swooning. And with Urban Decay launching their new Electric Palette in the UK very soon, I've been looking at blog reviews & swatches thinking I need this in my life! Unfortunately, I simply cannot justify spending the best part of £40 on something I'm realistically not going to get a great deal of use out of. Afterall, I'm not going rock up at work sporting bright pink eyeshadow am I? I was having a rummage through my makeup collection recently, when I came across this little beauty that I had purchased last year.

This is the Poptastic palette from budget eyeshadow kings MUA, which they describe as "a show stopping collection of eyeshadows that will make your eyes pop". And that it does! There's a gorgeous selection of vibrant colours in here, with a mixture of shimmer and matte finishes. There's a couple that are very similar, like the two turquoise shades on the bottom row. Unfortunately, MUA didn't name the shades in this palette (there's no names on the back of mine anyway, they may have changed this now!), which is a little disappointing (names are always fun!) and makes reviewing a little tricky when you want to talk about certain shades!

Top row

Bottom row

Having tried the Undressed & Undress Me Too palettes by MUA already, I knew that their eyeshadows were extremely good quality for the price you are paying, so I was expecting good things from this palette when I picked it up. A couple of the shades are a little chalky, the light yellow shade on the top row in particular. However most of the shades are buttery smooth and are a dream to apply and blend. The palette does come with one of those double ended sponge applicators, but I've actually thrown mine away, as they apply much better with my eyeshadow brushes.

My favourite shades from the palette are the two at the very left of the palette. The turquoise shade on the bottom in particular is stunning and reminds me a lot of MAC's Steamy, which a find myself swatching a lot when I go to a counter. Both have a slight hint of shimmer to them but nothing over the top. I always seem to be a sucker for the shimmer shades in any palette! The dark blue shade at the bottom right would also be very good to use in the crease to create a smokey eye look, so I'd imagine I'd get a lot of use out of that one, even when I'm not using other colours from this palette.

My least favourites from the palette are the light yellow, because of the chalkiness I mentioned before, and the lighter pink shade on the bottom row. This is one of the less pigmented shades in the palette and, being a slightly brighter version of a baby pink, it's never really a colour I've ever gravitated towards, so I can't see myself getting any use out of it.

All in all I really like this palette. Most of the shades are really nice and vibrant, and the formulas on the whole are really nice to work with. The shades aren't exactly the same as the UD Electric palette, but there are a few similarities in there. In fact, I'd say there's probably more shades I'd use in this palette than there are in the Urban Decay one! If, like me, you're a neutrals girl at heart but fancy experimenting with a bit of colour, I think this is a great place to start. At just £4 for 12 shades, it's not going to break the bank and you've got plenty of variety to play around with. I've not seen it in my local Superdrug recently, so I'm not sure if it's still available in stores, but you can still buy it online here.

Have you tried this palette? Do you ever experiment with brighter eyeshadows?