Completing My MAC Palette

I've had three empty spaces in my MAC eyeshadow palette, begging to be filled, for quite a while now. After much trawling through blogs and YouTube, and asking for your advice on Twitter, I ordered my final three shades last week and I am pleased to say my MAC palette is now complete! I don't even want to think about how much this palette is worth - building your own MAC palette is most definitely a very expensive thing to do, but all the shades are then tailored to your specific tastes (and let's face it, collecting them is fun!). The only problem is, I've seen so many other shades I want, I may have to start building another palette soon.

You can probably see from the photo above that my MAC palette hasn't received a lot of love yet - I'm not even close to hitting pan on any of the shadows. I guess there was the OCD part of me that wanted to wait until the palette was complete before I started getting it messy, and now it is I can't wait to get stuck in!

The quality of MAC eyeshadows is really good, I wouldn't say they are quite as good as my favourite Urban Decay, but they are almost up there! They are still buttery smooth and apply to the lids nicely, though you still get the odd dud shade. What you can't fault MAC for is their shade range. Like their lipsticks, there are so many eyeshadows to choose from, you really are spoilt for choice and narrowing it down to just 15 for your palette will prove very tricky indeed.

So, here are swatches of the shadows I picked for my first MAC palette:

Top row - Shroom, Naked Lunch, All That Glitters, Sable, Woodwinked

Middle row - Wedge, Patina, Shale, Satin Taupe, Mystery

Bottom row - Expensive Pink, Cranberry, Sumptuous Olive, Club, Carbon

My favourite shades from the palette are Satin Taupe, Sumptuous Olive & Club. Satin Taupe is such a staple shade for a lot of MAC lover's neutral palettes, and is a great shade for a classic smoky eye. Sumptuous Olive is probably my favourite of the three. It's a gorgeous olive/khaki green with a hint of golden shimmer and looks really stunning with my brown eyes. Club is a really interesting colour, which looks like a bit of a nothing shade on camera, but is really pretty in person. The colour seems to change depending on the light your are in - it can look green, blue or brown. I sometimes wear this as a crease shade when I'm wearing Sumptuous Olive - it's a great combination.

My most disappointing shade is probably Carbon. I was looking for an intense matte black to use as a liner shade, and was recommended this one by one of the girls in the MAC store. The pigmentation of this shade is pretty poor, and you really have work at it to get a good pay off. It is quite good at intensifying a smoky eye look though.

Do you have any of the shades in my MAC palette? What are your favourite MAC eyeshadows?