MAC Mondays: Blue Eyeshadows

As I have an ever increasing MAC collection and MAC being a good starting point for any make-up lover. I thought it might be useful to introduce you to some of the things I use and love. Hence, MAC Mondays. Each Monday I will show you something MAC, until I run out. That could take a while! I think once I run out of showing you swatches, I may well move onto looks. Of all the palettes, making a MAC palette and then using it may just be the hardest. You are bound to pick up some shades that don't suit you or just don't fit with the rest. Unlike with a lot of palettes that come with colours that will largely all go together, you choose your MAC ones. Its a potentially scary but liberating thought.

I'm starting with eye shadows, not in the neutrals as would possibly make sense, but with the colours I love most. So I'll start with the blues, also quite fitting as I'm sure lots of us will have the Monday blues today!

My MAC eye shadow collection, including spare palettes for travelling. 

As I'm sure you are aware there are various types of MAC palette out there. You can get ones that hold 2, 4 or 15 shadows. The smaller ones always come with a clear top, the larger 15 palette you can now buy with a see through lid - which is wonderful and I may de-pot my brights into one of them.

When you buy MAC eyeshadows for a palette they come in little card packets, as shown in the middle top of the photograph. You then take them out and pop them in the palette. If you buy single eyeshadows in a pot, they come looking like all the small pots below my 15 palette. The larger potted eyeshadow is a mineralize eyeshadow released in a collection.

Blue MAC Eye shadows, clockwise from top: Contrast, Freshwater and Moon's Reflection.

These are the three blue eye shadows I own.

Contrast is a very dark almost matte shadow. It is one of the velvet eye shadows. You may be able to see the top of the shadow looks quite rough and different to the others - this is because I used to wet it and use it as a liner. As a liner this is great if you are feeling like something different from the standard black. It is dark enough not to notice the blue overly much but makes life a little more interesting. It is also great for creating a blue smokey eye with a pop of one of the other blues in the centre of the lid - perfect. It has the smallest amount of shimmer to it but this isn't too noticeable as you'll see in the swatches.

Freshwater is a really bright pop of colour. It is a veluxe pearl eye shadow. This is probably one of my favourite formulations - certainly for brights. It is a shimmery but not over the top shadow, you get a beautiful shine without glitter. Freshwater is a super bright blue and probably not one for the faint hearted. It's one of my most used shadows. Paired with Stars 'n' Rockets, which you will see probably in next Mondays post, this is a stunner.

Moon's Reflection  is a lighter blue. More of a baby blue. Again, this is a veluxe pearl shadow, so has that beautiful dimension to it. I really like applying a wash of this to the lid with contrast either in the crease or as a liner (or both). I wore this to school for years (yeah, I got away with wearing a ton of makeup to school :/) so you can actually see a dent in the shadow. I haven't worn this in a while but I think it is time for it to come out again!

L-R: Moon's Reflection, Contrast, Freshwater

Contrast, Freshwater, Moon's Reflection.

I think with these three blues, unless you are a great lover of blue eyeshadow, you'd have most bases covered. If you only wanted one blue shadow, I'd personally recommend Freshwater simply because it is so stunning and blends so well with other colours I will mention on other Mondays. However, if you are not a brights lover, I'd highly recommend contrast as a shadow you can easily mix in for a touch of something different. I don't have that many blues myself as with blue eyes, wearing blue eyeshadow can look quite hard at times.

I hope you enjoyed reading this and that it will be a useful series. I'm guessing the neutral palette will be the most useful for the majority of you but we've a few weeks before we get there!

Fleur xoxo