Review: Coastal Scents Creative Me #2 Palette

As soon as the Creative Me #2 palette appeared on Coastal Scents, I began to get requests for reviews and tutorials. This one looked far more interesting than the Creative Me#1. As someone who definitely prefers shimmers to mattes, I hadn't really got much use out of the CM#1 palette.

The Hot Pots from Coastal Scents are a pretty neat idea. You can buy a palette and fill it with 12 shadows of your choice. The shadow pans are only $4.49 each so are much cheaper than a MAC shadow. Coastal Scents recently expanded the Hot Pot range with an additional 26 metallic shades (marked as ME on the page). The first 12 of those are also available as the Creative Me #2 palette for $21.95. The metallic shades are supposed to be bigger pans of some of the shades available in the 88 Metal Mania palette. I'm not entirely convinced as I couldn't match up all the shades in the CM#2 palette.


I don't think I need to mention that I love the colours in this much more than the CM#1 palette. I've already used it a lot more! The teal shade (HP-ME10) is a particular favourite. Each pan in the palette is available individually, which is why I've labelled them all up.

Most of them are really quite pigmented, but definitely require a base. The yellow (ME-08) is sheerer than the other shades but I've always found yellows to be on the sheerer side (true for nail polish as well for some reason, maybe it's something to do with the actual pigments used for yellow). One or two of the shades are much chunkier than the others - the white (ME-07), the yellow (ME-08) and the orange (ME-11) in particular. A base is definitely needed as most don't stick to my skin on their own very well. They need something to grab the base colour. The finish on them all is very high shine and shimmer, not a palette for you if you're not into your shimmers.


Click on the picture for the swatches. I've joined them all together to make a fancy collage picture for you! Most of them were swatched with only one or two swipes. The lighter shades (white, yellow and orange) needed a couple more layers. They were all swatched over primer.

-HP-ME01 - olive over a blackened base
-HP-ME02 - slightly warmed silver
-HP-ME03 - copper
-HP-ME04 - silvery lilac-purple
-HP-ME05 - violet
-HP-ME06 - chocolate brown
-HP-ME07 - frosty white
-HP-ME08 - yellow
-HP-ME09 - grassy green
-HP-ME10 - light teal
-HP-ME11 - orange
-HP-ME12 - fuchsia

Yes, my colour descriptions are very exciting. Honestly, the colours aren't overly complex. There aren't duo-chromes, unusual shimmers or anything like that. They're just good, basic metallic shades.

They do take a little work to blend together. I used the green and olive in the following eye look and kept managing to pretty much blend the olive off completely! I had to just keep dabbing it into my crease with minimal blending. They last quite well on my lids with a primer. Not quite as long lasting as Urban Decay for example, but pretty much most of the day. I get a little bit of fading at the inner corner by the end of a work day, but it's not too bad and there's no creasing on me when I use a primer. I haven't experimented with these and Pixie Epoxy yet. I'm sure the results will be awesome.


That's the green (HP-ME09) on the lid, blackened olive (HP-ME01) in the crease, MAC "Shade" fluidline.

Overall, the 88 Metal Mania palette is only $4 more than the CM#2. A few of the colours from the CM#2 palette aren't going to really be wearable for me. I'm going to definitely struggle with the yellow and orange, plus the frosty white is too chunky to use as a highlight. The 88MM palette would give you many more options. And if you love the teal in the 88 palette, then it's HP-ME10 if you wanted a bit more than the tiny pan in the 88 palette!

This palette was provided free for review/tutorial purposes )I was actually about to buy it considering the huge volume of requests that I had received).