Coastal Scents 88 Piece Makeup Palette ($21.95) is one of those products people talk about often, but it’s kept on the down low and you’re always left wondering if a $22 eyeshadow palette could ever be anything near amazing. Despite hearing raves from several trusted peers, I remained a little skeptical–I mean, I believed it was pretty decent, but I didn’t think it would be outstanding.

This palette is AMAZING. Coastal Scents really gives you quality eyeshadows that are smooth in texture and rich in pigmentation. I would say that the power of the shadows is well worth at least $100 to $150, because the shadows really do rival just about any major brand’s eyeshadows. Bobbi Brown’s Brights, move outta the way, ’cause you only have one thing better than this palette: your minuscule size–which is only valuable if you travel often. The 88 Makeup Palette measures approximately 9″ by 7″ — kind of like an oversized piece of paper. Each eyeshadow is about the size of a dime, and I imagine you’ll be able to get a good amount of usages out of each before you run out.

I was thinking about how fantastic would it be if you were able to mix and match and build your palettes with more normal-sized shadows, because one drawback of the palette is: what if you run out of five or six colors? $22 isn’t a lot to re-purchase, but at the same time, who wants to replace it just for a few colors? I’d also like a smaller palette size, just because this is quite large relative to any other palette I own, so it’s not convenient for me to store anywhere in my bathroom.

Of the 88 eyeshadows, I would say only a handful of them appeared chalky or less pigmented than what I would want in a top-notch eyeshadow. But let’s be cynical, if 75 of the 88 are amazing, this is still an incredible steal. For those of you who have ever wanted to try bright colors but can’t bring yourself to shell out $15 for each shadow… get this. Really, you will be as impressed as I was! I was taking photos and swatching each shadow one-by-one, and I kept remarking to my boyfriend how pigmented they were (and he, of course, half-listened and went back to his work).

The 88 Makeup Palette comes with both matte, semi-matte, and satiny shadows; it’s not exclusively matte formulations. They do a brilliant job of fully representing bright, bold colors, and they do lesser (but still good) job of representing more natural colors. I do think that their more subdued, more natural colors aren’t as standout as the bright ones — some of them just are missing the subtle nuances that make neutrals pretty without being bright. I’d also love to see things like a brown shadow with gold shimmer or green-gold shimmer. Coastal Scents shadows tend to be more base with coordinating/matching shimmer.

Ingredients: Talc, Mica, Mineral Oil, Kaolin, Titanium Dioxide, Magnesium Stearate, Isopropyl Palmitate, Lanolin, Methylparaben, Propylparaben. May contain: Mica and titanium Dioxide, Iron Oxides, Ultramarine Blue, Manganese Violet, Ferric Ammonium ferrocyanide, Chrome Oxide Green, Hydrated Chrome Oxide Green. FD&C Red #40/ak Kajem /fd&/c Tekkiw #5 Al Lake, FD&C Blue #1 Al Lake

In the end, the swatches don’t lie! There are quite a few swatches, so they will be in the post right after this!

See more palette photos…