Concrete Minerals Pro Matte Eyeshadow Review and Swatches

26 Comments

1. I ordered Concrete Minerals through Etsy about two years ago, and I love the quality and amount for the price! I have Lovey Dovey, Wicked, Lolita, and Ruse. I like to apply a little water to make the colors bolder. (I love that eye look on you, by the way!)

2. I would love it if they expanded their matte collection. My personal favorites are Queen, Toxic, Thrash, Ravage, and Domino. From their non-mattes, I love Lolita, Rocked, Storm, Juvenile, Harlequin, Deviant, Smut, and Unity.
   I have some issues with CM, unfortunately. Several of their matte shades can be duped down to smaller jars for less, with the same quality, for those who don’t need 2.5 grams of a bright yellow or red. This makes me wish they would offer smaller sizes. I also wish they offered samples.
   My main issue is an experience I had last year, where I purchased over $100 of product with the 3-5 TAT displayed prominently on the site. I waited a week, and still no shipping notice. I sent a few emails, and they weren’t returned. I had to make a minor fuss on their Facebook page. My package was marked shipped, a label was printed, and I was assigned a tracking number. Another few days went by and the number never updated. I’ve shipped plenty of things, I know printing a label gives a tracking number, and means nothing else if there are no updates. Again, my emails were ignored. I threw another minor fit on FB. Nine days after my package was marked shipped, it was finally dropped off at the PO. The owner finally emailed me, and told me the post office had held it for ‘insufficient postage.’ In my experience, packages with insufficient postage are sent anyway, and the recipient is required to pay the difference. It seemed like an excuse. There was also no actual apology, and no extras, which I kind of expect from a larger indie like CM after a three-and-a-half week wait past the normal TAT.
   This makes me extremely leery of buying from them again, even though I love their shades.

   1. Purple Oleander Hey there! I would recommend emailing or facebooking Concrete Minerals directly. Did this happen around the time that they changed their website? It makes me wonder if your order got stuck or something. I’ve never heard of anyone having any problems with Concrete Minerals and ordering before today, which is one of the reasons they’re such a highly rated company from me. I know that Concrete Minerals would be more than willing to do something to make things right for you.

      1. Phyrra Purple Oleander This happened last August-September. A bit before the site change. No one else I discuss makeup with has had this issue either, however, when I was posting on their FB page, I saw other people with the same complaints. Even if it was a one-time issue, I feel it was handled poorly, and I’m soooo cautious with any kind of online order to begin with. It was such a struggle to get my package that it ruined it for me for a while, after opening and checking the colors, I didn’t use them for about a month.
         I replied to the email from the owner where they said it was a PO mix up, asking why it wasn’t scanned in at the PO if she originally hand-dropped it of on X date, as she claimed. She never responded, so I let it drop.
         I’m not trying to make a big thing, I know all companies are run by humans and humans mess up. It’s over, I got my products. I should have included “I’m not sure what it will take for me to buy from them again,” because that was my original point. Yay distracted posting.

         1. Myself and another makeup artist just had a similar bad customer service experience from Concrete Minerals. We live in South Africa and I’ve been having a hell of a time trying to reach them regarding our 2month (probably lost) order. Two years later and they’re still using the same tactics with customers who try to reach them regarding missing orders.

            I just finished writing a blog post about my experience to warn other mua’s. The service is really shocking. At this stage we’re just hoping we can back charge the order so we at least don’t lose our money.

            1. I actually just had a bad experience ordering from Concrete minerals that I’ll be sharing soon. Couldn’t get a response to me email and my order arrived way after the turn around time stated

   2. I am having that same problem with Concrete Minerals right now.  Placed order for a pot of pro matte eyeshadow in Risqué red on 20 July 2013.  Finally received shipping notification on 26 July, which has yet to update even one time.  The status on USPS is described as being no guarantee of a parcel even having been received for posting!
      All my emails to CM have bounced, my contact attempt on Twitter has had no reply.  I’d sure hate to have spent money on nothing but hassle.  It’s now 30 July, I hope it arrives eventually.  Want.  🙁

      1. Lubyanka Have you tried commenting on their Facebook page? I had to do that TWICE, once to get the label printed and once to get them actually shipped. If you’re not too invested in the Risque red, you could file a Paypal claim.
         Good luck! I hope you get satisfaction one way or the other.

         1. Purple Oleander, I hatehatehatehateHATE using Facebook, but on your suggestion I had a look there, and as you said I see that quite a few others are recently commenting about orders overdue or not arriving at all,  silent unresponsive contact attempts left hanging emptily in the breeze, and refund actions being unhappily initiated.  I didn’t use PayPal so unfortunately that refund route’s no use to me.

             I sure hope the company isn’t on its way out of business!  Nice looking products, shame about the desperately poor customer service. 🙁

         2. Lubyanka Purple Oleander This has happened before, they won’t go out of business. What happened with me will probably happen again, all the people who aren’t getting refunds will get a suspicious story blaming the PO and a discount coupon, because, you know, after a bad experience, you immediately want to order again.
            If you ordered with a debit or credit card, you can call your bank or CC provider and reverse the charges that way. 
            BTW, if you’re looking for a matte like Risque, SpectrumCosmetic on Etsy sells several different gorgous red mattes, as well as most of the other matte shades CM carries. And they’re $3 for a 3g jar, $5 for a 5g jar! And the shipping is very fast for an indie company.
            Of the Spectrum Cosmetic red matte shades, Fatality is an exact dupe for Risque, a brightened dark red matte. There’s also:
            Bloodbath – a bright bright red
            Queen of Hearts – a red that’s as close to neon as you can legally get in the US.
            (I do not own and am not affiliated with Spectrum Cosmetics or anything in the indie world besides my own little blog, I just like helping people find the shades they want.)

         3. Purple Oleander  , awesome, thank you so much for your reassurance and suggestions!
            I had  a look at Spectrum Cosmetic and they charge £17.51 GBP to ship to the UK, which is a lot, like $25.00 USD for shipping alone.  I think I can prolly find something similar for cheaper, don’t you?
            Really what I’m looking for is a dupe for MAC pro pigment in Basic Red which ships for a reasonable price to the UK. I’ve been searching for some time and I’m a bit stumped.  If you could point me at something like it, I might very well do that Kermit arm flail YAY dance.  🙂

         4. Purple Oleander Lubyanka I forwarded your concerns on to the owner of Concrete Minerals. I’ve personally never experienced a problem with ordering from them, but I know how much it sucks to hve that happen to you.

         5. Lubyanka Purple Oleander Oh my goodness, I didn’t realize A. you were in the UK and B. shipping overseas was that ridiculous! I apologize. 
            I know Sleek’s Ultra Matte Volume 2 palette has a red, I’m not sure how close it is to Basic Red, though.

         6. Phyrra Lubyanka That was very nice of you! I hope this can all get cleared up quick.

         7. Phyrra ,That was amazingly thoughtful of you, thank you very much!  And  Purple Oleander ,  I got a ping back from the Facebook contact attempt, I tried emailing the, back as they requested but my emails to them are still bouncing unfortunately.  No further contact back from them, but this evening my parcel status updated for the first time to indicate an actual package has physically entered the system.  Only 14 days after I placed my order too, so, yay!

            I feel fairly certain your contributions helped this get rolling without the usual whole bunch of required effort from me.  So both my laziness and inertia quotients thank the two of you lots and lots.  🙂

            I went a bit nuts in the interim and ordered Russian Rouge from SauceBox and Extreme Apricot from NYX (reduced to £3/$5 in the sale).  What I have ultimately been after is a MAC-Pro-pigment-Basic-Red-like powder to pat on my red lipstick to mattify the heck out of it, cos that’s apparently how most of my fav fashion week looks got their extra finish.  So I’ll let you know how that works out for me.  🙂

         8. Purple Oleander Phyrra
            It’s heeeeeeeeeeeere!
            I ordered the NYX Extreme Apricot and SauceBox Russian Rouge over a week after the Concrete Minerals, but they arrived days ago.  I swatched all three for comparative interestingness, and to entertain you splendid helpful people.  🙂
            http://db.tt/1fs4gXEh
            Thank you for your help and encouragement.  I know now that if I order from Concrete Minerals in future, I should be prepared to wait 3+ weeks til it arrives.  Cos now I won’t be able to rest til I get Queen, darnit, but better to know these things first innit.  Anyway all happy now, check me out in all my powdered red matte marvellousness!
            http://db.tt/JKFpbIZ8

3. I am drooling over all of these.  Soooo vibrant!

   1. ClumpsOfMascara they are! so much fun to wear!

4. these are some fantastically vibrant mattes!!

   1. cinseven13 You have to see ALL THE PURPLES!

5. Oh wow, looks so lovely on you. That yellow seems like the sort of yellow I’ve wanted for awhile. I am constantly disappointed overall with Yellow shadows.

   1. jensawolverine This is a really good one.

6. Wow, these are vibrant! I love that they’re bright yet matte. Just makes them that much more versatile

   1. bcrueltyfree Yes, I know many of my pro makeup artist friends are often in situations where they can only work with mattes. So this is a great brand for some quality mattes.

7. thanks for the review and swatches!! i have been contemplating a purchase, so these swatches are helpful! 😀

   1. autumntrinity You’re welcome!

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