Makeup Geek Duochrome Eyeshadows
Today I’m happy to share my thoughts on the Makeup Geek duochrome eyeshadows with you. I have all the pressed eyeshadows and pigments to share. Most of my photos are shot in my lightbox with daylight bulbs (5500k). I took a few shots in my hallway which has warm light.
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Makeup Geek Duochrome Eyeshadows
Press sample.
Where to Buy
Makeup Geek
Price
$12 per pigment
$6 per eyeshadow
For the pressed eyeshadows the left side of the swatch is on bare skin. Right side is on Ofra Gel Eyeshadow Primer. I wanted to show you how well these shadows work with and without primer, even though I only wear eyeshadow with primer.
Phantom
a white base with violet purple reflects.
This is a highlighter shade. It’s semi-sheer on bare skin but great on primer. I like this color.
Blacklight
an electric purple base with icy blue reflects.
Soft lavender purple base with light turquoise blue shift. Reminds me of Urban Decay Tonic. While it’s not bad on bare skin, it’s pretty strong on primer.
Secret Garden
a deep espresso base with bright teal reflects.
Deep charcoal brown with deep teal shift. This has pretty good pigmentation on bare skin but it’s fabulous on primer. It’s gorgeous.
Typhoon
a deep teal base with green and gold reflects.
Deep teal blue with gold and green iridescence. The pigmentation is amazing. One of my favorites.
Ritzy
a warm red-brown base with green and gold reflects.
Warm, red-toned brown with gold and green iridescence. Another one with amazing pigmentation. This is sort of the green version of Havoc. You don’t see this shade as often as you see Havoc.
Havoc
a warm red-brown base with teal reflects.
Warm, orange-toned brown with light turquoise iridescence. Pretty good pigmentation.
Steampunk
a black base with rich copper reflects.
Smoky black base with copper iridescence. Super pigmented. I absolutely love this shade.
Mai Tai
an apricot base with orchid reflects.
Peachy-orange base with pink shift. Similar to Urban Decay Fireball. This shade seemed to have less pigmentation than the others.
I’m Peachless
a buff base with peachy-pink reflects.
Beige yellow base with pinky-peach shift. Less pigmentation than the others. Without primer I mostly see the pinky-peach shift. Works well as a highlighter.
Karma
a golden base with yellow-green reflects.
Golden yellow base with golden green iridescence. Similar to Urban Decay Sideline. See UD Sideline, Fireball and Tonic.
Voltage
a vanilla base with champagne-yellow reflects.
White base with golden iridescence. This is a semi-sheer highlighter.
Rockstar
a medium silver base with purple-pink reflects.
Light putty grey base with pinky-violet iridescence. Less pigmented than the others. Without primer, it looks like pink-violet on my skin. With primer, you can see the grey base.
These swatches were applied with Fyrinnae Pixie Epoxy. I wanted to show what they look like at their most intense.
Chameleon
a deep teal base with gold reflects.
This is a deep teal blue base with golden iridescence. Love this color.
Kaleidoscope
a slate blue base with pink, purple, and teal reflects.
This is a blue-toned grey base with strong light teal blue shift, I also see pink and violet.
Sugar Rush
a translucent base with icy blue and purple reflects.
This is a white base with strong light teal blue shift. I see subtle violet.
Mood Ring
a pale gray base with purple-pink reflects.
This is a light grey base with strong pink and baby pink iridescence.
Prism
a white base with peachy-pink reflects.
This is a white base with golden pink iridescence.
Wild Fire
a red-coral base with gold reflects.
This is a stunning coral red base with strong gold iridescence.
Hologram
an orangey-pink base with green and gold reflects.
This is a fiery orange base with golden green iridescence.
Insomnia
a warm red-brown base with blue reflects.
Deep plum brown base with blue iridescence.
Overall I’m thrilled with the pigments. The new pigment packaging is awesome. While it can be a bit hard to thread the top on and off, the jar is shaped perfectly. If you just dip your brush into the lid, you get the perfect amount of pigment for an eye look. The sifter keeps the jar from spilling. It’s a really great design and I love it. I’ve never been a fan of sifters but this sifter design is new to me and perfect!
The pigments are easy to work with. They’ve got a lot of pigmentation and they’re smooth. They’re easy to blend and the color shift i s pretty nice. Sugar Rush is my favorite type of highlighter for the inner corner and under the brows, followed by Prism. Chameleon, Kaleidoscope, Wild Fire and Hologram make great lid shades. I love how these colors look. Mood Ring is an ethereal pink that’s perfect for the inner lid.
The pressed eyeshadows are a little more hit and miss. Some of the shades are great. I love Phantom, Blacklight, Steampunk, Secret Garden, Typhoon, and Voltage. If you love browns you’ll love Ritzy and Havoc. Karma is really nice. Mai Tai, I’m Peachless, and Rockstar had less pigmentation than I expected and didn’t perform as well as the others without primer.
Overall, I think if you love loose eyeshadows you will love the pigments, especially with the innovative sifter. If you prefer pressed eyeshadows, I think most of the shades are fine, but you may find Mai Tai, I’m Peachless and Rockstar more difficult to work with because they have less pigmentation than the other shades. The shades that really stand out to me are Steampunk, Typhoon, Secret Garden, Voltage, Phantom and Blacklight.
I didn’t expect to find Steampunk so much fun to play with. I really like its smoky black base. I’m going to continue experimenting with it.
What shades do you like in this collection? What do you think of the new jar packaging?
Just out of curiosity, how would you compare Fyrinnae’s and Steampunk to Makeup Geek’s? I have the former, and while I like how Make up Geek’s looks, I don’t want to purchase it if it’s too similar. Thanks!
The pigments are stunning! That packing looks so much neater too.
There are several of these I think I need! So pretty!
When I finally purchase from MUG… the duochromes will be my first addition as well as a few staples. They are gorgeous.
Glad I’m not the only one who thought Prism might be a really cool highlightshade 🙂 I’m really into duochrome highlights, don’t ask me why. Love Secret Garden and Hologram as well! Great swatches!
I love them too! Sugarpill Lumi is a great one, Fyrinnae has a bunch too.
These colour are super nice!
All of the loose pigments are awesome! Especially Hologram and Wild Fire.
The pigments are stunning and vibrant!
All those gorgeous green shades – especially Typhoon, Secret Garden and Chameleon are just gorgeous. Love your eye look – it is beautiful. Thank you so much for the review.
Thank you! I should have a tutorial up on the eye look for Teal Thursday 🙂
I’m glad to see she changed the pigment packaging since before I was afraid to open them up. My pressed shadows just came, I opened them 10 minutes ago! I’m surprised how different they look on your arm compared to the way they look in the pan. I can’t wait to try them. I couldn’t decide which to buy and I couldn’t wait so I just bought them all!! I love your descriptions and swatches.
Can’t wait to hear what you think of them!
OMG Typhoon and Havoc. Sign me up for seriously everything in this post.
I knew you would love Havoc!
What a gorgeous collection! Your swatches make me want all of the things.
Happy you love the swatches Erika!
Very pretty. I wonder if I’d get along with their pigments? Wildfire is just gorgeous.
I think their pigments are awesome, at least the newer ones. Some of the older ones were chunky. I did treat these as duochromes (the way i would treat duochromes from Fyrinnae) so I applied them with Fyrinnae Pixie Epoxy to show them off to their full potential. When I applied the loose pigment Chameleon on my lid and lower lid with just eye primer you can see how the teal takes a back seat to the gold, and if I had wanted it more prominent I would have needed to have used Pixie Epoxy. That said, I found both the pressed and loose easy for me to work with, aside from the pressed shades that I felt lacked pigmentation. I mean, when the colors blend into my arm, other than the color shift, that means they’re pretty pale. I’m not sure what skintone they would work best on for those shades.
Thanks for the additional information. If the pigmentation is there, I can work with loose pigments with no problem. Maybe I’ll give some of these a whirl before giving up on MUG altogether.
I would try 1 or 2, Wild Fire and Chameleon maybe? To see if you like them?
Definitely just one or two to start. I’m too cautious to buy every single one at once.
WOW! These a gorgeous! Steampunk and Rockstar are perfection!
I love Steampunk and I’m not normally into brownish shades.
I really like Camelon and Wild Fire . I think both would look great on hazel/green eyes. I am not too sure about the jar packaging. It reminds me a lot of Bare Essecentual and some of the spillage that went with it.
I have some of the bare minerals eyeshadows and I don’t have any jars with sifters like these with the holes in the middle? This is far superior to the sifters with a ton of little holes that you normally see (in my opinion). I didn’t know anyone else used sifters like this!
Well, the early bare esscentuals did not have sifters, at least from my recollection. But the new ones do. And if the ones with the sifters gets knocked around, powder gets everywhere. Hence, my hesitance. But it could be the way bare esscentuals constructs their containers. You never know.
That’s true, everyone has different sources for their packaging.
Just bummed how not blue Sugar Rush looks. It’s beautiful, yes, but I’d love to see a strong icy blue. Kaleidescope is probably my fav. As I was looking I thought how awesome Steampunk would look on you with a teal and then you did it! Haha.
Sugar Rush reminds me a bit of Sugarpill Lumi, so it’s a color I really like for the inner corner highlight. Kaleidoscope is really neat! I shot a video on the Steampunk + Chameleon look, hope to have it up for Teal Thursday.
I really like Wild Fire!
I love that one too!
You’ve definitely convinced me to use eye shadow primer! I think Ritzy and Wildfire are gorgeous and would be flattering with my green eyes 🙂
Primer makes eyeshadow amazing. So happy you like them!