I was really excited to get the Metal Mania palette, and I found colors and pigmentation to be alright for the price. However, after just an year of buying it turned rancid. The odor was very strong and pungent, and basically pointed towards the kind of ingredients used. In this case, you actually get what you pay for.

I bought both of these palettes, the Coastal Scents Warm Palette and the Coastal Scents Shimmer Palette.

Firstly, I'll say that they are packaged very well. The cases are not flimsy pieces of junk. They've also got a mirror in the lid, as well as 2 sponge applicators in each - which are useless, BTW.

As to the quality of the products, forget it. They are loaded with talc. Which means the color payoff is not that great. If you don't use a primer, they quickly come off. When you blend them, they also get very muddy. Some are so loaded with talc that they disintegrate when you touch them with your brush. Being as small as they are, that means they will quickly be gone just from blowing away in the wind :-)

As for the colors, there are far too many that are almost exactly the same. I'm sitting here looking at mine now and have counted 21 that could be used as highlighters. This is just in the Warm Palette. Ridiculous. Out of the 88 in the Warm Palette, there are 4 shades of green. 4! One light minty green, one a dark green/black, one kahki green with hardly any color to it at all and the other a powdery sage green. Again, ridiculous. 4 out of 88? And crappy colors at that.

There are also far too many brown shades in this box. I wind up using some of the matt ones as brow fillers more than anything else. I haven't even touched 48 of the other colors.

Are there some decent colors in here? Some, but I would rate them as less than average in color, payoff and quality. I mean, come on....talc? A well known filler known to make it cheaper for a company to manufacture their cosmetics. It also causes reactions in a lot o people and clogs pores.

As for the Shimmer Palette, dear mother of god.....what can I say? I've never seen so many hooker blues in my life, especially not in one place. There are also far too many red toned shadows. Red? That just draws attention to dark circles and imperfections all over your face. Exactly what we're all always trying to avoid and fix. The brown shimmers are nice, but in this palette, there aren't enough. As for the greens, again, they are of circus type quality. If I want to look all cracked out and strung out, I could accomplish it just by not washing my face and letting my mascara smear all under my eyes. Free of charge.

There are some nice highlight colors in here, and not too many of them in this case. But I can count 3 shades of green that are pretty much identical, along with 9 pinks shadows that are also nearly the same. I mean, almost dead on. What a waste.

Out of this palette, I can honestly say I've used a total of 6 of the 88. So that is now a grand total of 176 eye shadows that I wouldn't even use HALF of. Hold crap, Batman.....in my books, that's junk. no matter how cheap the junk is. The color payoff of the Shimmer Palette is much better, but that ain't saying much as it has never been my goal to have bright RED or ORANGE eye shadow screaming across the distances at people. Oh, did I mention that the Shimmer Palette STAINS your eye lids? LOL For days! Again, if that's the look you're going for, go nuts. Buy every palette they have!

All in all, I can't say I'd buy either one of these palettes again, even for this price. If I could use at least half of the colors, I wouldn't say that. But with this substandard quality, the talc in their formulas, the over abundance of one type of color in each palette, definitely not. I also wouldn't give this as a gift as it would come off as a very cheap, dollar store type gift that didn't require a lot of thought. Not the impression I'd like to create when I'm giving somebody a present. And for the love of god, DO NOT buy their lip glosses!! Worst stuff I've ever tried in my life. They went straight in the garbage. Their brushes however, especially the badger type, absolutely rock and are dirt dirt cheap.

Don't bother wasting your money on these palettes. You'd be better off trying some of their loose shadows (which also have talc, incidentally) and pigments and mixing some of your own using the raw ingredients they have on their website. Which I've done and have come up with far superior products and exactly the colors I want. And it costs next to nothing. The loose shadows and pigments are also available in sample sizes, which prevents wasting money if you find out a product is crap. Pigment sample sizes are enough to last a very long time and allow you to also create your own custom shadows with the other bulk ingredients they sell (serecite, etc).

Their customer service is great, shipping is fast, shipping charges are cheap, and products damaged in transit are quickly replaced with few questions asked. But these palettes are a definite miss in my books. Unfortunately, I read all the rave reviews on their site before buying them and believed them. Makes me wonder what quality of makeup women out there are using that they think this stuff is so great LOL Ground dirt?? Never again hahaha