One Week, One Palette: Morphe 35OS

For the sixteenth week of my one week, one palette project, I decided to use my Frankenstein's monster Morphe 35OS palette. So, this is actually a combination of the Morphe 35OS, one Make Up For Ever shadow, and select shadows from the Zoeva Cocoa Blend palette. 

The 35OS palette originally looked like this:

And, frankly, that is just too much damn shadow for one palette. Not only is it ridiculous in terms of size, but there are so many shadows that are repetitive in shade and the quality is not equal across the board. 

I've shared my Morphe story before, but essentially, I bought the 35T palette and wasn't as disappointed in the quality as I thought I would be. I had only seen super sponsored and affiliate link–filled reviews of these palettes that promised quality that was out of this world. And obviously I knew that was a bunch of crap (and I still largely think that), but when I swatched the palette in-store (there is a retailer in NYC that sells Morphe), I was impressed with the shimmer shadows. The mattes, however, were complete garbage. I ended up throwing most of the 35T palette in the trash (though I did save some of the shadows), and swore I would never buy Morphe again. 

But then I found out that they took the 35O palette and made an entire shimmer version of it. Since I actually quite liked a lot of the Morphe shimmer shadows, I decided to buy the 35OS. But, as I found with the 35T, only about half of the palette was actually good. So I decided to take all the good shades and combine them with depotted shades from my Zoeva Cocoa Blend palette. 

Top, from left: 1 (Zoeva), 2 (Make Up For Ever Pink Ivory), 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7

Second: 8 (Zoeva), 9, 10, 11 (Zoeva) 12, 13, and 14 (Zoeva)

Third: 15 (Zoeva), 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, and 21 (Zoeva)

Bottom: 22 (Zoeva), 23, 24, 25, 26, and 27

I did not use every shadow in this palette last week as there were just too many. But I did use a good amount of them. 

Below are six look I did last week. 

Look 1:

9 on the lid, 8 blended into the crease, 19 padded onto the outer corner, 2 on the inner corner, and 1 on the brow bone. 19 on the lower lash line. 

Look 2:

16 on the lid, 14 blended into the crease, 8 blended above the crease, 17 and 23 padded onto the outer corner, 3 on the inner corner, and 1 on the brow bone. 17 on the lower lash line. 

Look 3:

4 on the inner and middle lid, 6 on the outer lid, 8 blended into the crease, 2 on the inner corner, and 1 on the brow bone. 14 on the lower lash line. 

Look 4:

7 on the lid, 6 blended into the crease, 2 on the inner corner, and 1 on the brow bone. 21 on the lower lash line. 

Look 5:

13 on the lid, 8 blended into the crease, 20 padded onto the outer corner, 2 on the inner corner, and 1 on the brow bone. 20 on the lower lash line. 

Look 6:

17 on the lid, 7 blended into the crease, 25 padded onto the outer corner, 3 on the inner corner, and 1 on the brow bone. 25 on the lower lash line. 

So, I actually really enjoyed this this palette last week in terms of pigmentation and performance, but I'm not really in an orange shadow mood at the moment, and I found myself wanting to use some of my other shadows. I'll get to that in a moment. 

As I mentioned above, I do really enjoy some of the Morphe shimmer shadows. The best are the foiled finishes, and I actually don't think I kept any shadows that didn't have that finish. I felt these shadows performed just as nicely as my Makeup Geek foiled shadows or even my Make Up For Ever artist shadows. It should be noted, however, that the Makeup Geek shadows have better ingredients.

Looks 4 and 5 were my favorite of the week, but I really enjoyed all the looks. The pictures of look 1 don't quite do it justice. It was a gold and bronze look that was really pretty. But as you can tell, even though I used different shadows, several of my looks came out looking very similar. And that is a huge negative about Morphe palettes. They boast that they have 35 shadows, but they are not 35 unique shadows. I selected the best shadows from the Morphe palette and made sure that none were completely identical, but it is pretty obvious that there are several shadows in my palette that look the same. 

Since there are no matte shades in the palette, I figured I would pair this palette with the Kat Von D Shade and Light Eye, but when I decided to depot my Zoeva Cocoa Blend palette and put the shadows I decided to keep in this palette, I realized that I really had a perfect warm, orange-toned neutral palette. I've already written about the Zoeva palette, so I won't go into it again here, but I can say that the mattes certainly made my looks very easy to blend. Even so, for a few looks last week I put an orange shimmer in my crease, and I really loved the way the look turned out. 

I see people often asking if Morphe is worth it, and to that my response is: it depends. Do I think Morphe lives up to the hype reviewers who are affiliated with them give? Hell no. Do I think they are the biggest crap on the market? Definitely not. I think the palettes are filled with hit and miss shades, and I think there are usually (in all but the shimmer palettes) more misses than hits. If you are okay with the price knowing that you might trash some of the shadows like I did, then they may be worth a try. If you are looking to have a complete, wonderful, and high-quality palette, I would look elsewhere. 

I've mentioned for the past few weeks that I've been getting a little fatigued with this project. It's not that I don't love it—I do. It's just that my palette collection is so huge that I can't even return to palettes I loved months ago. I almost made it to the end of my collection—with one notable exception. I still haven't used my two Ciate London palettes for a solid week, but I travel with those palettes so frequently that I use them all the time. I even took one of them to Washington, DC, last weekend for the Women's March. But the one palette I haven't done—that is incredible—is the Coloured Raine Queen of Hearts palette. 

The reason I won't be doing that palette right away, and also why I am taking a bit of a break from this series, is because I wouldn't be able to wear that palette to work. Several of the looks I did with the 35OS palette were worn on the weekend since the eyeshadow would be too dramatic for my workplace. Today, one of my colleagues actually commented on my makeup and said she was so impressed that I had different "complex" eyeshadow on every day. And that has been from me toning it way down. The Queen of Hearts palette is so beautiful that it deceivers to be worn as dramatic as possible, and that's just not realistic for my life right now for a solid week. 

So, I'm just going to take a bit of a break from this series and enjoy my eyeshadow. But don't worry, some version of it will be back soon.