Hey guys. Sorry for the lack of content, but I had loads of schoolwork. For any of you curious as to what exactly occupied all of my time for the past week or so, here it is. As you can imagine, throwing that together took a lot of time, since I was doing the editing, but I think the final product is pretty good for just a week, don't you?
Now, on topic I'll finally be doing a post on the quality of the Inglot palettes themselves.
Just for clarification, this is a review on the palettes: the things holding the Inglot Shadows, not the shadows themselves. You can find reviews on the shadows here and here.
Each palette is in two pieces. I'll be calling the translucent plastic the 'lid' piece and the black bit with the indentations for the pans the 'frame' piece. The lid lifts off completely to leave just the frame for the shadows. You can stick the lid underneath the palette while you're working with it, and then move it back when you're done. You can also either stack multiple palettes (both lid and frame) on top of one another or stack several frame pieces back to front and just put a lid on the top one, if you'd prefer. The magnets are amazingly reliable.
In the above picture I have both of my palettes stacked (lid-frame-lid-frame) and I'm only holding the top lid. I can wiggle my hand around and everything; the other three pieces latched onto it aren't going anywhere. In order to open these, you cannot pull upward. Have you ever tried to pull two strong magnets apart? You'll never get it to work if you yank them in opposite directions. It simply doesn't work. You have to slide the lid off sideways. I left these palettes on my coffee table once, and my mom (being curious) couldn't figure out how they were intended to open. Now you know.
Though you can't exactly tell what I'm doing in the above picture, I'm actually holding an open palette upside down. The pans are all inside not budging, even when I bang the back of it. I would never dare risk doing this with my customizable MAC palette.
The strength of these magnets does have its downfalls of course. The shadow pans are set 1mm deep into the indentations of the palette. That, combined with the strong magnets makes them nearly impossible to get out and rearrange. While I, personally, don't do this anyway, many people do. To get these pans out you need to carefully use a pin to push down on the edge of a pan and be very careful not to accidentally gouge a hole in the shadow.
Like I've mentioned in my shadow reviews, the pans on these are huge. I recieved a few emails over the past week asking me just how big they were exactly. I'll be answering in the form of some picture references. (You can click the images to see them enlarged!)
Here you can see the height/width of the shadow pans compared to my iPhone. They're enormous.
The palettes also feel very sturdy. They have a good weight to them. In my opinion, it's not too heavy to carry, but not too light to feel flimsy in my hands.
In case you can't read, the weight of the palette (with ten square shadows inside) is 251 grams.
One more thing I'd like to add. The numbers of the shadows are on the backs of the pans on a sticker, but those are impossible to see without getting the pans out. This will not be available online, but in an actual Inglot store the saleswomen were more than happy to slap labels on the backs of my palettes telling me which shadow was which (I don't rearrange them at all).
- Super sturdy.
- Good weight: not too heavy, not too light.
- Strong magnets make accidentally damaging these by dropping them fairly hard to do.
- Strong magnets make accidentally damaging these by trying to get a pan out very easy to do. In that same vein, it's difficult to rearrange or read the labels on the backs of the pans.
Nothing I can think of!
Overall, while a lot of people may have complaints about the strong magnets, I love them. Keep in mind though that these palettes probably aren't the best choice for frequent rearrangers or people who like to look at the backs of their shadows (for color names, etc). These are, however, so unbelievably sturdy. The palettes definitely feel like they're keeping my shadows safe. Plus they're just the right size, with no extraneous space that would take up room.
These are available both in Inglot shops and online. They are, however, frequently out of stock in-store, so double check by calling ahead of time!
