Product Details

The Menagerie Cosmetics Pastel Pup Palette contains a well balanced selection of matte pastel shades along with a black, a white, and one shimmer in their “tri-foil” finish. Their formula is talc-free, cruelty-free, vegan, and made in Newman Lake, Washington. There is a total of 24 grams of product and it retails for $36.

The individual shades can also be purchased as singles if you only wanted certain ones. The matte shades are $5 each and the Tri-Foils are $7 each.

Packaging

The palette is made of cardboard and has a slick, easy-to-clean surface. Inside, there is a pretty decent sized mirror, almost the size of the lid but not quite. I didn’t see any distortions in my reflection in the mirror. The individual shades are magnetic and can be removed from the palette but do note that there aren’t any labels on the back of the pans to help you remember where they go. There was just enough space between the pans and the wells in the palette to pry them out with a makeup spatula. The overall weight of the palette felt a bit heavier than I expected giving it a pleasantly well-made feel.

Formula Overview

Almost all of the shades in this palette are matte and there is a single shimmer in Menagerie’s tri-foil finish. The mattes adhered a bit more to the skin than a lot of other matte formulas I’ve used. They had a similar type of adherence as formulas like Makeup Geek’s deeper matte shades and the mattes in Natasha Denona’s Bronze Palette. Usually, this can make blending more time consuming, especially when the shades are deeper on my skin tone. However, being mostly lighter shades, I didn’t have any problems getting these to blend out. They were very buildable and didn’t dust away easily.

I want to briefly talk about the texture of the mattes and how they feel to the touch. The formula has a dryness and a drag to it that resembles how chalk feels on the skin. “Dry” is a word sometimes used to describe a formula that  has trouble adhering to the skin. This is not a problem with this formula. However, it does sort of look more dry sitting on the skin compared to other eyeshadows and slightly enhances the texture of the skin. I do love a very smooth, silky eyeshadow but I am guessing that part of the trade-off with the texture of this formula is better color payoff. I am okay with that trade-off, personally.

The tri-foil shade in this palette is one of 4 that the brand currently has available. Tri-foils are shades that shift between three colors, depending on the angle of the light. I didn’t get too much fallout from it and found it to have more of a sparkling finish than a metallic finish, even if I applied it heavily with my finger. The color shift was more on the subtle side compared to other eyeshadows I’ve tried that have a multichrome effect.

Some of these shades are pressed pigments, which is noted on Menagerie’s website, but I did not find that information on the packaging. The pressed pigment shades are Belly Slide, Cuddle, Snack, and Ice Cap. Pressed pigments can cause irritation in some people and stain the skin. They did stain my arm lightly during swatching but they did not stain my eyelid when I actually wore them. I didn’t experience any irritation.

Shade Selection

I like that this palette has a very well rounded selection of pastel shades. It is a great companion palette if you need transition shades for your more saturated colorful eyeshadows. You could also use it all by itself and have plenty of color variation for a look that feels complete. The inclusion of a white and black makes sense to me in this color scheme however the tri-foil feels like a little bit of an afterthought, albeit a pretty afterthought

Wear Time

Look #1 wore on me for 9 hours with only minor creasing and look #2 wore for 8 hours with no creasing. Look #3 started creasing on me after just a few hours so I decided to test a few more times and ended up having the looks crease around 6 hours in, which is pretty typical for me. I’m not sure exactly why this is the case since the ingredients listed for all the matte shades are incredibly similar. For all I know, maybe the variable was just my skin.

Was It Worth Buying?

Yep. Despite some of the nitpicking I did in this review, I’m still very happy to have this palette in my collection. I think its a good value, very versatile, and generally high quality.

Swatches

• Belly Slide was the hardest to blend out smoothly, as you can see in Look #3. It applied nicely with a shader brush but a blending brush caused it to look patchy.
• Snack darkened a bit as I blended it. Mixing it with a bit of Saddleback seemed to bring it back to it’s original lightness.
• Fishy seems slightly more sheer than the rest of the shades. It was buildable though.
• Sun Bathe deepened slightly when applied to the skin.
• Ice Cap is not super easy to distinguish from Belly Slide once on the eye.
• Snowball shifts from purple to blue to pink depending on the angle of the light. Applied with a brush, this had a little bit of sparkle fallout and applied in a way that resulted in more of a sparkling finish. I didn’t notice the shade-shifting of this very much when it was applied lightly with a brush. What I could see was pretty much just the light blue of the sparkle. Applied more heavily with my finger, I still didn’t see a whole lot of shifting from this shade unless I intentionally messed with the lighting in ways I normally would not. The shift is there, it’s just not very strong.
• Saddleback had good color payoff.
• Whisker isn’t the blackest black but it works really well as eyeliner. There was very little fallout as long as I tapped the excess off my brush.

Looks

Look #1

• Ice Cap – Outer lid/crease
• Ice Worm – Outer transition area
• Flipper – Inner lid
• Sun Bathe – Center of crease, outer lower lashline
• Belly Slide – Inner lower lashline
• Saddleback – Brow bone, inner corner
• Whisker – Eyeliner
• Snowball – Center of lid, applied with a brush

Look #2

• Cuddle – Inner lid/crease
• Snack – Outer lid/crease
• Fishy – Lower lashline
• Sun Bathe – Inner corner
• Saddleback – Brow bone
• Whisker – Eyeliner
• Wolfing (one of Menagerie’s singles) – Center of lid, applied with a brush

Look #3

• Whisker – Inner and outer lid/crease
• Saddleback – Center of lid, brow bone, inner corner
• Aquatic – Center of crease and transition area, center of lower lashline
• Belly Slide – Inner and outer transition area, inner and outer lower lashline
• Snowball – All over lid, applied with finger

Look #4

• Saddleback – Inner corner, brow bone
• Fishy – Inner lid, crease, and lower lashline
• Sun Bathe – Center lid, crease and lower lashline
• Cuddle – Outer lid, crease and lower lashline

Menagerie Cosmetics Violet Ink Palette Look #2

In this look I used Saddleback and Cuddle to complete a look I did with other products. Saddleback is on the brow bone and inner corner while Cuddle is used as a transition shade and along the lower lashline.

MOTD – 8.10.20

For this look I used Sun Bathe under the front part of my brow and Fishy as a transition shade. The rest of the look was completed using other products.