Lemmings always come out of the blue (see what I did there?!). You had no idea that you absolutely needed a blue/brown palette of high-end eye shadows yesterday, and bam! Today you do. On Friday Jan 18th Melt’s Blueprint stack will release, and I’ll tell you how to curb your lemmings, find possible dupes – or just buy the damn thing!
How to control spending
My week so far hasn’t been particularly smooth, and in former times, I would just go for the palette or whatever shiny thing that caught my eye, because YOLO and treat yourself, etc. But, first: can we please get out of that narrative that you have to amass stuff when you’re experiencing life difficulties, and second, my beauty stash is far from being small. (Third, furnishing a new apartment is hella expensive and I’m poor now.)
My mode to combat my over-shopping tendencies is – to make lists. Whenever I see something that strikes my fancy, on the list it goes. The list is getting re-evaluated after two weeks for smaller products, and after one month for bigger splurges. This helps a lot with curbing those impulsive shopping sprees, and that unholy threesome (my wallet, my stash and me) is much more wholesome because of it.
A homemade Blueprint stack!
That being said, limited edition items put that method under a lot of stress. It’s just not possible to overthink a possible purchase (aren’t companies clever like that?), but in the week from teasing the stack until today, I went from total and absolute obsession to rooting through my stash, determined to find dupes. (Want to shop your stash more? Here’s my no. 1 tip!)
Because, hmmmmmm, do I actually wear that much blue (answer: nope), do I actually have similar shades (unsurprisingly, yes) and can I get the missing ones easily (yes, because I did B2M at my local MAC and came home with two shiny new eye shadows I paid nothing for).
In conclusion, I looked at my habits, and asked myself: 1. Will I use it? 2. Do I have/can I get dupes? 3. Don’t forget programs like Back 2 MAC! And this is how my homemade Blueprint palette was born. (For Melt’s swatches, have a look here and there’s a video here!)
Possible dupes for the brown shades
Beaming, the whitish gold shimmer in Blueprint, I found in Estée Lauder’s Pure Color Bronze Sands Palette from 2011. This one is wholly made from eyeshadows in their ‘Gelee’ formula (you know the deal – Nars’ Dual-Intensity shadows or MAC’s Extra Dimension sport the same formula). It also yielded quite some rather close dupes, so yay for old palettes.
Hot Wire, the warm, coppery orange-gold shimmer from Blueprint, also comes from the same Palette, and I’m pretty happy with them – from the pics I’ve seen, they are pretty close to the real deal.
The tricky ones…
Hammered, the blackened burgundy matte, comes in the form of Cyprus Umber from ABH Modern Renaissance. This is a tricky one – because it looks nearly black in Melt’s pics, but from the swatch video I’ve seen (linked above), it’s much lighter. I settled for a happy medium with Cyprus Umber – it’s a warm dark brown matte.
Astonishingly, taupe-ish copper Nailed (shimmer) gave me the most grief. In my swatch pics I went for MAC’s pigment in Museum Bronze, but, again, the swatch video seemed lighter. My second choice would be Burberry’s Pale Barley, a light taupe-ish gold.
Possible dupes for the blues
For the blues, pale whitish blue shimmer Skylight from Blueprint was rather easy. I went with MAC’s Suave Intentions (from their Love Lace collection), which might be slightly grey-tinged. (A common theme you’ll see below.)
Deadbolt is a medium sparkly aqua blue and should be dimes a dozen – for me, again, it came from Lauder’s Bronze Sands palette. It is, again, a bit more grey, and therefore, a bit more muted.
Dim Out is a matte dark blackened teal, and if Melt’s swatches are true to life, I want to shake their formulator’s hand. Those mattes are notoriously difficult to realise without an annoying amount of chalkiness, which my dupes suffers from slightly. MAC’s Plumage is neither as rich nor as dark, and also leans more into a blue-green.
King Stud is a gloriously rich, royal blue shimmer, but MAC’s In the Shadows might not be as flashy, but still very, very good.
The end result: Melt Blueprint stack dupes
All in all, I saved about 60$, had a lot of fun with my stash (rediscoveries ftw!) and think that I will start to use those blues more often. Not bad for one afternoon, right?
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