Nina's MAC dupes (Guest Post)

First of all, a big hello to all you beautiful readers of Courtney's blog! I'm Nina from The Beauty Spot and I am a guest blogger for the day and feel very privileged to be able to share some of by beauty ramblings with you all! If you'd like to see more of my blog the link is above or the Bloglovin link is at the bottom of this post!

I was searching through my makeup collection last week and rediscovered this little beauty! I've had it for almost a year but unfortunately I haven't used it to its full potential. It was only when I recently purchased my Mac Pro Quad that I thought I had seen some of the shades somewhere before! Enter MUA! This palette has been reviewed so many times and I don't need to say how amazing the MUA range is, especially for the price (true meaning of value for money!). So I thought I would compare some of the shades to some of my Mac ones and see how 'dupe able' my Mac ones are! My Mac Quad contains: Satin Taupe, Naked Lunch, Smut and Black Tied. I'm not sure if I'll keep this collection together, but I seemed to be drawn to these shades. One of my all time favourite base shades is Naked Lunch, and when I looked at the MUA palette more closely I thought two of the shades could pass for it.

'3' is obviously a little more frosted than Naked Lunch, but number 6 is an almost perfect match! Hurrah! I still love 3 as a shade as it would be a good inner corner highlight and also to blend out some of the more intense shades.

 This comparison isn't spot on, but it's a really good option! Satin Taupe seems to be one of MAC's most popular shades and if there's something similar in this palette that's a pretty good choice made by MUA! You can see that Satin Taupe has a slightly more brown shade to it, but again a pretty good dupe in this palette! '5' is perfect for that daytime crease shading, but could also be used for a nighttime look by blending with a darker shade at the edges of the crease for a really intense look.

With these two shades I actually prefer the MUA one. It has just a slight shot of blue through it which I think would great to build up for a smokey eye, or also used wet for a liquid liner. It's still on the top row, which is definitely the 'dawn' collection of shades, but I am always a fan of something that can be used for a number of different looks!

Finally we have Black Tied vs 12 (does anyone else think that MUA should've given these some names?). These both needed a couple of applications to get the depth of colour seen here, but again MUA have hit us with a pretty good dupe! Black Tied definitely has more sparkle to it, but for a palette that takes any look from day to night, this is a great addition. It could sit on top of 10 or 11 to really finish off a smokey eye. All in all I think this palette is fantastic value for money! I purchased it from the MUA website in January (post Christmas blues anyone?!) alongside a few other items (10!) and quite a few of them have become staples in my collection. I chose this palette to take away on a winter holiday and thought the shot of purple and blue on the bottom row would be a great addition to my holiday makeup bag especially as I wanted to travel light in the makeup department! I really don't think you can go wrong with MUA palettes, there some great choices and very comparable quality to other brands, whether that's high end or drugstore. I will definitely be purchasing more products from the MUA range, I just wish that my local Superdrug was better for their range of MUA and keeping products clean and tidy.

  What MUA products have you tried? Any favourites I should try?

 Nina xx