Maybelline The Nudes Palette Review and Swatches

Maybelline The Nudes palette ($9.99) hit drugstores stores last month and has 12 nude-toned shadows. The first thing I thought of when I saw it was "finally! A drugstore brand is coming out with a dupe for the Urban Decay Naked palette ($54)".  So I was excited to get it home and compare it to my Naked 2 and 3 palettes which I absolutely love and use every day.  

It comes in a sleek black case and includes one of those sponge-tipped applicators that I never use becaise they're pretty terrible. The UD Naked palettes come with a double-ended brush, but in that case, you're getting what you pay for.

I wasn't too crazy about the range of shades in this palette- many of them are close to one another. There is a variety of matte, shimmer, and satin shades but not enough variance in the colors, especially on the darker end.  I would have liked to see some richer browns and charcoals in here.

Ok, so before I post the swatches, I just want to say that I had to swatch each color at least 3 times to get the effect you're going to see below.  I've seen other reviews with these dramatically pigmented swatches so I thought these shadows would be soft and pigmented...wrong!  I think it's misleading to make it look like these are intense in color or highly pigmented so I'm not going to do that.  They go on streaky and it takes a lot of buildup to get them to show up nicely, which let's face it, you're not going to want to do on your eyes. It's easy to keep building up the color when swatching your arm, but when you're doing your eye makeup, it's a pain to use shadows where you need to really dig the brush into the pan to get any sort of pigment and then you get all kinds of fallout crumbling down your face.  I built these up a bit so they would show up on camera but I wanted to be honest about the fact that they were all swatched at least 3 times.
With that said, not all of the shadows were like this.  A few of them were soft and had decent pigment, but overall, most were streaky and not easy to work with. The swatches below go in order of the palette from left to right.

The first 4 on the top row were the worst when it came to pigment.  The first shimmery beige was almost impossible to pick up with a brush or my finger.  I had to dig at it to get it to come up.  

The next four (last two on the top row and first two on the bottom row) had the most pigment of the bunch (except for the one all the way to the left).  I liked these shades the best also- they had a nice satiny finish.

The last four on the bottom row were ok- I like the one second from the left, it was a nice bronzy shade. The black at the very end is horrible- it comes out a streaky gray.

Overall, I just can't recommend this palette to you guys.  I'd hate to see you spend your hard-earned money on this one, and I'm disappointed that there are so many reviews out there showing these shadows as highly pigmented.  I've worked very hard to be a source you can trust so I feel very strongly about being totally honest if a product doesn't live up to standards.  Even if it's inexpensive, I still feel that you should be getting good quality and if not, I'll say so!
Sooo...if you can swing the Urban Decay Naked palette, I say go for it!  Like I said, I use mine constantly and it's a very high quality product.  But if you're not in the market for that and really want a nude palette at a good price, I thought of another option for you guys that's much better than the Maybelline Nudes palette...

ELF Eyeshadow Palette 32-Piece Neutral $6- I have this palette and not only is the pigmentation great (hard to believe since it's so cheap!), but you get 32 shades for $6. It has a huge range of shades too. This is a limited edition, so if you're thinking about buying it, don't wait!  They still have them at drugstore.com (click the picture below) but that's the only place I've seen them other than Ebay.

e.l.f. Eyeshadow Palette (32 Piece) Natural