When I read about the release of the Freedom Pro Artist Refillable Palette, its safe to say that I couldn’t wait to spend hours on the internet uhming and ahing over my colour combinations and building my own personalised palette.

There has always been an audience for custom palettes, in fact, as consumers we love it when we can put our own stamp on it.  Be it a phone case, notebook, key ring or one of those headbands with your name on from the 90’s – we’re all prepared to pay for that “it’s mine” feeling.  The ability to customise an individual make up palette  puts the power back into the hands of the customers.  They get to build themselves a palette based on the colours/formulas/products they use frequently rather than using just three colours from a palette of 12 and I suppose the brand can see which shades go down better than others based on what’s raking in the sales.

MAC are the front runners when it comes to custom palettes and the likes of Inglot, Urban Decay and budget beauty flashback brand Fashionista have all released customisable products with some being more successful than others.

There’s nothing I love more than ogling someones 15 pan MAC custom palettes.  Neutrals, brights, autumnal shades… is there anything more satisfying?  But at £10 a shadow, the thought of dropping £150 on one palette makes me wince a little.  You can purchase empty magnetic palettes such as the Z Palette which you can fill with a mix of pan shadows/face products but these can get a little bit messy, especially if you’re having to depot your shadows and they don’t have magnetic pans.

Trust me when I say, the Freedom Pro Artist Refillable Palette is a much easier AND affordable solution.

The empty magnetic palette itself costs £5 to buy and with a total of 50 products to fill to your liking ranging from £2 for a shadow & £3 for the blush/contour pans.  It fits 18 single shadows or 8 of the face products – or if you want to, you could include a mix of products for your Freedom Pro Artist Refillable Palette like I did.

I picked up 10 shadows in matte and shimmer, two blushes, a contour and a highlight to create the ultimate powder palette for both eyes and face for a total of £37.  YIKES, how did that add up so much, that’s an Urban Decay Naked Palette right there.  True, but these are all colours that I know I’ll wear (cool & warm toned) and I’m given me the option to switch out if need be thanks to the handy packaging they come in.

 It’s also worth bearing in mind that as with all of the Freedom products, the colour pay off and finish is amazing for such a budget brand.  Khila included some excellent swatches of all of the shadow colours on her blog and for reference I picked up 5, 7, 10 (matte), 7 (colour) and 1, 3, 6, 7, 9, 10.  With my tendency to over pack and bulking out my luggage with shadows, blushers, contour (you name it, I take it) the only products I really need to think about are liquid.  If they could add cream concealers and transparent powder refills to the options I’d be pretty much sorted.  There’s even a lovely big mirror in the lid – what more could you want?

What I love most about these refillable palettes is that you can quite easily build a collection of palettes based on product: eye shadow, contour & highlight or blush (they also have Banana Powder and a selection of cream contours available) products mean you can build your kit and save on space.   The combination is entirely up to you and the news that they’ll be adding more selection to the refill selection only opens up the possibilities.

The only niggle I do have and I fear it may be something a little bit anal is that I’d love it if the actual product pans were square and fitted uniformly within the palette as the gaps and underutilised space make me twitch.  That aside, the concept for the Freedom Pro Artist Refillable Palette is head and shoulders above what other budget brands are doing at the moment, the colour selection is good for an initial release and the quality of the product is amazing for such a reasonable price.