Review: Alchimia Apothecary Makeup Products

I'll try to be as neutral as possible with this review despite my misgivings about this company. I'm not going to tell anyone to avoid it, but I know publicly stating that a company is in your personal blacklist is controversial and people would want my reasons, so I'll just leave screenshots of my reasons here and here, and people can make up their minds as they want. 

I personally would prefer not reviewing these since I didn't like the products, but I got a blogger pack and it makes me feel obligated to do a blog post on what I got. I took some time reviewing since it came with skin care too, and I wanted to review everything at once. But looks like it's just make up now. For the skin care, I think it's going to take a long time since I'm still trying to decide if I had an allergic reaction, something was up with the products, or my skin just decided to break out & clear up at the right (or wrong) time coincidentally. So screw skin care, here are swatches for  the eyeshadows:

EDIT: Just to clarify, I paid for the blogger bundle. It was heavily discounted at $5 for a bunch of samples but it's not free. 

Against UDPP:

Left: Under artificial light
Right: Under natural light

Against bare skin:

Left: Under artificial light
Right: Under natural light

I didn't bother glitter glueing the mattes but here's Penny Loafer under natural light:

I can honestly say I like Penny Loafer a lot. The colour's gorgeous.

Formula-wise, these shadows seem..well, normal. I was kinda curious what "plant derived ingredients, skin specific butters and oils, and bio-ferments" would do, but I honestly can't tell the difference with other indie eyeshadows I've tried. The only difference is that they stain. Like really badly. Even on bare skin.

I'm used to pigmented indie shadows staining when you apply them with a wet brush or over primer, but staining my bare skin is rare. These are the stains left after my bare skin application.

Even Shu Umera can't do anything

The left is after washing and scrubbing with soap, the right is after I used my Shu Umera oil cleanser, which usually removes everything.

I usually do a look with the eyeshadows I'm swatching, but I noped and decided not to do a look with these. My eyes are very sensitive and anything that can stain it that badly freaks me out.

Here's a swatch of Coil on my lips:

I'm not a fan of the formula. It feels like rubbing eyeshadow on my lips and feels kinda dry.

Oh and a minor annoying detail, Alchimia's sample sizes are ridiculously packaged:

Someone on reddit mentioned they're "postage stamp sized"..it's true.

It feels a bit petty to whine about packaging, but these super tiny ziplock bags were so hard to work with. I'm ok with a tiny amount of product, since I'm getting these at a discount, but I really prefer the reasonably sized ziplock bags other companies use for their samples. First, these bags were hard to open since I have fat fingers. Next, it's hard for you to get the product out neatly. So you're really stuck depotting them. I normally keep all my samples in their original bags so I can travel with them, and have no problems with using eyeshadows out of little sample bags, but these I can't.