Shopping My Stash: duping the Christian Dior Bonne Etoile palette

I fell in love with Christian Dior's Bonne Etoile Palette at first sight. I mean, do you blame me? Look at it:

Le sigh.

However, a few things stood in the way of our ever being together. The first was the fact that I have never been that sold on the quality of CD shadows - I have had a couple of the 5 Coleurs palettes and gave them away because they just weren't pigmented enough. The second was the price - $103?? Sure they have pretty stars stamped into them, but still...wow. So I decided I'd try to find all five colours within the myriad of shadows I already own - in beauty jargon, "shop my stash".

Despite almost caving and buying Bonne Etoile on several occasions, I talked myself out of it each time. I knew I would regret this purchase immediately, and put it away in a bottom drawer where it would lurk as a constant guilty reminder - a kind of Tell-Tale Heart of makeup purchases.

Finally I came up with the brilliant idea of "shopping my stash", to see if I could come up with a close enough dupe to satisfy those faint pangs of longing I still occasionally experience.

 The colours I was looking for were (anticlockwise from the bottom of the pic above):

1. A deep teal metallic

2. A shimmery seafoam green

3. A mushroom pink frost

4. A khaki green

5. (centre of palette) A shimmery chocolate brown

I came up with a few combinations, but the winner is:

1. Deep teal: MAC Birds and Berries

2. Seafoam green: MAC Aquadisiac

3. Mushroom frost: MAC Prance (Mega Metals range)

4. Khaki: TheBalm Lead Zeppelin (from the Balm Jovi palette)

5. Chocolate brown: L'Oreal Infallible Endless Chocolate (it's a bit darker & cooler in real life)

I think I did well! The chocolate, teal and mushroom colours are spot on, and I actually like my MAC seafoam green better because it has subtle gold shimmer. I also think once Lead Zeppelin (the olive green) is layered over the darker colours, I probably won't need to blend it with anything to get a similar result to the "real thing".

Just FYI, I could ALMOST get a "close enough" version of this using only TheBalm's Shady Lady Vol. 2 palette (it was missing a seafoam green):

 For this I used:

1. Deep teal: Bossy Bobbi (more blue but still ok)

2. --- no colour match --- (used MAC Aquadisiac)

3. Mushroom: Tempting Tara (white) blended with Just This Once Jamie (dusty pink)

4. Khaki: Makeout Mary (a bright metallic olive) blended with Caught in the Act Courtney

5. Chocolate brown: Caught in the Act Courtney

Overall I'm very happy I resisted the urge to get the CD palette, and it was worth the time to find similar colours in my stash. I had fun and my whole arm is covered in swatches!

Have you ever shopped your stash to satisfy a beauty craving?