Preview: MAC Venomous Villains - My Dark Magic Mineralize Eye Shadow Duo

UPDATE: I have added swatches and more thoughts on My Dark Magic at the bottom of the post!

According to Christine from Temptalia, Venomous Villains will launch online in under an hour from now so I wanted to provide some IRL pics of My Dark Magic.  I have not worn or swatched it yet and hope to do so in the next couple of days before the official launch, but I thought the pics might help. As usual, you can click on any of them to make them larger.

More photos after the jump!

With flash:

Daylight, without flash:

Also see my post on the Oh So Fair Beauty Powder here, which I have updated with my thoughts on how it wore during my trip to Seattle.

UPDATE:  I have swatches and my thoughts so far!

Here is the plum side of the duo (the left side in the pictures above), taken with flash only because the lighting outside is awful today.  Swatched dry (top) and wet (bottom).

Here is the violet side of the duo (the right side in the pics above), swatched both wet (top) and dry (bottom):

My Dark Magic is an almost black base with plum shimmer on one side and violet shimmer on the other.  It's almost like they are warmer (plum) and cooler (violet) versions of the same color.

You can probably tell from the (poor) swatches that this shadow works MUCH better wet than dry.  Used wet it is gorgeous; the pictures don't convey the shimmer as it appears in life.  The color is true, but it's always difficult to capture movement in these situations.  Swatched wet, the colors glide on the skin and are very pigmented.  Swatching them dry was slightly difficult; they didn't want to show up as nicely.  They appeared to be more sheer and less pigmented.  Whether I would use them dry or wet would vary depending on the situation, but I can say that I am likely to use them wet more often than I will use them dry.

I haven't worn these in a look yet, but when I ran my finger over the swatches after they had set, the wet ones barely moved at all; it looked like a little bit of feathering on the edges of the swatch where my finger passed.  The dry ones list a little bit of shimmer that migrated over my arm where my finger passed.  Overall both wet and dry held up well; I expected the dry ones to fly all over the place when I ran my finger over top.

I caved and ordered a couple of things when the collection went live, so I will post about those after they arrive later in the week.

Did you haul anything from the Venomous Villains collection?  What are your faves?