MAC Snow Ball: Extra Dimension Eyeshadow in Frostwinked, Delicate Drift, Stylishly Merry, It's Snowing, and Starry, Starry Nights

Today, MAC launched the first part of their annual holiday collection called Snow Ball: "Find your rhythm and light up the night in cool frost and high-chrome shine. We've got all the bling you'll ever need to make everyone go star-struck. Be the sleighbelle of the ball, dancing until morning, feeling alive, reveling in the new generation. See you on the dance floor." Each year, MAC releases a colour collection of individual items for a single colour story along with a slew of value sets. 

The Snow Ball colour collection sees the launch of 16 new and limited edition products, including five shades of Extra Dimension Eyeshadow, which is described as "a modern hybrid formula that combines the smoothness of a cream, the blendability of a liquid and the finish of a powder with long-wearing colour and prismatic reflections. Its creamy, silky, near-fluid formula creates luminous, well-defined eyes in finishes from sheer crystallized light to stunning metallic." They are housed in "cool crushed champagne metallic" packaging with clear plastic boxes featuring a gold geometric snowflake design. The eyeshadow itself is embossed with a snowflake design. Each Extra Dimension Eyeshadow contains a total of 1.3 grams of product, and retails for $26. These are not redeemable as a free product in the Back to MAC recycling program.
Clockwise from left: Frostwinked, Delicate Drift, Stylishly Merry, It's Snowing, and Starry, Starry Nights
In daylight: Frostwinked, Delicate Drift, Stylishly Merry, It's Snowing, and Starry, Starry Nights
In direct light: Frostwinked, Delicate Drift, Stylishly Merry, It's Snowing, and Starry, Starry Nights

Frostwinked is a pale cool white with a silvery mint pearl in a shimmering metallic finish. This is a new and limited edition shade. It has a lightweight, silky texture, and goes on smoothly and evenly. It has high pigmentation and opaque colour pay-off. It can be layered and blended out easily. It is lighter and more silver than Vex, more silver and more metallic than White Frost, and lighter and cooler than She Sparkles.

Delicate Drift is a light-medium warm peachy pink with a golden peach duochrome pearl in a shimmering metallic finish. This is a new and limited edition shade. It has a lightweight, silky texture, and goes on smoothly and evenly. It has high pigmentation and opaque colour pay-off. It can be layered and blended out easily. It is darker and more peach than Last Dance, brighter and more pink than Sweet Heat, and lighter and more peach than Slow/Fast/Slow.

Stylishly Merry is a medium warm reddish pink with a greenish gold duochrome pearl in a shimmering metallic finish. (Note: This is a completely different shade than the original Stylishly Merry Extra Dimension Eyeshadow in the permanent range.) This is a new and limited edition shade. It has a lightweight, silky texture, and goes on smoothly and evenly. It has high pigmentation and opaque colour pay-off. It can be layered and blended out easily. It is lighter and more duochrome than Let's Roll, more golden and more duochrome than Last Dance, and more pink and more duochrome than I Like 2 Watch. 

It's Snowing is a medium warm muted rose pink with a silvery mauve pearl in a shimmering metallic finish. This is a new and limited edition shade. It has a lightweight, silky texture, and goes on smoothly and evenly. It has high pigmentation and opaque colour pay-off. It can be layered and blended out easily. It is lighter and more pink than Smoky Mauve, warmer and more metallic than Swish, and cooler and more pink than Sweet Heat. 

Starry, Starry Nights is a deep-dark cool muted black with a silver pearl in a shimmering metallic finish. This is a new and limited edition shade. It has a lightweight, silky texture, and goes on smoothly and evenly. It has high pigmentation and opaque colour pay-off. It can be layered and blended out easily. It is softer and more metallic than Black Tied, and more sparkly and more metallic than Carbon.

Snow Ball might just be my favourite MAC holiday collection to date. They killed it with the packaging, colours, wearability, and textures this year, and these Extra Dimension Eyeshadows are my personal must-haves from this collection. If you're not familiar with Extra Dimension Eyeshadows, they're ultra-smooth, ultra-silky, very pigmented, and incredibly metallic. In my opinion, it's one of MAC's most stand-out formulas, and it's my favourite MAC eyeshadow formulation to date. These shades actually remind me of Dazzleshadows with their multi-dimensional sparkles, but have the smooth texture and metallic finish that we expect from Extra Dimension Eyeshadows. In general, the five shades released in Snow Ball are widely-flattering across all skintones from light to dark. Frostwinked makes for a bright, festive accent colour; Delicate Drift, Stylishly Merry, and It's Snowing are gorgeous as one-sweep shades on their own or as lid shades grounded with matte shadows in the crease for a more dimensional look; and Starry, Starry Nights is perfect for a softly shimmering smoky eye this holiday season. The most notable colour here is Stylishly Merry, which looks like melted duochrome foil. It is stunning and I haven't seen anything like it before. (Again, please note that the Stylishly Merry from Snow Ball is a completely different shade from the original Stylishly Merry in the permanent range, which is a fuchsia purple.) For fans of sparkly and metallic shadows, these are definite must-haves — whether you're in a holiday party mood or not.