Oh! These cuties — oldies but goodies — came home with me last Sunday after a trip to the mall with El Hub.
It was part of Operation Get My Sh*t Together, otherwise known as The Great Office Purge of 2015. My mission: to stop by the MAC counter and make some long-overdue replacements.
The night before the mission, I found an old stash of MAC Paint Pots at home that desperately needed to be tossed and replaced. Two of my ride or dies, Soft Ochre and Groundwork, were effectively deceased, and since I can’t function without them, I had to restock. ASAP.
LOL! I made myself laugh. 🙂
Anyway, Soft Ochre and Groundwork are both cream shadows, but they have a matte finish. I like using them as eyeshadow bases, or sometimes just on their own.
MAC Soft Ochre Paint Pot ($21)
I think matte warm beige Soft Ochre looks really pretty under warm neutrals like Soft Brown, Saddle, Ricepaper and Swiss Chocolate. I use it sometimes to sort of blank out the natural color of my lids (similar to how you might use concealer on your lips to blank them out).
Like, if I have a palette with shades that are slightly lighter than my skin tone — like pale taupes, tans or beiges, which wouldn’t normally show up well on my NC42 skin — I’ll start by buffing a thin layer of Soft Ochre on my lids with a MAC 217, then apply the shadows on top. Soft Ochre acts kind of like a buffer between my skin color and the shadows, and makes the shadows more closely resemble the way they look in their pans. It also intensifies whatever I layer on top.
LOVE this color. It’s a must-have MAC staple of mine.
MAC Groundwork Paint Pot ($21)
Oh, MAC Groundwork… How I heart 
thee.
Groundwork is a neutral mid-toned taupe-ish brown with a matte finish, and I love it for everyday looks. I use it as a base for neutral brown and taupe eyeshadows, and I also think it’s just really pretty on its own.
When I’m in a rush — you know, like every day of my life — I like to do a layer all over my lids, and then apply some quick cat eye liner.
MAC Select Cover-Up in NC42 ($19)
Select Cover-Up, the last thing I grabbed at the counter, is something I used a lot waaaaay back in the day when I first started wearing MAC face products.
Let’s see… When was that? 2001? 2002?
It might’ve been 2000.
Yowza.
Needless to say, it’s been around a while.
Select Cover-Up comes in 13 shades, so that’s a nice, wide range of colors. It’s a medium- to full-coverage liquid concealer you can use under your eyes and anywhere on the face. For a full-coverage concealer, it looks virtually undetectable on the skin. It may be a seasoned veteran, but it still works great, especially around trouble spots, like flaky patches and pimples.
And it doesn’t oxidize as much as MAC Pro Longwear Concealer does on my combo dry/oily skin.
I got a hankering to grab a new tube when I came across an old one while cleaning out my office, and I remembered how much I loved it.
Oh! — I just remembered that you can also mix it with a little of your face moisturizer to create an improv tinted moisturizer.
Must put that on my list of things to do this week… 🙂
I wore it today around my nose, my chin and on my cheeks. It covers everything but still looks natural and effortless, and holla! — it doesn’t settle into fine lines and pores. I think it looks extra lovely set with a light dusting of MAC Mineralize Skinfinish Natural.
How about you? Have you restocked any of your MAC ride-or-die faves lately?
I use MAC’s Layin’ Low paintpot for exactly the same purpose, when I want lighter colors to show up on my lids. Select Cover-Up sounds like something I need to check out pronto! You had me at the tinted moisturizer bit!
Hey Karen! I’ve always found Groundwork too “purple toned” on my eyes so never really got into that. I like Inidanwood a lot though its gorgeous and on skintone like mine its a beautiful everyday gold-bronze-hybrid!
My HG-Icantlivewithoutyou paintpot is Painterly. I use it everyday on its own to even out my eyelids. I don’t expect to restock it any time soon. I seems to last forever.
Hi Karen, I’ve lurked here a lot but haven’t posted. I just want to say that I’ve tried over and over to love the paint pots. I’ve bought 3 over the years and I think I’ve returned them all because they seen do go on super dry over my lids and very hard to blend, and seem to make my eyes appear even more crepey. These 50 year old eyes can not take a lot of tugging. I have oily lid/skin. What gives? Any tips? Thank you!
Great post, Karen, brings back great MAC memories! Soft Ochre was my first paintpot … I purchased it way back in 2008 and the same pot was still going strong until a couple years ago (yeah, probably a little too long to keep it). Your post reminds me how great it is as a lid primer, so i will restock it this weekend along with another classic, Extended Play Gigablack Lash mascara – perfect for the lower lashes!
I recently restocked Bamboom. I’ve been wanting to try a paint pot but I’m just so in love with Bamboom that I can’t pull myself away from it. Well, I guess if it ain’t broke…though I probably will “fix” it at some point with a paint pot in the near future 🙂 But I’ve been using Bamboom since maybe 2006/2007.
I’m actually grateful I never got into MAC… oh the $$$…. 😮
Those paint pots are cute though.
I love Soft Ochre! I reach for it every time as a base to wear under eyeshadow. I still apply primer first and then pat this one. It’s definitely a makeup workhorse. 🙂
When I still worked as a make-up artist Soft Ochre was very often my base of choice!
Using the paint pots as a base definitely sounds like a great idea. If you’re going to do primer before shadow anyway (which I absolutely must), you’re getting a lot of benefit without even adding a step. You’re always full of good ideas! 🙂
I do not conceive my eyes without primer + soft ochre! It is the combination that I have been using non stop for the last 2 or 3 years on my oily lids. Works like a charm! And I finally found the perfect brush for the paint pots: Zoeva concealer buffer!
“Painterly” Paint Pot is my go-to-base. I had a mild heart attack when Little Bean hid it a while back and I didn’t find it when I wanted to do my makeup.
Things got a little hectic and I ended up cleaning the bedroom (!) to find it.
The things you do for love…
I have too many Maybelline Color Tattoos to justify getting a Paint Pot at the moment, haha. I love my Prolongwear concealer, it’s fabulous for long grad days of working in the lab and teaching and studying!
I haven’t restocked on any of my staples either and I’m probably not going to for a while because of all of these bomb ass collections coming out. I’m probably gonna spend an entire check on all the stuff I want lol. Eventually when MAC calms down a bit and I stop splurging on summer collections I plan on getting more Fix+, a few technakohls, lip liners and Prep + Prime lip. I also want to try the corrector duo and that concealer too. I’ve been meaning to try it for the longest