Palettes

10 Things You Should Know About the Urban Decay Naked Smoky Palette

June 2nd, 2015 by Karen 54 Comments

10 Things You Should Know About the Urban Decay Naked Smoky Palette

It’s smokier than the time my brother showed up late to a hip-hop dance show smelling like he spent the last 20 minutes hot-boxing in the car. Translation: it’s incredibly freaking smokey! — and you can do a lot of different things with it, like a smokey bronze eye, smokey gray, smokey brownish black, a smokey black panda eye, a smokey plum, a smokey taupe… Lots of smokey possibilities.
It’s completely clothing optional (It’s called Naked Smoky, after all, which reminds me… I spell it “smokey,” but UD spells it “smoky”), although I do recommend wearing clothes if you’re going out wearing this makeup.
On that note, I may or may not be wearing clothes in these pics. Take a guess! 🙂 And then say “CLOTHES: YES” or “CLOTHES: NO” in the comments. LOL!
The name may cause confusion if you discuss it with your Filipino mother.
MOM: What are you doing?
ME: Oh, checking out this thing called Naked Smoky.
MOM: What do you mean you’re naked!? I didn’t raise you to be naked on the Internet!
ME: No. Mom, no, I’m not naked…
MOM: And you’re smoking now too? Smoking is bad. Don’t smoke!
If you go to DSW wearing Naked Smoky on your lids, you’ll be the most glamorous person there. (True story! I just got back from looking at shoes… Didn’t buy anything, boo.)
It will not help you make friends with the neighborhood kitties…but it can be used to create smokey eyes like the eyes of your favorite smokey-eyed kitty.
Speaking of cats, if you happen to run into Tabs while wearing the grays and browns in this palette and he rubs his face all over your face (as he’s apt to do when he’s looking for love), you will not be able to see the cat hairs he leaves on you since most of these colors match his fur. Again, true story.
If you get it, you’ll have another brush to add to your “Emergency”/”Just in Case”/”Things I Probably Won’t Use Every Day” pile, because the dual-ended brush that comes with it is meh. I’ll give it props for not being scratchy, but I think the brush heads are too dense and stiff to do any real-deal hard-core smokey blending. They just end up pushing stuff all over the place, so I’d grab a fluffy tapered brush and a domed blending brush instead. Fluffy blending brushes all the way, son!
While playing with it, you may become so wrapped up that you forget to eat lunch. Yes…you guessed it. TRUE. STORY.
It hurts like a mo’ fo’ when it falls on your foot. So try to avoid dropping it on your foot. 🙂

The 411 on the Urban Decay Naked Smoky palette

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Dior Summer 2015 Contraste Horizon (556) 5 Couleurs Eyeshadow Palette: A Traditional Summer Eye Palette With a Twist

May 29th, 2015 by Karen 16 Comments

dior contraste horizon — Dior Summer 2015 Limited Edition 5 Couleurs Eyeshadow Palette in 556 Contraste Horizon ($62)

I see torrents of teal, bunches of brown, gobs of gold and a deluge of Dior on the horizon!

The new $62 Dior Summer 2015 Limited Edition 5 Couleurs Eyeshadow Palette in 556 Contraste Horizon, one of two limited edition powder eyeshadow palettes in the recently released Dior Summer 2015 Tie Dye Collection, is available now online and at Dior counters, where it patiently awaits makeup lovers hoping to take it home. 🙂

Dior Contraste Horizon contains a shimmery medium warm brown, a shimmery deep teal, a shimmery warm yellow gold, a shimmery mint and an iridescent pale violet, and yes, it’s $62.

YIKES!

Dior is a high-end brand, after all, and with their prices, it seems they aren’t afraid to show it.

This is what I’d call a traditional summer eye palette…with a twist. If you live for classic summer eye colors, you may freak out over the shimmery gold, brown and teal shades in this palette.

Granted, the whole brown/teal/gold combo idea isn’t exactly revolutionary — I mean, it’s no Ryan Gosling body pillow — but because Dior is freaking Dior, these shadows do everything they’re supposed to do, and they do it well.

Take the teal, brown and gold eyeshadows in this eye look I’m wearing. Seriously, it only took one layer with these to reach maximum color. The highly pigmented powders are downright indulgent, and yay! — no fallout. Plus, an eight-hour wear time.

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MAC Unsung Heroes: Veluxe Pearlfusion Shadow in Brownluxe

May 29th, 2015 by Karen 16 Comments

mac brownluxe palette — MAC Veluxe Pearlfusion Shadow in Brownluxe ($40, available now in the MAC permanent collection)

One of the downsides of deep-cleaning one’s office (yes, Operation Get My Sh*t Together is still ongoing) is finding a huge mound of stale cat treats behind a box of eye palettes and realizing, “Holy freaking crap! I’m the woman who had a pile of stale cat treats in her office and has no idea how long they were there!”

It could have been days, weeks or even years, and frankly I’m surprised that Tabs didn’t find them, because I’m sure he would have “removed” them for me.

T-Money insists on being hand fed when it's snack time — Hey girl, haaaay!

Before you click away thinking, “This woman is crazy,” I do have a point, and it is this: one of the upsides of deep-cleaning one’s office is rediscovering long-loved and lost gems like MAC Brownluxe Veluxe Pearlfusion Shadow.

If you like wearing eyeshadow but feel like your blending skills are lacking, and/or you’re often in a hurry to get out the door, and/or you can’t bear the thought of buffing out three layers of Soft Brown with your 217, YOU NEED THIS IN YOUR LIFE.

“Five complementary shades that glide on and blend beautifully for infinite day-to-night looks: egg shell, frosty orange gold, light yellow chocolate, deep bronze, blackened plum with pearl. Matte to highly pearlized finish.”

— maccosmetics.com

MAC Brownluxe belongs to the Veluxe Pearlfusion Shadow family, a group of powder shadow palettes in the MAC permanent line. It’s one of eight Veluxe Pearlfusion palettes available now for $40 each.

A few of the MAC Veluxe Pearlfusion Shadows…

The MAC Veluxe Pearlfusions have a different formula than the regular MAC powder shadows that come in the round pans. Softer and silkier, they feel almost creamy to the touch.

Each Veluxe Pearlfusion palette (Plumluxe, Copperluxe, Peachluxe, etc.) has its own distinct color theme, and within each palette, you get five Veluxe Pearlfusion Shadows hand-selected to work together in that particular theme.

Browluxe, one of my favorites in the Veluxe Pearlfusion fam, has a soft, shimmery eggshell beige; a satiny, medium golden tan; a glittery, orangey gold; a shimmery chocolate; and a shimmery, deep plummy brown — all colors that I could happily wear daily for the rest of my life based on how I’ve been feeling lately, ’cause I’ve been all about #datneutrallife.

But it’s not just the Brownluxe colors that I like. The Veluxe Pearlfusion formula is also just plain fab. It’s really, really easy to blend. Even if you’re completely new to eyeshadow, I think you could do a look incorporating two or three (or maybe even all five!) of these colors, and have it turn out looking like you know exactly what you’re doing.

I don’t know what kind of cosmetic witchery is at work, but it’s probably related to the creamy formula. Erasing edges between the colors and creating diffused gradients that seamlessly transition from light to dark, which are telltale signs of someone who’s been blending for a while, is easy with these shadows.

Brownluxe is the best if you’re always running late (story of my life). I wore it yesterday to a meeting in the city with some beauty folks, and I only had 20 minutes to do a full face of makeup from start to finish. Brownluxe helped me quickly do a neutral cat eye, which I paired with a bright hot pink lip (MAC Pink Pigeon), and I think it turned out looking like I spent 45 minutes instead of 20.

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Does $20 L’Oréal La Palette Nude 1 Give $54 Urban Decay Naked a Run for Its Money?

May 22nd, 2015 by Karen 14 Comments

loreal la palette nude 1 — Wearing L’Oréal’s $20 La Palette Nude 1

Knowing that L’Oréal owns Urban Decay, I wondered just how closely L’Oréal’s much less expensive $19.99 10-pan La Palette Nude 1 palette of neutral powder shadows would imitate its $54 Naked superstar cousin. Would La Palette’s three mattes be as easy to blend as UD Naked’s matte shadows, and what about pigment, shimmer and fallout? How would they compare? And what would I miss with only 10, instead of 12 shades?

I decided to find out.

The $19.99 L’Oréal La Palette Nude 1 vs. the $54 Urban Decay Naked Eyeshadow Palette

Briefly, what’s the idea behind L’Oréal La Palette Nude 1?
Well, it’s basically the Urban Decay Naked Eyeshadow Palette with 10 neutral powder shadows instead of 12. Seven of them are shimmers — a warm beige, a peach, gold, bronze, chocolate brown, silvery taupe and a cool-toned white — and three are matte browns — a medium taupe-brown, medium tan brown and a dark neutral brown. La Palette Nude 1 is one of two eyeshadow palettes that were added to the L’Oréal permanent line this spring, and it comes with a dual-ended brush with a sponge-tip applicator on one end and a small flat eyeshadow brush on the other. There are also four simple how-to tutorials for four different eye looks on the bottom/back. It’s available now online and at drugstores and Ulta.

What makes it interesting?
First, for me, the price. It’s $34 less than Urban Decay Naked.

The 10 shadows work out to $2 each, versus Naked with its 12 shadows, which work out to $4.50 each. So it’s less than half the price.

Yes, I can see your big saucer eyes from across the keyboard, ’cause that’s tempting stuff. 🙂 Seriously, I’m the last person in the world who needs another neutral palette of brown and beige shades, but when I saw La Palette Nude 1 at Ulta last week, I had to go there. I couldn’t stop myself.

What is this compulsion I have to try all of the brown eyeshadows…? It must come from the same place that makes me want all of teh kittehs. The struggle is real, my friend.

So, is La Palette Nude 1 as good as Urban Decay Naked?
In some ways, yes, I think it is. Like Naked, it has a good variety of matte transition shades (which are also highly pigmented! *thumbs up*), and a perfect balance between warm and cool color-temp shades.

The shadows also feel silky and soft like Urban Decay’s, which I guess isn’t a big surprise, considering that L’Oréal owns Urban Decay. Maybe there’s some crossover between the formulas, or maybe not and it just worked out that way. La Palette’s shadows also last seven to eight hours for me.

But there a couple of ways in which I think UD Naked trumps L’Oréal La Palette Nude 1…

Nude 1’s mattes, while fabulously pigmented, take longer to blend.
This first time I wore the Nude 1 palette, I used my trusty NARS Pro-Prime Smudge Proof Eyeshadow Base. I layered the shadows on top of it, and I felt like I had to work pretty hard to buff out the edges and transition shades into each other. The overall look turned out a little choppy. Then I tried the mattes on top of a creamier base (MAC’s Paint Pot in Soft Ochre), which I hoped would give the shadows a more slippery surface. It seemed to help a bit, but things were still a tad choppy. It required more passes with my fluffy blending brush to get my gradients worked out than I could count, so if you’re going to invest in this palette and plan to give these mattes a daily workout, I highly recommend also having a cream shadow on hand to use as a base, along with a healthy dose of patience.

Nude 1’s shimmers aren’t all that shiny.
Compared to the shimmery shadows in UD Naked, Nude 1’s pearlescent shadows don’t shimmer as brightly, so I get more of a soft shine than a mirror. The shimmer also doesn’t seem anywhere near as pigmented or refined. In fact, I feel like it looks pretty chunky on my lids. It reminds me of the shimmers in the Maybelline Blushed Nudes palette.

I don’t know if it’s something that companies do on purpose to cater to the drugstore makeup crowd, or if it’s just a consequence of a lower price, but it is still possible to reach the point where Nude 1’s shimmery eyeshadows shine bright like diamonds. You may just have to wet your brush first and do a lot of layering.

It’ll take some effort, not gonna lie.
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Eye Shadow x 9: MAC Amber Times Nine Eye Shadow Palette

May 19th, 2015 by Karen 14 Comments

Mac Amber Times Nine Palette — The $40 Eye Shadow x 9: MAC Amber Times Nine palette (center)

Gah!

Why?

Why, makeup gods, WHY?!

I don’t understand… The Eye Shadow x 9: MAC Amber Times Nine eyeshadow palette, one of four $40 MAC Times Nine palettes available now in the permanent collection and released with the Eyes on MAC collection, is soooooo my style. On paper, it has everything I usually want in a neutral eyeshadow palette. It has some matte brown transition shades; it has a sprinkling of sparkle and shimmer, thanks to the inclusion of a few shadows with Frost and Lustre finishes; and it has not one, but two of my favorite MAC eyeshadows of all time in Cork and Ricepaper.

Plus…IT HAS A SHADE CALLED KITTIES!

All this for $40, which I considered a steal based on all of the looks I saw myself doing with it.

Then I delved in…

Wearing the Mac Amber Times Nine Palette — Here I’m wearing Ricepaper, Don’t Tell, Cork, Aromatic and Pepper Please on my lids

When the four $40 MAC Eye Shadow x 9: Times Nine palettes launched a while back, it was with the more expensive $85 MAC Cool Neutral and Warm Neutral 15-pan palettes.

In addition to Amber Times Nine, there’s also a Purple Times Nine palette, Navy Times Nine and a Burgundy Times Nine, but yesterday I played with Amber.

The pans in these Times Nine palettes are smaller than regular full-size MAC eyeshadow pans (they’re about the size of my thumb, LOL!) and hold 0.02 ounces of powder, compared to 0.05 ounces in a standard $10 Pro Palette refill pan.

Eye Shadow x 9: MAC Amber Times Nine gave me trouble…

This was my first time using one of MAC’s Times Nines, and while I was hoping to achieve neutral shadow nirvana with Amber, I didn’t. Seriously, what a letdown… I had so much trouble working with this palette.

The hard-packed shadows feel like concrete in their pans, and I have a tough time picking them up with either a brush or my fingers. Even the darker shades, which I expected to be more pigmented, apply disappointingly sheer. I have to layer and layer and layer some more to see them on my lids.

And the colors I know so well and love, like Cork and Ricepaper, are unlike the Cork and Ricepaper I’ve grown to love. I swear they’re sheerer here, and harder, and require more passes with my 217 to blend.

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With The Blushed Nudes Palette by Maybelline, Imitation Naked 3 Is the Sincerest Form of Flattery

May 18th, 2015 by Karen 15 Comments

maybelline blushed nudes — Maybelline’s $10 The Blushed Nudes Palette

On the drive to the NKOTB/TLC/Nelly concert in San Jose last week, my friend and fellow makeup lover Marisol asked if I would mind us making a pit stop at a Walmart down there to see if they had Maybelline’s new $10 The Blushed Nudes Palette.

She said that she’d looked all over for it up in the North Bay where we live to no avail, and that the closest place she could track it down was the Walmart right next to the concert venue.

A $10 dupe for Urban Decay Naked 3?

“Do you mind if we swing by?” she asked.

Uh…do I mind stopping by a store with a huge beauty section to look at makeup?

I said I didn’t.

Marisol said that she heard the palette was a $10 drugstore dupe for the Urban Decay Naked 3 palette.

“Of all the people I know,” she told me, “I thought you would understand.”

I did. 🙂

With a $10 dupe for Naked 3 on the line, shirtless Jordan Knight would just have to wait, LOL!

When we got to the Walmart, we made a beeline for the beauty department, where we found two Blushed Nude palettes in stock. I took it as a sign from the makeup gods that I needed to bring one of them home, and Marisol did too. She snagged the other one.

Forget about buying an overpriced New Kids t-shirt at the concert. This would be my souvenir instead. 🙂

The Blushed Nudes Palette by Maybelline: 12 eyeshadows in rose gold shades

With the rose gold packaging and 12 eyeshadows in rose gold shades, The Blushed Nudes looks a lot like UD’s $54 Naked 3 palette… Right? The resemblance is uncanny! For this one, it’s pretty easy to see where Maybelline got their inspiration.

Eyeshadow Trickery 101

But while very similar, there are some pretty big differences between the two.

Like first, the price. One is $10 and the other is $54.

That’s huge.

Second and third, the levels of pigment and shimmer. The Urban Decay Naked 3 shadows contain much more pigment and pearl. With them I think you definitely get more intense color and shine on your lids, but you can get there with the Maybelline Blushed Nudes eyeshadows. You just need to resort to a little makeup trickery.

Like you could…

Basically, use more. You can build up the Blushed Nudes shadows in layers, but you’re probably looking at using two or three times as many as you’d need with the Naked3s. Maybe five or six total layers with the lighter shades.
Intensify the colors by applying them with a wet brush.
Use your fingers instead of a brush, so you can really apply some pressure directly on your lids.

Of course, none of this is necessary if you actually want a softer, hazier eye look. Most of The Blushed Nudes shades are fairly sheer, so if that’s your agenda, your regular brushes would do you just fine.

Where are my mattes!?

And then there’s the whole matte situation… You get three matte shades — matte beige Strange, light matte pinkish taupe Limit and matte purplish taupe Nooner — in Urban Decay Naked 3, which are very handy as transition shades.

The Maybelline Blushed Nudes palette, on the other hand, has only one matte, a sheer pinkish taupe that looks like UD’s limit (only sheerer). I tried using it as a crease color…but I wasn’t too crazy about it. I had to use hella layers (I’m talking five or six) to have it really register on my medium skin tone, and even then I still couldn’t see it very well.

It may not be an issue for paler princesses, or if mattes just aren’t your thing, but if you’re around my shade (I’m a MAC NC42) or darker, or if you’re just all about that matte crease life, it’s something to consider.

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The Pacifica Power of Love Palette Is a Curious Thing That Could Make One Woman Weep and Another Woman Sing

May 8th, 2015 by Karen 14 Comments

pacifica power love palette — The Pacifica Power of Love Eyeshadow Palette ($19.99)

Unless, as a child, your ears were fed a steady diet of cheesy ’80s pop music, you probably won’t think of Huey Lewis and the News when you open the new Pacifica Power of Love Eyeshadow Palette ($19.99).

But since I was THAT KID, that song creeps into my mind when I think about this palette.

“Try to think of other things, Karen,” I tell myself, “like how these mineral eyeshadows are cruelty-free, or how they’re infused with coconut water.”

But nooooo, all I can do is think about Back the Future…

So, Pacifica. Remember when they were just about bath products? Over the past few years they’ve moved further into the makeup space with color products for eyes, faces, lips and cheeks. Their focus is natural makeup — products made with vegan ingredients that are also cruelty free.

New for summer, the Power of Love Eyeshadow Palette is available exclusively at Target stores for $19.99. Inside the cardboard packaging, which is recyclable and printed with soy ink, in case you were wondering, are 10 powder eyeshadows, eight of them shimmers of varying levels of shine, and a couple of mattes. The shades are mostly neutrals, but there are a handful of accent colors as well. Most of the shadows are moderately pigmented, but a few are quite sheer.

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The Make Up For Ever Artist Palette Vol. 2 Colors You Crave: Nine Pigmented Pans Make This a Good Special Event Palette

May 7th, 2015 by Karen 17 Comments

Current cravings:

A Pink Power Smoothie, even though I already had one today for breakfast.
Is there an unwritten rule I don’t know about against drinking two of the same kind of smoothies in one day?! #deepthoughts.
A hug from Tabs, because I haven’t seen him since I fed him gravy this morning.
He usually “supervises” me in my office during the mornings because he likes the sun in here, but I think he’s afraid of the new pink shelves, so he’s hiding.
The poppin’ pigments in Make Up For Ever’s new $42 Artist Palette Vol. 2 Colors You Crave

May brings us two new Artist Palettes from MUFE — Vol. 1, Nudes You Need, which I played with yesterday, and this brighter one here, Vol. 2, called Colors You Crave.

Now, if my stomach rumbles through these next few paragraphs in this post, I apologize. You see, I am currently craving lunch, in addition to these colors. 🙂

The palette houses nine pans, which are arranged into color-coordinating columns of three (or rows, if you turn it sideways), of Make Up For Ever eyeshadow in their incredibly soft, crazy creamy gel-[dash]-powder formula (they reformulated their eyeshadows last year).

So, how soft are they? Well, this morning El Hub stopped by my desk to loiter as he sometimes does and asked what I was doing. Before I could answer, he reached out and touched the palette.

Of course, he gouged a big divot into one of the pans just by brushing his Tarzan hand against it, so you have to be a little careful with these… All of that is just to say that they’re very soft. They almost feel like a cream, but they’re not. They aren’t wet at all. They’re still powders, but they’re squishy powders.
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