New Urban Decay Naked Skin Shapeshifter Travel Contouring and Highlighting Palettes

Hmm… Would I change my tune about contouring if the new Urban Decay Naked Skin Shapeshifter palettes had actual werewolves on the packaging? I dunno, maybe. You know how I get about vampires and werewolves.

Aren’t these pretty? And when you open them up, look at that — even more prettiness! There are four powders on one side, five creams on the others and, in the middle between them, a huge mirror.

Shapeshifter is UD’s new travel contouring and highlighting palette, and it comes in two different varieties — a Light Medium Shift palette for light and medium skin tones, and a Medium Dark Shift palette for medium and deep skin tones.

My skin tone is usually considered medium, so I didn’t know which one of these would work best for me, because the lighter one seemed too light, and the darker one seemed too dark.

Urban Decay recommends cherry picking your favorites in EACH of the palettes if you’re somewhere in the middle like I am, so I’m like, wait — what? I gotta use both palettes? I thought these were supposed to help me streamline things?! Oh, well.

You already know this, because I only say it five million times a day, but I’m not really a fan of contouring. Every once in a while I’ll contour the sides of my nose, like, if I’m doing a full beat glam, which is sooo rarely these days, but if I’m just running to the grocery store to get a gallon of milk, I see no reason to sculpt my face. Plus, I went through a phase when I was contouring my nose a lot and, ultimately, it made me feel weird about myself. Like, I don’t want to feel like I *have* to correct the shape of my face, you know?

But hell, life is short. Might as well try contouring and everything else a little every once in a while. If you don’t like how something turns out, you can wash it off anyway (which is the true power of makeup, I think!).

So, the first time I used these, I didn’t know where to start, because the palettes have so many things (and good-sized pans)! You get three matte contouring powders (a light, medium and dark), two matte contouring creams (a light and medium), two matte cream color correctors (one lighter one, which also doubles as a highlighter, and a darker one), a pearly powder highlighter, and a pearly cream highlighter in each one.

I ended up going with the cream and powder contours from the lighter palette, and then I mixed and layered the cream and powder highlighters from both the lighter and darker palettes together.

The soft powders are easy to apply, and I’ve been using the fan side of the new Urban Decay Shapeshifter F113 brush that also came out with the palettes, but I’m finding that they (especially the contour powders) make the dry areas of my skin look dryer than usual… I feel like I look older than I am.

I do, though like how fine the powder particles are in the pearly highlighter. They don’t look obvious, but you still gotta be careful how much you apply because it can go from glowing to frosty in two seconds.

I think the highlighter is OK, but the creams are on the drier side, so they aren’t *that* creamy (the consistency is similar to a slightly dried out MAC Cream Colour Base), but they layer well.

As for the contour and color correctors, they highlight my fine lines a little, especially under my eyes, and when I set them with powder, my lines look even more obvious.

I gotta say, I like the concept and the presentation with these, and the highlighters as well, but overall, these aren’t really my thing…

If you’re considering them, I recommend checking them out in person, just to be sure and to test how the powders and creams sit on your skin. They’re available now online, at Ulta, Sephora and select Macy’s stores.

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen