The Urban Decay X Kristen Leanne Collection Daydream Palette

So what do you think that is there on the front of the $26 Urban Decay X Kristen Leanne Daydream Palette?

Is it…

A. Cake frosting (*nods enthusiastically*)
B. Body lotion
C. Shaving cream

Because it looks like all three to me.

But if I can only choose one (Monday Poll flashbacks), I’ll go with cake frosting because — hi! — I’ve been watching The Great British Baking Show for five days straight.

Incidentally, that show is like chicken soup (with baked homemade crackers) for the soul. It’s almost a cure for the common cold, but I digress…

Isn’t this palette cute? When you open it up, there are five warm neutral powder eyeshadows inside.

Daydream is part of the new Urban Decay X Kristen Leanne collection, which is available now. It’s a collab between UD and spunky, cruelty-free makeup-loving YouTuber Kristen Leanne. In a nutshell, she has colorful hair, she loves rainbow looks, she’s got tattoos, and she owns a hair color company called Arctic Fox that’s all about mermaid and unicorn colors…so she’s all about color.

There are two eye palettes in the collection — a colorful one and a neutral one. The latter, of course, is the one I wanted to try first.

All-matte Daydream (which is $26) and Urban Decay Naked Basics fill the same niche, but while Naked Basics has six long-wearing matte powder shadows, all of which are on the cooler side, Daydream has five. But both palettes can be used in essentially the same ways.

With Naked Basics, you get several similar tones that are just distinct enough from each other that you can easily whip out beautiful, bad-@ss gradients with ease.

That’s also the case with Daydream. It has three similar shades near the middle of the palette — Daydream, which is a light warm tan; 12/12, which is a warm coral-y peach; and Subscribe, which is a mid-toned orange-brown something like MAC Saddle.

All three colors are close enough to create cohesive gradients with, but they’re distinct enough that you can still tell that they’re different colors.

Basically, they make it easy to do a gradient on your lids.

You can use the two other shades — beige Lucy and dark purplish chocolate brown Eight — to accent your looks. I use Lucy to highlight and Eight to line my lash lines (it looks really pretty layered with MAC Teddy, Prunella or Costa Riche liners, by the way).

The thing about these shadows, though… The “catch,” so to speak, is that even though they don’t exhibit fallout, and they’re so easy to blend, it’s very tempting to just keep going and going and putting on more and more, because they’re too much fun to blend! — so they tend to look a little heavy on my lids. Consequently, because I can’t control myself, the powders look obvious, like they’re just chilling on top, and my fine lines look bolder than I’d like.

But…I mean, if you have self control, which I’m sure you do, you’ll be fine.

The palette is $26, so it isn’t one of the most expensive palettes out there, but it isn’t drugstore either. It is, however, versatile. You can use it by itself and/or with any of your favorite colorful or glittery palettes and shades.

Also, if you wear orange-brown tones well, you’ll have tons of fun with it. It’s available at Urban Decay, Sephora, Ulta and select Macy’s now.

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

P.S. Happy hump day. 🙂