Viva Adonis - Irish Beauty Blog: Urban Decay Naked Basics

Thursday, 3 January 2013

Urban Decay Naked Basics

Happy new year blog people! I hope you all had a lovely Christmas - mine was very quiet, but that's exactly how I like it, and I feel really lucky! So, I want to give my two cents on one of my most recent purchases. It's (finally) here, it's the new 'it' palette, and, at this stage, we've all heard about it. Just in case you've been hibernating, Naked Basics is the latest offering from Urban Decay. It's a compact, well-put-together palette, made up of six shades - one is a pearly-shimmer finish, and the rest are all matte. The hard, slightly rubberised packaging makes this , in my opinion, the most durable out of all the Naked palettes and is perfect for travelling.

Ad you might be able to tell from the above picture, I was seriously excited to go out and buy this! I got it just before Christmas, so I've had time to play with it over the last little while and tell you why I think it's so great.

First off, it's definitely good value for money. At €26, you're paying €4.33 per shadow. Every eyeshadow in the palette is excellent quality - smooth, pigmented, buttery, blendable and with minimal fallout. These mattes are just as good as, if not slightly better than my Inglot ones - that's top quality!

The shades themselves may appear a tad dull in the pan, but they work really, really well at creating a natural, defined eye look. If you're not familiar with matte shadows then I think that this palette is the perfect place to start. To me, mattes are best for creating a really natural looking 'pin-up' eye but you could do this and much more with the shades in the Naked Basics palette.

The picture below is from the first time I used the palette, so I stuck with a fairly 'safe' look that I'm comfortable with. I used W.O.S. all over the lid and mixed Naked 2 and Faint and used it in the crease and under my lower lash line, with Venus as an inner corner highlight. I could have definitely gone a lot smokier with this eye look (and have since) by using more of Faint and a little of Crave. I've also used Faint in my brows and it works perfectly for me, so that's another plus point to this palette, especially for travelling and so on!

Apologies for the utter state of my brows in this picture. I was really sick over Christmas and took the opportunity to grow them out a bit - gross, but necessary.

So, to sum up, I think that this palette is absolutely brilliant, good value for money, and is definitely my favourite Naked palette! I hope that this review helps if you're thinking of purchasing, and if you already have it, do let me know what you think!