Urban Decay Naked set

You have probably already heard that L'Oreal is looking to purchase Urban Decay. Hopefully they have not already and it doesn't go through because in my world that means no more Urban Decay for me. I know the argument is that you should still purchase from animal friendly brands who are owned by animal cruelty companies to show them that Look! We will buy the stuff you don't test on animals! However...in my opinion, you are still putting money in their pockets and I just can't do that. Not purchasing anything from them knowingly sends a stronger message. Is it tougher? Hell yes. I happen to be fortunate that I can get my bath soap and sundries from someone who makes it in her kitchen. No animals harmed. Shampoo too.
I don't know. Follow your conscience.

I ran into these quite by accident while trolling Sephora. I also got a couple Ciates to get up to free shipping, one of which I have on and will review for you later. (Teal. Pretty. Want to do a couple comparison shots to another teal or two.)

The now legendary Naked eyeshadow pallet is a lovely collection of neutrals. If you haven't picked one up yet, I'm shocked. They are perfect work friendly colors all in a nice little set that is varied enough to keep your look from getting boring while not cluttering up your makeup space and storage. Urban Decay, knowing they're on a big wave with is, have released another set of eye shadows and now these polishes.

These are minis, come in a cute little case, more about that later, and are similar to the eye shadows, only there are fewer of them. I am not writing this from my usual digital perch and I did not edit the photos from there, either. I think they look a little washed out, I'm hoping that is just a difference in video cards and settings and that they look better than I think. Please humor me if they really do look washed out. These are all two coats.

This is picture heavy. On a set this large I would break it up but I'd lose you all. Bear with me.

This is in the annoying plastic box. I hate that plastic stuff. Show of hands: who has cut themselves on one of those. **raises hand**

Out of the box. Nice glare, I apologize. There is a nice variety of neutrals here, not all beige. Shimmer, micro-glitter, creams, metallics...they are all here.

The classically fun names. Particularly loving "Creep". Does that mean "To Creep, as in creep along" or does it mean "Creep" as in "That guy who stalks you at work"? I think it's up to you.

Naked is the most bland of the group. It's just a creamy beige. It's not bad on me, surprisingly. Usually this type of color gives me lobster paws.

 Cute little bottles. 

Sidecar is a very sheer nude shimmer. The shimmer is dense, it's not eaten alive by the base color, which has a pearlescent quality and it going to take a ton of coats to make opaque. When they are this sheer I always wonder if they intended it to ever be opaque. I dunno.

This is truer to the actual color. There is a real dusty rose pink tint to this which makes it very wearable. 

Bet you are wondering what this looks like over Naked! I immediately wondered that, too.

This is a really great bottle shot.

This was a better nail shot. Naked is only on the first two nails in these swatches so you could see the difference. 

 Toasted is the peach side of the spectrum. It has that lovely shimmer in it, it's very neutral but not boring. Definitely work appropriate. 

This is really lovely, I liked this a lot. And it appears to like me, too!

Coppery bronze goodness. This might actually be my favorite of the group. It is so highly pigmented it wanted to clump up. Just keep the brush loaded and be careful. The gold shimmer in this makes it so sexy. Love.

It looks lit from within. I really love this one. Lit from within...ironic as it's named Smog!

It was Smaug that made me love dragons. I know...ubergeek.

This is my other favorite. Hustle is a dusty plum and it's so pretty. It's also one of those deeply pigmented colors that manages to look good on anyone. It has a real metallic glint to it from the hint of silver...this is so so pretty. 

A little closer look. It wanted to clump up as well, but just keep smoothing. It'll be OK. This is unique, I don't think there is anything else quite like it in my collection, which is impressive. Not bragging, actually kind of embarrassed, but all the same. There is something smoky and intriguing. If this kind of color were available when they were doing film noir, the sexy vamp who hires the detective but is in on the game would have worn this. Not red. Red's too obvious. This would have been the color to offset her expensive black French cigarettes.

Creep is a deep black jelly with silver micro glitter. It doesn't try to be anything else. It's really pretty, really striking and really a pain to apply. This balled up worse than any of the others. I got it...but it took effort. I had to remove it and reapply on one nail. There is a lot of pigment in that black base, but it's not a cream. You can see where it's thin on sections of my nails that it isn't. 

This is a really good shot of it. I have a better label shot as well coming up next because I couldn't choose. It was like one showed off the nails, one showed off the bottle. Blah.

This isn't that unique, there have been a few of these lately. Orly Goth is coming to mind, and it's easier to apply. However, this is a nice addition to all the beigy neutrals so I am not going to complain too much.

I haven't been to Ulta in about a thousand years, but if you're interested in this set, I want to assure it's safe to have it delivered. The box is not hollow, it's foam. I have a shot for you:

The nice thing is you could probably wing this 40 feet into a wall and nothing is going to break. The bad side is that you can't get the freaking bottles out. I pried mine out with a pen, explaining those little dents in the tops of the spaces. They are really in there. It's also not hard to store. There isn't a lot of wasted space and it's pretty thin. 

So, while it's still cruelty free, I wanted to show you this. Now we'll go back to our regularly scheduled program of leftover Christmas ideas and the last (!!) Deborah Lippmann exclusive set. Which is still available because I think a lot of people never knew about it. More on that in it's own post!

Happy Talons!