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!

Thank You, Urban Decay, for listening

If you read the beauty news, beauty blogs or eco blogs, you know that China has mandated that any beauty product marketed and sold there must be tested on animals. What. Are they TRYING to piss us off? I know I addressed this earlier, but if you're a casual reader then you may not know this. All the biggies have basically gone for it. All of them. There have been a few hold outs, Illamasqua for one. I don't know that you could call them really a biggie, but they definitely have a cult following, I'm a hard core Illamasquan, and they have stated they will not go there if they have to change their stance on animal cruelty. GO ILLAMASQUA! Maybe they had no intention of marketing in China in the first place, but who cares? They're still not gonna. The others have said "OK" and off they go to the huge Chinese market. Estee Lauder and everything they own, which is...everything, was the biggest hit. Like Bumble & Bumble hair care? Estee Lauder. Like Clinique? Estee Lauder. La Mer? ESTEE LAUDER! So disappointed because if a giant like them said no, maybe there would be enough consumer pressure in China to change their stance but...well, I can only control where my money goes.

Urban Decay had decided to join the lemmings over the China cliff and compromise their ethics in a quest for the Holy Yen. PETA, who you all know I have some skepticism about, actually accomplished something very worth while with a letter writing campaign to try to talk them out of it and succeeded. To honor that decision I did an Urban Decay polish for approximately 2 days but the point is made. I had to give them a nod. I wear Urban Decay 24/7 eyeliner pencils almost daily. Great colors and they don't rip your eyelids off getting them on. This is good. But I don't really do a lot of makeup reviewing, there are other bloggers out there who apply it better and write better about it. I love makeup but it's the polishes I adore.

I have one set of Urban Decay polish. It's an oldie but I did check and some are still out there to be had without going to the EvilBay. It's one of the minis in the Apocalyptic nail kit and I found a couple still available on Amazon.com. Once I found those I didn't really look further, honestly.

Yikes. OK. So I show you the good, the bad, and the ugly, you know that right? I had a lot of trouble controlling this polish and I actually wound up doing my nails twice. Poor MDAMO. He put up with my tantrum when this happened. It wasn't FBomb so much as just bad underpinnings, which were then thrown out. They just wouldn't dry and then FBomb wouldn't dry and then it dried on top of it and BLAH!!!
What you can see in this swatch, though, is a deep red that went everywhere. It was simultaneously goopy and hard to control. Gorgeous, though. Blood red. I felt like a femme fatale in this color. It's a straight up dark red creme. It's not burgundy. It's RED.

Sunlight through the window, no flash. Probably the best color representation.

This is highly highly pigmented and therefore a bit thick (tips hat to Kaydie!). I couldn't control it for crap, but I loved it once I got it on.

Teeny Tiny Mini Bottle. These little bottles actually kind of piss me off. I like knowing I can be as messy and wasteful and use it as many times as I like. Mini bottles make me feel like I have to be careful, save them up for special occasions...irritates me. This is one area of my life where I should be allowed to be as reckless as I want.

Teeny Tiny Little Label.

Think it's flammable? LOL

I think I had taken a brush and acetone to the cuticles, etc to clean this up at this point. I had it all over the place. All over me, the cat, the desk...I smacked it into the desk. This would have been funny if it hadn't been so sad. It was a doomed manicure.

MUCH cleaner. This may have been from round two.

I had read some reviews online that said these don't wear well. Unfortunately, I can't speak to that because I only wore it a couple days. It's my way of thanking the powers that be at Urban Decay for recognizing the world will respect them more if they don't compromise their principles than a real review, though I've told you what I learned.

Very pretty, Very vampy, great name and still Very Vegan. Thank you, Urban Decay, for deciding to stick to your morals and your existing fans who love you for them.

Happy Talons, Urban Decayites!

Haul Pics

Awhile ago I mentioned that I had succumbed to Rescue Beauty Lounge bringing back classic lacquers.

I had also made a huge haul from Apothica and Sephora and Illamasqua...because I have no self control. It's sad really.

What had happened was my friend who is a make-up artist with Estee Lauder, had done this really gorgeous eye on me. I had waited because I'm trying to pay things down and didn't get it. Because they were trend colors and I'm stupid. The eyeliner was a gorgeous royal blue. Daring, even. I loved it. I didn't buy it and it was shipped back to Lauder, as they do with trend stuff that doesn't sell. I went on a little mission that I WILL find a royal blue eyeliner as wonderful as that because those fascists at Lauder took it away.
Yeah.

The irony that I could have bought the one eye liner and not 5 of them is not lost on me. On the bright side, I got some gorgeous new stuff. On the downside, I'm further in debt. Well...I'm trying to behave. For right now that will have to be good enough.

Here's some pics:

RBL haul 1...The red box is the nail treatment set. Isn't that lovely? Here's another:

And lastly the colors themselves:

Now where are the pics of the larger haul....Hm

Did I, or did I not, tell you I was bad. BAD.

Wow. Those two yellows look really different in the pic. I honestly didn't look at them side by side, I confess. There's some Stila in there, some Urban Decay...If you haven't tried the Urban Decay 24/7 eye liners yet, do it! They're awesome. I was testing colors at Ulta and couldn't get them off my hand, not even with hand sanitizer. It took some Lauder make up remover to get that off. And the colors are To. Die. For. That is Deviant you see in the picture and it's gorgeous.
Yes. I was bad. Bad.

I think that Stila Barbie blue in the upper right corner of the pic may well be the winner in the contest, but honestly between work and family stress paired with illness, I haven't even tried to duplicate the look.

Damn These Vampires by The Mountain Goats just came on my iTunes...."Crawl til dawn, on my hands and knees. God damn these bite marks, deep in my arteries...". Great stuff. I love the emo rage!

LOL

Happy Polishing!