Cup of Reviews: Urban Decay Full Spectrum Pallet

Hello my Sweet Confetti Cupcakes,

Noooooo, just missed my post Sunday!!! I had such a great schedule in May!!! Sigh… I hope you’ve had a lovely weekend so far, mine was jam packed so I didn’t have much time to write. I’ve also been shopping for some cute playsuits and dresses, just because I’m lazy when it comes to assembling my outfits… I’m seriously getting ready for Summer. We’ve had already a couple of hot days here in little Belgium and I’m very very thankful for that.

Today I’ll be reviewing the Urban Decay Full Spectrum pallet, which has been released for a while now. I must confess… I’ve had it since November last year or so. I’ve been wanting to do a review on it, but I just didn’t feel inspired… It probably was the cold weather, because last Winter, I was also going through a dark period in my life. So I just didn’t feel like my colorful crazy self and stayed true to the neutrals. I kind of felt guilty about it. But as long as it didn’t feel right to me, I postponed this review.

It was only until recently when the first sunrays hit my face and that the future looked a bit bright again for me, that I started feeling inspired again to wear bold colorful looks! At this point, I feel ready to give you my in depth review of this baby.

Packaging

I have 3 words for you: Sturdy, Sleek, Cool. You get a humongous mirror with decent large pans. It does feel somewhat bulky, but you do get 21 shades.

This costs 56,95€ for the pallet with the 21 shades (a total of 25,2g of product). This means that this costs 2,26€/g, compared to 3,2€/g of the Naked 3 pallet. So you do get more bang for your buck!

This pallet comes with a dual ended brush. One side is made to pack on the shades (this side is a nice dense brush) and the other side is to blend it out (so the bristles are a bit longer and flexible). These are very good quality and very soft.

Shades

The first thing I noticed when I first saw this pallet was how wearable the shades actually were. Though of course you’d need some extra neutral shades in order to create daily wearable looks.

Not saying that you can’t pull off a complete look with these, but it’ll definitely be super colorful, which is not really how I like to wear my eyeshadows daily. Even if, I do like to add my pops of color. I’d need for instance:

• a beige as traditional shade
• a matt black perhaps
• a medium neutral brown

These will help me make the colorful looks more wearable. With that being said, you can imagine the endless combo’s you can achieve with this pallet.

Let’s have a look at each shade, shall we! You clearly see that per column, there is a color scheme. The first row is always the darkest, the middle row is the brightest and the lowest row is the frosty lightest row. It is pretty much build like a rainbow. The shades in the second row are almost completely matt, except for the last shade Ice. The first rows are all shimmery except for Delirious. And the last row is completely shimmer except for Metamorphosis and Bump.

I’ll swatch column per column. The first column is all about pinks:

• Alchemy: is a deep berry tone. Even though it looks dark in the pan, it’s actually not. It has a satiny finish…
• Gossip: is a very intense cool toned deep pink pink. This is one of the most intense pinks I’ve used so far. This also has a satiny finish…
• Paranoia: Frosty, shimmery very cool toned, almost purplish pink

Next up are the reds. Where was the time reds were such a difficulty and challenge to wear. Watching Jaclyn Hill made me get out of my comfort zone and rock these edgy shades.

• Warning: is a beautiful rusty shade. It’s a dark orange with slightly gold shimmer, very subtle.
• Seize: is an orangy almost matt red. It swatches quite patchy but with a brush it blends out nicely.
• Jones: is a frosty yellowy orange.

 

Then we are in the realm of the yellows. These are also shades that I usually never wear. But having this pallet challenges me to use it…

• Midnight Blaze: I guess this shade is what you get when you take a cool toned yellow and mix it with a lot of black and a bucket of gold sparkles. Looking at the pan, you’d expect a darker shade. But it’s actually quite sheer. It’s not a bad thing though, because if used with the next shade Calavera, it blends in quite nicely. The contrast is not too big.
• Calavera: on the contrary to the picture below is Cavalevera quite a warm bumblebee yellow. The finish is almost matt.
• Goldmine: is the perfect frosty yellow. I wouldn’t call it gold, which is normally deeper in my opinion.

Next up are the greens. I don’t usually wear these shades. So I haven’t used these yet. This’ll be my next challenge to wear!

• Hundred: is a very dark leafy shimmery green.
• Hatter: is way out of my comfort zone. It’s an intense emerald green with a satiny/matt finish. But if you look closely you can see a bit of green sparkles. It’s an interesting shade.
• Mean: is a frosty light green.

Under the sea, under the sea,… Oh yeah, next up are the blues. My favorite color aside from Pink.

• Minx: is a stunning royal dark blue with blue sparkles.
• Blindsided: is the shade I think of when I think of a Hawaiian beach, how the water would reflect the shining sunrays, with coconut trees everywhere. It is a bright blue with a hint of turquoise with turquoise sparkles.
• Metamorphosis: is a light cobalt blue with a slight turquoise sheen to it. The shade is beautiful but doesn’t apply very pigmented and quite patchy. I find myself having to dig in it several times before I obtain the desired opacity.

Then we have the mysterious purples. I find that purples are often a favorite for women with dark hair. These were also shades I’d pick up when I first started playing around with make up.

• Delirious: is a matt classy dark plum.
• Sketch: represents the perfect type of violet. It’s shimmery, not too dark and not too warm shade that every purple lover should own.
• Faded: is quite a strange shade. It is a greyish pastel purple with specs of gold. Even though it is in the lowest row (of the brightest shades), this shade has the tendency to darken your eye look. Wearing this on you entire lid makes it look smoky even though the shade isn’t dark.

I wouldn’t call the last row the blacks, but mainly the essentials. These are the shades you’d use to finish your look.

• Platonic: is a shimmery dark grey, that you can use to darken the outer corner or to line your eye with.
• Iced: is a frosty pearl shade that is extremely shimmer and thus perfect for your inner eye corner or to top off any color that needs a touch of sparkle.
• Bump: is an opaque pure chalky white. I often use it in my inner corner and slightly on the brow bone as a highlighter. You could also use it as a base to intensify your other colors. It’s thus a very versatile shade.

My Conclusion

I love this pallet, but it requires some focus. This means that when in a hurry in the morning, I’m not likely to pull out this pallet. It takes a bit of time to think out a look. But they were smart to organize their columns per shade range. So it could be a no brainer to go for one column, the middle shade as your lid shade, the upper shade to darken your outer corner and the lowest shade as your inner corner highlighter. That is pretty convenient. But I don’t tend to go for that because that would be too easy haha! The true challenge lies in trying to combine shades from different shade ranges (columns).

It’s obvious that if you clicked on this review that you are looking for colorful shades. In that case I’d recommend it to you. But you’re not likely to use it, if you’re someone that sticks to neutral shades. Now if you like neutral shades and would like to incorporate some pop of color, the Full Spectrum pallet might have too many shades for you. In that case, you could also try the Urban Decay Electric pallet.

Looks 

Here are some look ideas. If you want to know how I did them, I’ll be posting how to’s per look separately.

I already did a post on this look. You can check it here.

I felt like playing around with the pinks, purples and blues.

The third look is all about the reds and yellows.

And why not some yellows and a pop of blue!

I hope you enjoyed this little post and I’ll talk to you guy in my next post!!

Love,

Sarah