Urban Decay Moondust Palette

Hello!

Today I’m going to my first beauty post and as I’ve recently purchased the Moondust Palette by Urban Decay I thought I’d give it a quick review!
Since returning to uni in September I’ve often noticed my friend Milly having really cool sparkly eyeshadow looks. I always wondered what it was but never thought to ask, until one night I was getting ready for a night out round at hers and she brought out the Moondust Palette.
I was instantly intrigued by it because, let’s face it, the colours are super eye catching!

One of my first thoughts when deciding whether or not to buy this palette was, ‘will i use all the colours?’. I had a think about it and spoke to my friends and decided that yeah I probably would use them all at some point, but even just buying it for my favourite few shades would be worth it to me (plus with a quick check on the Urban Decay website i found that buying a couple individually would cost more than the entire palette anyway)!

Speaking of price this palette comes in at £36, I will leave a link to the product at the end of this post. To some £36 may be out of their price range, to others a bargain, but as it ultimately works out at about £4.50 per eyeshadow I think it’s pretty good value for money. Especially  considering the price for individuals on the Urban Decay website is £15.50, seems pretty outrageous to me?

One of the first things I noticed when my parcel arrived and I first saw the palette was the insanely cool packaging. Like seriously plenty of eyeshadow palette’s have gorgeous packaging, but this is like the rockstar of eyeshadow palettes.

It’s chunky, metallic, glittery box with statement ‘moondust’ indented on the front with a reflective mirror like effect in the lettering, and of course the main identifier ‘Urban Decay’ in gun metal grey in the top centre. Everything about this palette sparks visual interest, maybe one of the reasons why it’s such a well known and loved product.

However this isn’t the only reason for the success of the product. On first trying out the shadows on myself I found that the formulation of the eyeshadows are absolutely lovely and, most importantly, the pigmentation is second to none! I can’t imagine anything more disappointing than buying a super bright vibrant eyeshadow palette only to find that on application only a whiff of the original shade transfers onto the eye. Luckily this was completely not the case with the Moondust palette. I was able to achieve sparkly, intense eye looks with ease, and I don’t profess myself to be a pro at makeup application! The shades blend well and just generally look absolutely bloody lovely.

So how do I feel about the shades? Well, I’ll be honest, on first glance some of them looked pretty scary to me! Here’s a run through of the shades one by one.

Specter

This is a gorgeous sparkly, shimmery rosy shade. Despite it looking very pink in the palette it comes off more like a highlight shade and looks absolutely gorgeous used on the inner corners to open up the eyes. When i first looked at my friend’s palette this was one of the first shades I was drawn to. Compared to some of the other, more dramatic, shades in the palette Specter is certainly one of the ones that would be more wearable on a day to day basis.Simply in terms of what I’m used to wearing this is probably the shade I was initially most comfortable with.

Element

I would describe this shade as a rusty, coppery red. It looks more intimidating than it actually is. On the eye it comes off as a kind of reflective red glitter that is most noticeable when it catches the light. Of course if you want a more intense red it is buildable, but generally I like to wear just a hint across my lid to finish a look off. This is definitely one of my favourite shades in the palette. I’m sometimes cautious of reds, but Element is unique and gorgeous!

Magnetic

This is a beautiful purple shot through with a silver sparkle. This shade is perfectly wearable and would suit anyone in my opinion, but looks especially stunning with green eyes as the colours compliment and enhance one another. One of my absolute favourite things about this palette is the duo chrome effect of most of the shadows. Although the colours may initially seem apparent, when you apply them to the eyes there’s generally another layer that reveals itself when the light catches it.

Lightyear

Now, there’s no getting around it, this is not an every day shade. Nor is it the most wearable eyeshadow I’ve ever seen. This is probably the one I will reach for the least, however, I do think there are some really fun uses for it! This colour screams ‘party’ to me, and I feel like a party is the perfect place to wear wacky eyeshadow shades and have no one bat an eyelid. Personally I quite like the idea of using a slanted eyebrow brush, like the Mac 266, wetting it slightly and using this is an eyeliner, just above your usual black line. Perhaps I’ll try that out in a makeup look sometime and write a post on it.

Granite

A fitting name for what is a very grey silver. This shade is stunning and just has the most intensely pretty sparkle. Do I really need to work hard to convince you that a sparkly silver shade is lovely? This can be used in so many ways: dramatic inner corner highlight, eyeliner, across the lid you name it. Despite being silver, probably one of the most common eyeshadow shades, Granite is unique. It has that kind of gunmetal grey base shade to it (which I personally love) and the brightest, light catching silver glitter through it. I was trying to think of a word to describe it and space dust popped to mind, then I remembered the palette is literally called Moondust, guess it’s just a really well named product!

Lithium

Oh Lithium. You are my favourite. When something is called Lithium you know you’re onto a winner (cue Nirvana). This shade cannot be pinned down. Is it gold? Is it bronze? I think it’s probably somewhere in between, but whatever it is it looks amazing! It looks especially stunning on blue eyes as bronzey shades compliment blue eyes beautifully. I could rave about this shade all day, buy the palette for this shade alone (only half joking).

Vega

Another one of the more intimidating shades in the palette. As a general rule I steer clear of blue eyeshadows, scared of repeating the 2008, preteen blue eyeshadow fiasco. It’s nearly ten years on now though and about time I ventured out of my comfort zone and tried out a blue shade (nervous laughter). I would recommend using a light hand with this shade, as intense blue is probably still a bit of a no go. That’s just me though, feel free to prove me wrong I’m sure somebody with better skills than me could make it look wonderful. For me though, I quite like to use it in a dark smokey eye. I use it over the darkest shade in the outer V just to smoke out the look and make it that little bit more glitzy and dramatic.

Galaxy

Galaxy is really quite similar to Granite in terms of the base shade, however, Galaxy is shot through with a blue sparkle which looks stunning when the light catches it. This is a shade I haven’t used as much as some of the others, but brushed across the lid on a cool toned smokey look this shade looks great and, as with all the shades in this palette, unique! Another way this could be used, if you’re a little intimidated by it, is by sweeping Granite across the lid and just using Galaxy to highlight down the centre of the lid. This would give a slightly more subtle effect than using it all over the lid, but would still look lovely.

Well now that I’ve gone through all the shades individually, I’ll just show you a couple of pictures of swatches to demonstrate the pigmentation.

I apologise for perhaps being the palest person you have ever seen! Specter is right at the top but doesn’t show up well in this picture, mainly due to my pale skin. So here’s another picture.

As you can see all of the shades are beautifully pigmented, this was just one swipe of all of them so you are getting a decent product for your money (in my opinion).

This is for sure the most exciting eye shadow palette I have bought in a long time and I hope you find this blog post interesting and are as excited about the product as I am.

Until next time,

J x

http://www.urbandecay.co.uk/en_GB/make-up-palettes/moondust/ud773.html