Urban Decay NAKED Basics

Swatches & Review

When I heard about the NAKED Basics over the summer, I was really excited for its release, but when the release date came for it, my excitement fell short because of the shades in the palette. When I went to Sephora this weekend and saw it, I had to buy it because it was so small, cute and was a good value considering it is $27 for 6 full-sized eyeshadows.

First off, I have a bit of a rant. This palette has been advertised as an "all-matte" neutral palette. While it seems like it is all-matte, it is 83% matte (with five out of six shades being matte). The first shade in this palette, Venus, is not a matte finish, it is a satin white. If you compare what they say on their website, it is considered as "6 Nakedly Matte Neutrals," however, when you look at the back of the box, it states, "...features both mattes and satins." Urban Decay should not have advertised this as "all-matte" when it is not, even though almost the whole palette it. You may disagree with me, but this is my opinion.

Image on the right found on Urbandecay.com

Okay, now onto the product

*note: the colors seem a bit washed out because my room is a bit bright right now
The six shades in the palette is: Venus, Foxy, Walk of Shame, Naked 2, Faint, and Crave. It is housed in a tiny compact with a rubbery feeling (kind of like NARS), so it is convenient to take it on the go.

Venus: A pearly creamy white. This was very soft, buttery and pigmented.

Foxy: Yellow-beige matte. This took a few swipes to show up on me. The first two swipes was no visible on my skin so I used about 4 swipes. This would be a nice shade for lighter skin-tones. This is soft, but applied sheer on me.

Walk of Shame: Matte pink-ish beige. This also took a few swipes to show up on my skin. Like Foxy, this applied sheer.

Naked 2: Matte soft-taupe. This was buttery soft and had great pigmentation.

Faint: Warm medium-brown with a matte finish. This kind of reminds me of Secret Service, but this may be a bit lighter. This was soft and was really pigmented.
*note: Faint came with the little scrapping on the bottom of it :(

Crave: Matte black-brown. Crave definitely looks more black than brown. This was rough and applied patchy for me. I heard it was smooth for others, but it just did not work out for me. I tried it with three different primers at different times as well, using Urban Decay Primer Potion, Too Faced Shadow Insurance & Lorac Behind the Scenes primer.

Overall, the value of this palette is amazing. Each Urban Decay eyeshadow retails for $18 individually, which makes this a $108 value. If you have both the NAKED and NAKED2 palettes, this palette is not necessary since there are similar shades (not dupes) from the other palettes, but these matte shades will compliment the colors in the other palettes very well. I like using mattes with shimmer, which is what I usually do all the time because I do not like too much shimmer on my lids. My three favorite shades from this palette is Venus, Naked 2 & Faint, and I see myself using those the most. All the others ones are nice, but I can definitely do without them since they do not apply on me as well. I like that Urban Decay came out with an "all-matte" palettes (not all 6 are matte), but I was really hoping for a colorful matte because Urban Decay is supposed to be "Feminine, Dangerous, and Fun" and these shades are not really well.. fun. I also still wish Urban Decay named this palette as half-naked, because this is half the size of both their NAKED palettes.

This retails for $27 and is currently sold at urbandecay.com and Sephora stores (they do not have a display out yet,so you might have to ask them to take it out from the back).

What do you think about the NAKED basics? Are you going to get it? Which NAKED palette is your favorite?

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Urban Decay Naked Skin Foundation: 6.0

Swatches & Review

A few months ago, Urban Decay came out with their new line of liquid foundation to fit in with their NAKED line. Although I have tried out many foundations, I never actually used much foundation before, so I decided to try their foundation line. I normally do not break out much, but this year was the worst year for my skin. I broke out so much that I have a lot of acne scars on my face, which has never happened to me when I was younger, so this foundation came at the perfect time for me.

Urban Decay describes this as a weightless, ultra definition liquid foundation

There is a wide variety of colors for this foundation. The numbers that end in .0 is for warmer skin tones and the numbers that end in .5 is for cooler skin tones.

When swatched & blended out on my hand, the skin looks a lot smoother.

My face is definitely not perfect. Since the beginning of 2012, I have had really bad acne and it is still continuing and I do not know why it is so bad. When I asked my doctor's they just said there has been a hormone change in my body that triggers the breakouts, but it's weird since it's just not stopping. On the left, you can see that there is redness and acne scars on my skin. On the right, you can see that this foundation balances my skin tone out evenly with no redness. Both of these pictures have been taken under the same lighting.

Overall, I really like this foundation. I have been using it for a few months now and this is definitely my choice of foundation. I only use one pump, which gives me a medium coverage, but you can add an extra pump for full coverage. It feels light on my skin and does not look cake-y at all (like how Bare Escentuals foundations make my skin look). Since it is now winter, I am thinking about picking up one in a lighter shade since 6.0 looking kind of dark on my skin for the weather. The only downside to this for me is the price. It is $38 for 30mL/1 oz of product. That is the same size as most drugstore foundations and 3 times the price.
This retails for $38 and is sold at UrbanDecay.com, Sephora (in-stores and online, Ulta (in-stores and online), & select Macy locations.

What do you think about Urban Decay's NAKED skin foundation? Have you tried it? What is your go-to foundation?

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