Urban Decay Full Spectrum Palette

 Not so much a review this as just a deep sigh of: "IT IS SO PRETTY, I CAN NEVER MAR ITS FABULOUS BEAUTIFULOSITY BY ACTUALLY  USING IT", the Urban Decay Full Spectrum Palette is released online now and costs £43.

Just look at that damned bejewelled cover.  LOOK AT IT.

Oh, and the eyeshadows are quite pretty too:

Arranged beautifully in ombre-d colour groups, there's every shade here for someone who wants a bright, beautiful and clear eyeshadow look.  Peacock eyes?  It's all here, and look at that yellow, amazeballs!  (I'm so channelling 2013, I know).

Cor.  Some seriously beautiful colours there.  I won't ever use it, my days of colourful eyeshadow are long gone (I'm all about the lips now, baby), but it is SO BEAUTIFUL.

What critical faculties?  I'm in lust.

The Fine Print: PR sample.


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Urban Decay Vice Lipsticks Launch

l-r Pandemonium (mega matte), Firebird (cream), Naked (cream) and Conspiracy (metallised)

Urban Decay have finally launched their full range of Vice lipsticks in the UK, and they're really lovely.  With 100 shades in six finishes (sheer, metallised, cream, comfort matte, mega matte and shimmer), there's truly something for everyone.  I think the Gwen Stefani collection was really a taster for the new Vice finishes, so I'm not going to review them in depth here, but I thought I'd show you a couple of pictures of the lipsticks, and tell you that they're magnificent.  I have Pandemonium, a grape purple in the mega matte formulation, Firebird, which is a cream fuchsia (and a repromote of the same shade from the aforementioned Gwen Stefani collection), then there is also Naked which is a pale pinky-grey mauve and Conspiracy, a metallic coffee bean shade which will never, ever, ever grace my lips.  Ever.  Beautiful on the right person (like, my mum for example), but I have no desire to wear it personally, but doesn't it look gorgeous in the bullet?

l-r Pandemonium, Firebird, Naked, Conspiracy

There is figuratively nothing that makes my heart sing more than the sight of an untouched bullet of lipstick, and these are sooooooo photogenic.  Look, I have neither pets nor children, and only one sickly houseplant to take pictures of, so leave me my little indulgences, please.

I don't have swatches, because they're too pretty to mar, frankly, but here's a pic of me wearing the original version of Firebird taken back in February,  the lasting power on the cream formulation is marvellous, by the way,  and whilst not billed as a particularly long-lasting formula, I find they last at least 6-8 hours without reapplying, even if you eat whilst wearing:

Leave me alone, it was 6am on the Eurostar.

So there you go.  Not my most in-depth review perhaps (unless "pretty things are really pretty" is your bag, admittedly), but, by gum, they're pretty.

Urban Decay Vice lipsticks cost £15 each and are available now from the usual stockists. 

The Fine Print: PR samples and purchases

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LipsNspritz 7th February 2016 - Urban Decay Special

 

  
So, there were two themes for LipsNspritz on Instagram this week, one is pretty easy to spot, but did anyone notice the fragrant link?  I spent the week trialling the Urban Decay #UDxGwen lipstick collection, and I wore Ex-Girlfriend, Phonecall, Firebird, Wonderland and Spiderweb.  You can see colour descriptions and swatches of the full collection here, but I have to say that I am mightily impressed with the range.  Both Ex-Girlfriend and Phonecall are sheers, but last very well over a liner, around 3-4 hours or so.  Firebird, Wonderland and Spiderweb are all cream formulas (I've yet to wear the "mega-matte" shade 714 properly) and the lasting time on this formula is phenomenal.  I literally didn't have to touch any of them up for 10-12 hours, and, best of all, they didn't dry my lips out in the slightest.  Even Spiderweb, which I didn't wear with a liner underneath lasted as well as the others with a liner.  Amazing.

Clockwise from top left, Ex Girlfriend, Wonderland, Firebird, Spiderweb and Phonecall

All of the shades are glossy satin finishes, but of course the cream finishes are more opaque than both Ex-Girlfriend and Phonecall, and last longer as a result.  Overall, I'm delighted with the collection, even though I now have to remove my lipstick with oil of a nighttime!

Fragrance-wise saw me in both Maison Francis Kurkdijan's Aqua Vitae, and the brand new Baccarat Rouge 540.  Aqua Vitae was my fragrance of the year in 2013 (and you can read the review here) and I'm still getting to grips with Baccarat Rouge 540 (I was expecting something red and jammy, and got the scent of hot sand instead, which was confusing), but you can expect a full review in due course.  I also wore Jean Paul Gaultier Fleur de Male, and Classique Intense.  Fleur de Male is one of my favourite hot-soap, orange blossom and barbershop fragrances - now sadly discontinued - and Classique Intense, which I first smelled in the depths of my parosmic madness, but now reveals itself to be a huge talcum, and jasmine monster, which I've fallen rather heavily for.  And finally, I wore the gauzy and ethereal Elie Saab le Parfum, which is the smell of orange blossom glimpsed through chiffon, and is beautiful and wonderful.  And the link between all of these?  Francis Kurkdijan, of course.  I was lucky enough to spend an evening with him and Jo Fairley of the Perfume Society last week, which was lots of fun.  If you haven't been to a Perfume Society event yet, you're really missing a treat.  I'm off to Paris with them at the end of the month, and I can't wait!

What've you been wearing?

The Fine Print: PR samples and purchases


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Urban Decay Gwen Stefani Blush Palette and Brow Box

 I don't do much to my eyebrows (they're tattooed on, so I don't have to), but the Urban Decay Brow Boxes are lovely, and there's a special edition of them for the Gwen Stefani Collection, and it's this one in Bathwater Blonde.

Quite obviously defined for people with fairer hair than I, the brow box comes with two shades, and is most suitable for dark blondes/light brunettes.  Sadly, I am a dark brunette ... 

It comes complete with two brushes, two powders, one wax, one tiny pair of tweezers, and two mirrors, one of which is magnifying, there's really all you need to do your brows on the go.  Do you do your brows on the go though?  Admittedly I only brush mine through as a finishing touch last thing in the morning then ignore them for the rest of the day, but would a travel brow kit work for you?  Tell me, I'm curious!  It costs £19.50, but I think it's perfect for girls with medium shades of hair, there's no red in either of the shades, which is great too.

The blush kit though, I can totally get behind, even though it's a tad on the warm side.  Urban Decay describe the shades as:

Cherry - light pink satin,
Easy - deep rose w/gold shimmer,
Angel - champagne-nude shimmer,
Lo-Fi - soft bronze matte,
Hush - medium pink w/gold shimmer and
OC soft pink w/peach shift. 

So you basically have all your blusher, bronzer and highlight options covered in one palette, which I really like.  It's a good and hefty palette though, which will stand up to a fair bit of abuse in a makeup bag (the only other cheek palette I have is made of cardboard, which basically won't travel), and the pans are a decent size, so at £35 for the whole thing, it seems good value.  I'll do a Face of the Day featuring my picks of the collection (and I'll be doing a Gwen Stefani special over on my LipsNspritz hashtag on Instagram this week) some time towards the end of the week.  Light depending.

What would you pick up from the collection?

I reviewed the eye palette previously, here.


The Fine Print: PR samples.

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Urban Decay Gwen Stefani Lipsticks Full Collection (with swatches!)

 So, after a bit of a snafu with the Urban Decay website the other week, I finally have the whole Gwen Stefani collection in my grubby little paws.  I wasn't intending to, I just wanted the Firebird and Wonderland lipsticks initially, but then circumstances intervened, and after a short delay, I now have everything in the collection, including the online exclusive shades.  Today I'm going to concentrate on the lip products, because there's a reason this blog is called Get Lippie, but I'll show you the rest tomorrow.

There are eight shades in total, and from left to right here we have:
Ex-Girlfriend - a sheer nude
Phonecall - a sheer candy pink (online exclusive shade)
Firebird - a shimmering fuchsia
Wonderland - glorious cherry pink
Spiderweb - glossy blue-red
714 - matte scarlet
Plaid - looks red here, but it's actually a juicy berry pink (online exclusive shade)
Rocksteady - deep blood red.

All the lipsticks except Spiderweb and Plaid come with matching liners.

The packaging is a little plasticky, but it's fun and finished in a funky black and gold graphic design. The bullets are firmly attached in the cases, and they're gorgeous, gorgeous colours in a range of finishes.

So, what are the colours like on skin?

From left to right here we have Ex-Girlfriend liner and lipstick, Phonecall (both), Firebird (both), Wonderland (both), Spiderweb (lipstick only), 714 lipstick + liner, Plaid (lipstick only) and Rocksteady (both).  Sadly, I haven't worn any of the lipsticks yet (cold sores, sorry, and a full diary of LipsNspritz precluded) but I'll update this post with my thoughts once they've been worn.

Initial thoughts are that if you're a red lipstick fan - and it must be admitted here that I'm a much bigger fan of red lipstick than I am Gwen Stefani! - then you'll love this collection.  There are a couple of shades here for non-red lovers, but this is basically a BRIGHT collection, and I love it for that.  Only time will tell if the formulas are as good as the colours appear to be, but I'll keep you posted.

Coming up tomorrow, pictures of both the cheek palette, and the eyebrow kit.
 

What are your thoughts on the Gwen Stefani collection?


The Fine Print: PR samples and purchases


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Urban Decay Gwen Stefani Eyeshadow Palette

Yawn, celebrity collaborations are so ovah, amirite?  Well, no, actually, I was so happy when this appeared on my doorstep last week that I actually did a little clap in the hallway.  I need to get out more, I know.  Now, I have to admit, that I'm not, particularly, a fan of Gwen Stefani (and I could name two, maybe, No Doubt songs, if I was pressed), but I do know her makeup style quite well, and I like it a lot.  Well, I would, as it is based on my own, being mostly neutral eyes, and a strong, bright lipcolour.  This palette encompasses that look beautifully - though you'll have to supply your own lipstick ...

The packaging is a great - strong graphic black and white, with antique gold edging, it's actually rather misleading in terms of the contents, for they are not as "in your face" as the box leads you to expect:

It's a palette of neutrals with a couple of pops of bright colours and a few deeps for lining.  It's skewed very pale, however, and, whilst this made my heart sing (all the Urban Decay Naked palettes have been either too warm, and/or dark for me - so I don't use any of them), it'll be a huge problem for a lot of warmer-toned, and darker-skinned people than me, I think.

There are mattes, shimmers, satins and glitters, nine neutrals (yay!), three deeps, three "pop" shades and if you're as pale as me, it'll make you very happy indeed.  I've seen a lot of talk on other websites complaining that it is "boring", but I think it's actually hugely versatile - and, it looks exactly how I would have expected, though I'd have thought there would have been more contour shades.  But, if you're pale, which I am, it's great.

Shades are:

Top Row (l-r)
Blonde - a very pale matte gold
Bathwater - pale shimmering wheat
Skimp - extremely pale peach
Steady - shimmering cool peach
Punk - matte blackened burgundy
Middle Row (l-r)
Baby - warm pale taupe
Anaheim - matte slightly-greyed flesh tone (my favourite!)
Stark - Matte peach
Zone - warm matte taupe
Serious - glittery dark grey

Bottom row (l-r)
Pop - glittery peach

Harajuku - cool baby-pink satin
Danger - dark blue satin

1987 - glittering green-gold

Blackout - soft black.

My sample came complete with a little card with four bubbles of "UD Gwen Stefani Lipstick" samples on, which I am - possibly - even more excited about than I am the eyeshadows!  There's no information re the lipsticks available, but the eyeshadow palette will be released on November 22nd, and will cost £40.  There's a waiting list you can put your name on for it on the Urban Decay website - I predict a sell-out very quickly.

The Fine Print: PR Sample

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Urban Decay Vice Palette 4 - first look!

  
Okay, it's not a Christmas collection, but I think any makeup addict would be delighted with this in 
their Christmas stocking this year!  The Vice palettes from Urban Decay have long been a cult with beauty bloggers, and I suspect this will be no exception, either.  Inspired by the colours of an oil slick, it's so pretty!

Gloriously detailed on the outside, with iridescent overlays, and coming in a foiled pouch, Vice 4 is beautifully packed up.

Inside though, is what really matters, and inside doesn't disappoint:

A pretty mixture of neutrals and brights (but mostly brights, admitedly) this a gorgeous palette for all ages, especially if you love playing with your makeup.  I can think of one little girl who's going to love this one this year! (it's okay, I don't think she's reading this ...)

Urban Decay Vice 4 palette is instore now, and costs £43 for 20 eyeshadows and one double ended brush.  Will you be splashing out on colour this Christmas?

The Fine Print: PR Sample


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#LipsNspritz of the week 11.10.15

Life would be dull indeed without lipstick and perfume, I've made it a mission this last month or so to document my entire lipstick and perfume "wardrobe".  The idea is to wear every perfume and lipstick that I own, and post my thoughts on each on Instagram every day.  I'm trying to do it without repeats, but I've decided to allow myself the occasional one (admittedly an exception made for my "parosmia perfume" Paradox, because there are days still where it's the only thing I can face smelling), but I won't do it too often.  This week I replenished my stores of the original Acqua di Parma, which is one of my all-time favourite fragrances of all-time, and I'm delighted that it's largely untouched by my disability.  It's the smell of a hot and soapy sportsman emerging from the shower, and I've missed it terribly since I ran out last year!  I wore it with Burberry Kisses Sheer balm in Hydrangea, and you'll see more of that later on this week.

Other lipstick and perfume combos of the week after the jump:

Urban Decay Black Eyeliner Collection

To say I like a bit of black eyeliner would be a mild understatement ... alongside my red lipsticks, I think a decent black liner would be my desert island item.  Well, alongside a full set of Zelens skincare, and a few bottles of Guerlain that is, but I digress ...

Anyhoo, I was superhappy when Urban Decay revamped their black eyeliner collection a few months ago,  Here we have 24/7 Velvet Liner in Black Velvet, a blacker version of their normal 24/7 eyeliner formula,  Ink for Eyes, a waterproof liquid liner, All Nighter, a deeply pigmented twist-up pencil, and a pot gel-liner.

Black Velvet is a sooty black liner, which is very soft and easily blendable.  Ink for Eyes isn't the blackest liquid liner that I have (that would be Illamasqua Abyss, which is unmissable), but it has a lovely thin felt-tip style applicator that is very easy to control.  All Nighter is probably my favourite of the four, being soft and incredibly black, and the nib is perfect for tightlining the upper lash line.  This simply does not budge once applied.  It's not quite as blendable as Black Velvet, but it's great for getting a strong graphic liner look, and it's excellent on the waterline.  It turns out that I'm not a massive fan of pot liners (they tend to dry out too quickly for my tastes, but this could be more of a reflection of the fact that I have about 30 eyeliners in regular rotation, lets face it) generally, but this is a good, highly pigmented and deeply black one.

All in all a fab and really very useful little collection of black liners. There's one for all tastes, and they all deliver.  I'll be backing up my All Nighter, I can tell you that ...

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Urban Decay Pulp Fiction Collection

It's everywhere at the moment, but I couldn't not blog about the Urban Decay Pulp Fiction collection, because it contains one of my favourite beauty items that has been released ALL YEAR.  Yes, one of these items is so lovely and amazing that, literally the day this collection went in-store, I ordered three back-ups of one of the products.  I actually ended up with six back-ups, but more about that later ...

Anyhoo, in news that will make a sizeable percentage of my readershship (myself included) feel really, really really old, this year marks the 20th year since Pulp Fiction was released. TWENTY YEARS!  Jeez.  I remember Quentin Tarantino being the enfant terrible of cinema back then, I bet Quentin thinks he still is.  I'm digressing, of course, as this makeup collection is basically a tribute to Uma Thurman in character as Mrs Mia Wallace, and as Limited Edition collections go, this is a good one.

The collection consists of the eyeshadow palette, a lipstick with matching liner, a nail varnish, and a repromote of one of the Heavy Metal glittery eyeliners.   There's also a makeup instruction card that will help you recreate the definitive Mia Wallace look.

I think they've got the colours spot-on, to be honest, aside from the white, which I don't think is entirely necessary, they already have the highlight colour in Righteous, which makes "Furious" rather redundant, but, anyway.

Colours are velvety and pigmented, and wear very well over a base. The dinky double-ended brush that you get in the palette is extremely good quality as these things go, and is a handy addition to the palette, unlike many of these things.

With Flash

Natural Daylight

The one bit of the collection I'm disappointed with is the addition of the glittery liner, which I think would have been better replaced with one of Urban Decay's excellent black liners (they currently have at least four, and any single one of them would have been more useful than silver glitter, but hey, as I've already discussed, I'm an old gimmer, right?), but Gunmetal it is.

The lips and nails though, are marvellous.  Good and bloody, and very, very red.  I wore Chanel's Rouge Noir for years (both lips and nails) after Pulp Fiction - it was the first time I'd realised that dark nail varnish was even "allowed"! I was a bit hacked off, actually, when Chanel re-released Rouge Noir lipstick a few years ago, only to have changed it to a cruddy, unflattering brown shade rather than the deep bloody red of my memory (actually, not just my memory, I still have a Rouge Noir lip palette in the house, eeep!).  Whilst these colours aren't direct matches to the shades worn by Uma in the film, they are darn good, and beautiful. 

The formulation on Urban Decay's lipsticks generally excellent, and Mrs Mia Wallace is no exception.  Creamy, moisturising and deeply pigmented, it's a joy to wear. The lipliner is  just a bonus really, you don't need it for coverage, but it's a nice thing to have, all the same.

My joy from the collection is the nail varnish, however.  Yes, it's no A England in formulation, but the colour!  Oh, the colour, it's a perfect blood-red, with just a tiny hint of shimmer to stop it being too flat, but for me, this is the red I've been looking for.  It can be a tiny bit chip-tastic, but I find the sticky-sandwich technique works really well for combating that.

So, I immediately went out and ordered three bottles of the nail polish from the Urban Decay website.  But, they "lost" my order (well, it was never confirmed, and even after long discussions with the company they never could find my order) so I ordered my backups from Debenhams.  However, the Urban Decay bottles from the lost order turned up anyway!  So now I have SEVEN bottles of Mrs Mia Wallace polish.  Want one?  Leave me a comment (on this post) with your favourite quote from Pulp Fiction and I'll pick two of them at random on Friday and send you each a bottle of polish ... (UK readers only, sorry!)

The Fine Print: Samples were provided for this review by Urban Decay, however the bottles of polish being given away were purchased at my own expense - and the giveaway is not being run in association with the brand.

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Urban Decay Revolution Lipstick & Liner in Manic

I am SO glad Urban Decay have got rid of their old, deeply tacky, lipstick packaging.  Whilst I like skulls and that, having a SWORD as a handle just made me too embarrassed to use the damn things.  Oh, and I regularly used to impale myself on the damn things in my makeup bag, too. 

However, if you coat something in pewter, I've discovered I'm pretty much powerless to resist.  And a hammered finish? I'm in! Luckily for my lips, the contents of the new range of Revolution Lipsticks from Urban Decay is pretty damn fine too.  I picked out Manic as my choice, a lovely wine shade:

 

It's autumn, and I'm really getting my deep cool shades at the ready for the cooler months to come. Manic is a nice transitional shade from summer to autumn, being rich, but not really very dark, as you can see here:

It's a slightly browned wine, glossy in finish, and the matching liner is just a little more pink, and matte.  They're a good match though - if your lips are on the more pigmented side, the liner will give a nice "My Lips But Better" finish, if you use it to fill the lips in entirely, as I've done below:

The liner is creamy, smooth and velvety soft, and I've found that it applies nicely without any dragging.  However, it does wear down very quickly, so if you want a sharp line (as you will with some of the deeper shades in the range), you'll need to sharpen extremely regularly.  It definitely forms a good base for the lipstick though, you can see both here:

Revolution Lipstick has a lovely soft texture, and feels creamy on the lips (rather than slippery), and they're extremely well pigmented.  The above pic shows one pass of the lipstick (over the liner) on my lips.  I find they last quite well too, taking at least three or four hours before needing a touch up.  They're also nicely pigmented without the liner too:

As you can see, the finish is a little less creamy without the liner, but it's no less pigmented for all that.  It's rather more translucent, but that's about the only difference using it without liner. There are 22 shades in all, ranging from the palest of nudes to the darkest of deep purple-browns, with a lot of really nice reds in between, I have a couple of the other shades too, and I'll show you those soon.

Personally, I don't bother with lipliner much, so I don't really go a bundle on this one (plus, it's so soft I estimate you'd only really get two applications per sharpening, so I'm not sure they're entirely cost-effective), but the new lipsticks are a definite winner ...

Have you tried them?

The Fine Print: Press samples.

This post: Urban Decay Revolution Lipstick & Liner in Manic originated at: Get Lippie All rights reserved. If you are not reading this post at Get Lippie, then this content has been stolen by a scraper