Urban Decay The Vice Palette Eyeshadow Palette Holiday 2012 Swatches and Review

I'm sure by now everyone's seen Urban Decay's newest palette.  I'm sure most of you even bought one during last week's friends and family sale.  But for anyone who hasn't seen the incredible new Vice palette by Urban Decay, here's my take on it.

This time the case for the palette isn't cardboard and there aren't any pull-out drawers.  It's a solid, rubberized purple plastic with a gem-like smoky crystal Urban Decay logo.  

With the press of a button, you can flip up the lid of the palette (and this lid actually stays open) to reveal a full mirror, 20 palette-exclusive shadows and a full-sized, double-ended eyeshadow brush.

One side of the brush is a fluffy crease/blending brush...

 

The other side is a flat lid/shading brush.

 

 Urban Decay Vice Palette Holiday 2012

(natural light and flash)

First row:  Desperation, Muse, Jagged, Blitz, Penny Lane

Second row: Junkie, Chaos, Occupy, Unhinged, Black Market

Third row:  Provocateur, Rapture, Vice, Noise, Armor

Fourth row: Nevermind, Echo Beach, Anonymous, Freebird, Laced

Swatches in natural light, no primer, left to right:

 

 Desperation, Muse, Jagged, Blitz, Penny Lane

 Junkie, Chaos, Occupy, Unhinged, Black Market

Provocateur, Rapture, Vice, Noise, Armor

Nevermind, Echo Beach, Anonymous, Freebird, Laced

Super easy 2-minute look using Blitz on the lid, Jagged in the crease, Penny Lane on the lower lashline and Anonymous on the browbone.

What I liked:

• The formula on nearly every shadow is perfect.  Creamy-feeling, pigmented, nicely blendable.
• The shadows are perfectly pigmented on their own, but can also be used wet for an extra boost of color, shine and sparkle.  The metallic shades look amazing used wet.  
• The packaging is sturdy and attractive.
• The included brush is regular Urban Decay brush quality and is very convenient for travel.
• Some super gorgeous colors in here!
• Palette included a black, a perfect neutral matte highlight, some sparkly shades, some neutrals, some brights; it's extremely versatile and has practically every color you need to create a wide range of looks.
• The way the colors are arranged is really appealing to my eye.  
• The shadow colors are all exclusive to this palette.  No duplicates!  Though some of the colors do look suspiciously similar to existing Urban Decay colors.
  

What I didn't like:

• Some of the colors aren't as pigmented as I had hoped they would be.  Chaos (the bright blue) and Noise (the bright pink with glitter), the two colors I was looking forward to the most, are the least pigmented.
• Some of the colors are a dark base with a glitter-type shimmer, so they look different on the skin than they do in the pan (Jagged, Occupy, Junkie).
• The glitter shades, even though they are the new and improved Urban Decay shadow formula, do still have glitter fallout.  It's better than the old formula used to be, but the glitter fallout is still not completely eliminated.
• The rubberized palette attracts dust and fingerprints from the very first time you use it (think NARS' rubberized palettes).
• The bristles on the crease/blending end of the brush are (for me personally) a little too floppy for crease application, but this makes it nicer for blending.  I prefer a stiffer brush for crease application.

In my humble, unhealthily makeup-obsessed opinion, this is the best palette Urban Decay has released by far.  I've bought almost every single palette Urban Decay has ever done, and none of them wow me like this one does.  None.  The only other one that comes close for me is the Alice in Wonderland palette.  I think Vice has the perfect variety of colors, ideal shadow formula, a good (and useful) brush, and nice, sturdy packaging that isn't going to get beat up and dented like the cardboard Book Of Shadows ones.  There are so many amazing colors in this palette and they all seem to complement each other.  I'm very happy with the Vice palette.   I would definitely recommend it.

The Urban Decay Holiday 2012 Vice Palette retails for $59 and is available now on urbandecay.com (where I ordered mine) and Sephora.com.

Butter London Holiday 2012 Nail Lacquer Collection Swatches and Review

 I'm not sure if this Butter London holiday collection has a name, but I do know that it's really freakin' glittery.  And I like glitter.

Butter London Fairy Cake.  A mixture of very fine light silver glitter and larger (but still small) silver-based hologram glitter in a clear base.  Not a unique color.  Also seems to have a faded look to it compared to most other similar silver/holo topcoat style glitters. 

Butter London Fiddlesticks.  A rich, deep magenta jelly base with tiny pink glitter.  A little flash of purple here and there.  Makes me think of a pink/magenta version of something like China Glaze Ruby Pumps (or Butter London Chancer).

Butter London Jack The Lad.  Dark evergreen base with yellow-gold, aqua-blue, and grassy green foil shimmer.  Also has a slight blue flash when tilted at an angle.  Extremely pretty polish.  Somewhat similar to the new Zoya holiday color Logan but not an exact replica. 

Butter London Scallywag.  Tiny sky blue glitter in a clear base.  Surprisingly colorful!  And it's very sparkly, as any good glitter should be.  It's also worth noting that this color dries to an attractive sugary/sandy matte finish (like the China Glaze fall glitters) if you don't use topcoat.

Butter London Scallywag, no topcoat.

Butter London Scuppered.  This looks more like Thanksgiving than Christmas to me!  It's a multicolored metallic sparkle polish made up of different shades of brown, bronze, gold, red, and orange, plus it has some larger pieces of bright green glitter for even more color.  It's a lot like Jessica Gingersnap, just browner, a little darker, and with added green glitter. 

Butter London Shambolic.  Shambolic has a lot going on.  It has very dark eggplant purple microglitter, lighter true purple microglitter, all kinds of speckles pink, lavender, blue and red glitter, and on top of all that it has large pink and silver hexagon glitter.  To make it even more complicated, it even has a warm, sort of golden purple duochrome shift when you hold it at an angle.  It's a whole galaxy of purple.

The formula on these was good.  The texture of each one was different (something I've noticed among all the Butter London polishes I've used), but the application on all was easy and presented no difficulty at all.  I used three coats of each polish and none needed more than a third for complete opacity.  Dry time is average bordering on long.  All of them look best with two coats of topcoat.

Doesn't feel like much of a winter/Christmas/holiday collection to me, but I'm still into it.  Look at all those different kinds of glitter!  Fairy Cake and Scallywag are the least unique in the collection and I'd probably skip those in favor of cheaper dupes (like the ones from Color Club), but the rest are pretty fantastic.

What do you think?  Like 'em?  

The Butter London Holiday 2012 collection is available now at Macy's (which is where I ordered mine).

Zoya Ornate Collection Holiday 2012 Swatches and Review

Zoya's Holiday 2012 collection is here and this year it's pretty special.  What's so special about it, you ask?  Well, this collection features the debut of Zoya's first ever holographic polishes.  Yep, that's right, ZOYA MADE HOLOS!

Zoya Aurora.  Aurora is one of the three new holographic colors and out of the three, Aurora seems to have the densest amount of holographic glitter.  The holo in this isn't chunky or rough like true glitter, it's the flat, smooth, flaky-looking type of holo particle like in the China Glaze Kaleidoscope or Ozotic holographic polishes.  The darker purple base in this makes the holographic effect really stand out.

Zoya Blaze.  Blaze is a cool-toned red holo. The interesting thing about this color is that the holographic particles seem to blend in with the red base, giving it an unusual depth while at the same time altering the colors of the rainbow effect.  The red base seems to bring out the gold, red and purple aspects of the hologram while muting the other colors. 

Zoya Electra.  Electra is two different bar glitters in a clear base.  There's a very fine, stringy light silver bar glitter and a larger, chunkier, holographic silver bar glitter.  It can be worn alone or layered, though in my opinion, it's almost too opaque for layering. 

Zoya Logan.  This one isn't holographic, but it's still pretty awesome.  It's a very vibrant green base with chunky gold foil shimmer.  Plus, when viewed at an angle, it has some pretty decent blue duochrome flash on it as well.  

 

Zoya Storm.  This is a black base with chunky scattered holo shimmer.  Of the three holographic colors, this one seems to have the least amount of holo glitter.  It's not weak or inadequate by any means, but it doesn't seem as densely packed with holo pieces as the other two.  This color has a starry sky effect in certain lights, showing mostly black and silver, but the holo comes out beautifully when the light hits it just right.

Zoya Ziv.  Not the typical gold foil, this one has a little something extra to it.  The base is a neutral gold with a grainy foil finish, but it also has some larger, warmer-toned gold flakes in it as well.  When the polish is fully dry, it's very shiny and reflective.  The gold flakes aren't the focal point of the polish, but they add a bit of extra depth and detail to the color. 

I swatched a coat of Electra over all the colors in the collection to give you an idea of how it looks layered:

Zoya Electra (one coat) over Zoya Aurora

 Zoya Electra (one coat) over Zoya Blaze

Zoya Electra (one coat) over Zoya Logan

Zoya Electra (one coat) over Zoya Storm

Zoya Electra (one coat) over Zoya Ziv

The formula on almost all of these was great.  Electra is the oddball. It seemed too thick and a little bit gooey; I think it just needs to be thinned.  Thinning it might also help sheer it out enough for better layering, too.  The rest of the colors were perfect.  Smooth, thin, free-flowing but not runny or pooling, no streaking, no bald spots, good opacity, good brushes.  I did three coats of each color and that's all they needed.  An interesting thing I noticed about these is that all of them (except Electra) dry completely smooth and glossy without any added topcoat. Electra is pretty chunky and needs at least two coats of topcoat to look smooth.  Dry time is fast on the holos, average for all the others.

I love this collection.  It's small but it manages to fit in almost all of my favorite things:  green, purple, glitter, holo and duochrome.  The new holographic colors are especially exciting because I've never seen Zoya do holographic finishes before.  My favorite would probably have to be Storm, followed closely by Logan, but I really like all of them.  I also like this comic book theme on the names in this collection (or am I just reading into them too much?)

I really, really hope that this means there will be more Zoya holos in the future, because the three in this collection are pretty awesome.

The Zoya Ornate collection is available now on zoya.com.

(This was sent for review.)