Review: Urban Decay Naked3 Eyeshadow Palette

Hi everyone, and welcome to my blog!

I thought I'd start out with something that everyone will recognise: the Urban Decay Naked3 palette. I only acquired it about 8 months ago, so it's still fairly new to me. Below are my thoughts on the formula, the colour selection, what I liked, and what I didn't like. Enjoy!

First of all, the shadows feel very soft, specifically the shimmer shades. The matte shades feel a little chalky to the touch, but they actually have way more colour payout. There's a little bit of fallout in all of the colours, but it's only the glitter shades you need to worry about, as you'll be scrubbing glitter from your under-eyes for DAYS. They all blend really nicely though, especially with the brush that comes with the palette - this has got to be my favourite included brush that I've received with an eyeshadow palette. The big, fluffy end is perfect for blending and building, and the smaller end is great for packing in colour.

(Mecca Cosmetica stock photo from meccacosmetica.com.au)

I don't have much to say about the advertised palette Vs the real-life palette - the colours were really well-represented on the Mecca website, unlike a few palettes I've bought that ended up looking really different in person.

The palette comes with 12 shadows - some matte, and some shimmer. Let me start out by saying that the matte shadows have to be my absolute favourites - they have amazing colour payout and are very full coverage. "Strange" is a very very pale nude, "Limit" is a cool-toned dusty rose, and "Nooner" is a cool-toned pinky-brown. I was using the shade "Strange" as an eyeshadow base for a very long time, so much so that I soon hit pan and decided I should probably find something else to use as a base. Because I'm so pale, it just created the perfect blank canvas for me, and it was very hard to find a replacement (for my current eyeshadow base I swap between: the "Firefly" pressed shadow by ColourPop Cosmetics and the shade 'Divinity' in Too Faced's Chocolate Bon Bons palette). The other matte shades, "Limit" and "Nooner", are incredible, cool-toned mauves - I'm all about cool-toned shadows, and these ones are perfect to use in the crease or as transition colours. I usually start with "Limit", and blend"Nooner" into the outer corners for depth.

Now for the shimmer shades - my favourites are "Liar", "Factory", and "Darkside". "Liar" and "Factory" are these beautiful mauve/pinky-brown metallic shades (a light and dark version respectively), with just the right amount of shimmer to them, and "Darkside" is a deep taupe/mauve satin. I love using "Darkside" in the outer corners for a really gorgeous smoky eye, with "Liar" all over the lid and "Nooner" in the crease.

The rest of the shimmer shades I found to be a bit too difficult to use - first, there's "Dust", which looks like a gorgeous pale pink shimmer in the pan, with loads of glitter. I found this one too hard to build, as it was just too translucent on the skin, and even when I wet my brush it still ended up looking really patchy and sparse. Next is "Burnout", a pale peach/gold colour. I think I only ever used this in my inner corners, to be honest, for a nice spot of shimmer. It really matches "Limit", so I'd wear those two together during job interviews or something, but they're not bright or colourful enough for me to wear for fun. "Buzz" is a bright metallic pink, which looks like a gorgeous shade in the pan, however I had the same issues with it as "Dust". I really wanted "Buzz" to be this amazing opaque shade, but it always ended up looking like a sheer sprinkle of pink glitter on my eyelid. "Trick" is a straight-up true gold - this one I used a few times, but since all of my favourite shades in the palette are cool-toned, I found this one hard to place, as it's got a nice warm glow to it. It just didn't match any of the looks I created. Next is "Mugshot", which I found to be a dirtier version of "Liar", so most of the time I just went straight for "Liar" instead. Last is "Blackheart" - this one is very dark, and very black. If I ever used this shade, it was only the tiniest bit in the outer corners, or as a blended-out liner. It has violet/pink glitter mixed in with it, which is very visible in the pan, but on the eyes it doesn't show up very well.

In the end, I really like this palette, and it was my holy-grail palette for a good long while. The only issue I have with it is the wearability - I found that some of the shades (like "Trick") just did not belong, and "Mugshot" was far too similar to "Liar" for me to use it. The sheer nature of the pink metallic shades also ruined it for me - I wanted a great colour payout, but ended up with a light dusting of glitter. You can definitely tell which shades are my favourite.

Final verdict: 3.8/5 stars.

Thanks for reading, and God bless! xo

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