The Urban Decay Electric Palette is Everything You Dreamed Of

 

Full disclosure – I am so happy and proud to announce that yours truly is amongst the fabulous bloggers chosen to debut Urban Decay’s Electric Palette! You can see my photo right here on their page, along with a few quotes about my favorite color from the palette (right now that’d be Fringe, with Freak being a runner up). Click here to check that out!

Urban Decay has enjoyed a longstanding reputation as the department store brand with edge, great pigmentation and sizzling colors. Eye shadow shades like Fishnet and Woodstock were some of the reasons I remember being first attracted to the brand. Urban Decay was known for bringing the glitters and the brights, and I was here for all of it. But then things shifted a bit. The brand known for high impact colors became equally known and desired for all things Naked. Longtime fans of UD love the  Naked, Naked 2 and Naked 3 palettes, but I know I’m not the only one who was ready for them to pump up the JAM. And now they have, with the Electric Palette. Get into THIS, bellas:

 

  WHOA at these colors! So bright! Such high impact! So SUMMERTIME!

The palette features 10 electric shadows, and two of them are known to UD lovers – Revolt and Chaos. The others are brand spanking new.

The Electric Palette wouldn’t be complete without a little controversy. I’ll admit, I had already opened the product and tried it out before I realized – in fine print on the back of the package, it clearly says “WARNING: Slowburn, Savage, Jilted and Urban are not intended for immediate eye area.” Whoops! I had already used it around my eye area without thinking twice (as one would) and I didn’t notice any effects to be afraid of. I reached out to Urban Decay for further clarification and they offered me an official statement:

“We created the Electric Pressed Pigment Palette with artistry in mind. Using pressed pigments was the only way for us to create heavily saturated brights with the intense pigment load we craved. Traditional eyeshadow formulas just wouldn’t cut it. To achieve shades like these, we started with our existing Eyeshadow formula and modified it to create a new Pressed Pigment formula.

Everywhere but the U.S., the Electric Palette is an eyeshadow palette. Because of a technicality, in the U.S. it’s considered a multiuse artistry palette. To get the most out of this palette, experiment and see what works for you. You can use the Electric Palette all over (and that’s where the creativity comes in!).

A few shades contain a colorant that has not yet been approved for the use around the immediate eye area. However, this restriction only applies in the U.S.; in every other country where Urban Decay is sold, these shades are approved for use around the eyes.

Bottom line? We didn’t want to limit the Electric Palette to eyeshadow. It’s an artistry palette with unlimited possibilities! How you use these shades is up to you. (And no matter where you use them, you’ll get insane color payout.)“

So basically the bright neon pigments are not approved by the FDA for around the eye use – Christine of Temptalia has more of an explanation on her blog about all of this.

Other commonly used beauty products that aren’t approved by the FDA include henna, eyelash tints and kohl (AKA kajal, which I grew up using in Trinidad). It’s actually been really interesting learning more about the FDA in terms of cosmetics regulations – click here, here and here to read more about all of it, and click here to read about the campaign for safer cosmetics. European countries frequently ban products that pass muster here, but this seems to be a rare opposite case. I offer this as a disclaimer – I chose of my own free will to use the Urban Decay Electric palette as eye shadow, but if you have concerns and sensitive eyes you absolutely should heed the package warnings and use those colors alternatively – as blush, or nail polish or however you’d like.

So having said that, here’s how I rocked Electric.

For look #1, I created a gradient blue look along the lashline, featuring Chaos, Gonzo and Fringe.

For look #2 – I rocked Jilted from lash line to lid and Savage from the middle to the outer corners, layered over Jilted. These are also GREAT for layering and enhancing the look BTW.

 

 

Shout out to amazing Chicago MUA Viola Nicholson for the Jilted/Savage look, and keep an eye out for a whole ‘nother photo shoot we did together! For those who have asked about the lighting of these pics – that’s totally natural lighting and these pics were snapped by my favorite Chicago photographer Chuck Olu-Alabi. Each look was snapped on a different day. I think I do look a little less glowy than normal in the second look but it was totally natural lighting. Blame it on Chicago winter.

Via Twitter, I realized that makeup lovers are turning to me for things I don’t typically do, like swatches. I admire the beauty bloggers who do swatches and really detailed looks. But I’ve always been very old school in my blogging – I’m all about the writing and sharing the experience, but in terms of being a makeup artist and swatcher, I prefer to leave that to the experts. But because I’ve been asked, here are swatches of Urban Decay’s Electric Palette on brown skin, in natural light, just for you!

Some of the shadows have a beautiful iridescence that is gorgeous in person but difficult to capture on camera. Fringe and Freak both look really different in the pan than they do in these photos. They’re gorgeous, IMO.

Please know if you ever want me to blog about or address or answer ANYTHING, all you have to do is ask. You can leave me a comment, you can shoot me an e mail, you can tweet me or leave a comment on Facebook or Instagram. I’m all about transparency and I do try to respond to politely asked questions and help in any way I can.

So what’s the verdict? I really like this palette and I think it’s totally worth the purchase. I am already predicting that this will go the route of Naked, and become a movement within Urban Decay complete with multiple palettes, lip color and who knows what else? The sky’s the limit for Electric and I am HERE for all of it!

And on a personal note, I am still pinching myself that one of the department store brands I coveted so much as I was on the come up, would look to someone like me to be one of the faces of their product. I feel very Mama-I-made-it about this, so indulge me for a minute. I would like to thank Urban Decay for this awesome opportunity!

What are your thoughts? Are you into Electric? Which color are you most excited about in this palette?