Review! Urban Decay Stardust

Urban Decay has Stardust eyeshadow on sale, right now, for $6 each.  Overall, I'd say this is a good deal.  They are usually $20 each.  For most of the 5 colors I tried, I wouldn't pay full price for them.  Diamond Dog is the exception.   It is a wonderful taupe-brown that mimics my own eyelid's natural coloring, taking it just a bit darker than it is naturally. 

These have a lot of glitter in them, but I found that the initial impact of the glitter wasn't very obvious.  Once the pigment wears away, and you are left with more of a wash of color, the glitter stands out more.  This faded color, with more impactful glitter, is the look I prefer.

All of the shadows have iridescent glitter.  However, the iridescent effect is somewhat subtle, and the overtone is silver, with flashes of purple, green and pink.  With primer, the color mostly wore off after 4 hours, but the glitter stayed in place with minimal fallout.  The glitter particles are very fine, and not at all chunky or gritty.  I am a bit disappointed that they used (or seem to have used) the same glitter blend in all of the colors.  It would rather them have tailored each glitter combination to more closely compliment the base color.  Because the glitter is iridescent, it picks up the colors of the shadow around it, so they appear to be color-coordinated when first swatched.  However, after the color faded, I could not detect any difference in glitter from the swatches.

These shadows are advertised as being sheer, and they are.  The colors look very vibrant in the pan, but they don't retain that on the skin.  I really like them for soft, summery looks, because I get the high glitter, without the double-impact of a super-bright color.  However, if you want your color to stick around all day, I would use another eyeshadow underneath these for your base color, and use these to top it off with glitter.

Here are the 5 colors I bought, left to right, top row - Void, Bobby Dazzle, Diamond Dog, bottom row - Moon Spoon, Retrograde.  Urban Decay still has a blue and a green shade available, Atmosphere and Griffith, on their website.

Retrograde is a grape purple:

Moon Spoon is a taupe grey, leaning more towards grey:

Bobby Dazzle is a beautiful light champagne (it is more peachy-gold in real life, the flash washed it out):

Void is a pencil-lead black that looks grey in the pan from all the glitter, but when applied has a darker base:

 And here they are, swatched out, in ambient light

With Flash:

Here is a very quick and easy look, using Diamond Dog all over the lid, and Bobby Dazzle above the crease to the eyebrow, and into the inner corner:

Then I added Charcoal Brown Sormeh to the waterline and lashline and smudged, and added mascara:

And it's a super-easy, super-fast, summery daytime look:

As the day wore on, the colors faded (except for the Sormeh), and the glitter stood out much more.  The glitter is very fine, though, so it really does remind me of stars sparkling, and not like a fairy foofed on my face.  Keep in mind that if you don't use a color base underneath these shadows, The pigment probably won't last all day. 


So, do I recommend them?  Well, I would recommend picking up a few shades while they are on sale for $6.  I think the only color I would replace at full price would be Diamond Dog.