Urban Decay Vegan Palette - Mini-Review and Swatches

Hey loves! I hope everyone had a fantastic holiday - if you're heading back to school or work soon, good luck! My three siblings are absolutely bummed about having to go back to school tomorrow! Luckily I still have two weeks of break left, so if you're like me and still have time to relax, enjoy it!

Anyway, I was browsing Facebook today and someone had posted a status telling everyone who read it to get off of Facebook and do something productive. I kinda took that to heart and decided to go swatch the Urban Decay Vegan Palette that my mom had gotten me for Christmas - to be honest I was hoping for the Naked Palette, but I was with my mom in Sephora when she picked the Vegan Palette up and they were totally out of the Naked Palette. Hopefully if I go back in a week or so they'll have some more in, but until then ...

(The colors can be seen better in the picture on the left, but you can really see the glitter and shimmer in the picture on the right.)

I decided not to do a full-blown review of this one, because Urban Decay is fairly consistent when it comes to eyeshadow quality and these colors are all available as singles and have been around for a while - plus, I'm lying in my bed in my sweatpants (actual sweatpants, not even yoga pants) and living off of chocolate and Advil, so focusing on writing a review just wasn't happening right now. But I still wanted to at least share a few thoughts with you guys.

First of all, the packaging on this is almost too cute to resist. And I'm a sucker for adorable animals - even my little brother had to admit the elephant on the inside was cute. And while the shades are all available in the regular line, this palette is definitely a solid collection of colors. I wish Urb was a tiny bit more pigmented, but other than that I really like all the colors. I do already own Smog in like five different forms, but it's also always been a favorite of mine, so I guess that's not really a terrible thing. One of the things I really like about Urban Decay's palettes like these is that even though they only come with a few colors, they range from neutral to funky and bright. For a beginner, Twice Baked, Smog, and Half Baked are really nice neutrals, Urb and Gunmetal are slightly more colorful but still very wearable with a little practice, and Minx is very bright and a great color to work your way up to. I guess the word I'm looking for is proportionate - it's not all neutrals or all bright colors, but a balanced blend of both. If you already have a lot of these colors and can resist the packaging, I would probably skip this palette, but if not it's definitely a very nice buy, and how precious would it be as a gift?

XOXO, Ally