Naked 2 \\ Urban Decay

 The Naked 2 eyeshadow palette by Urban Decay was a very anticipated product due to the success of their first Naked palette. Once launched, getting a hold of one of these became very difficult as everyone was trying to buy one. It took me about 3 or 4 visits to the Urban Decay counter at Debenhams over a few months before I finally managed to buy one! As you can probably guess, I was overjoyed and could not wait to start playing! The one obvious improvement in this palette over the Naked one is the hard case which makes it better for travel or just keeping in a makeup bag as the eyeshadows don't get cracked and ruined.

This eyeshadow palette consists of 12 shades: 9 of the shades are shimmery/metallic and only 3 of them are matte. Because of this, if you aren't very keen on shiny eyeshadow colours I would suggest you steer clear of this as it really would be a massive waste of money. The colours Foxy and Bootycall are good to use as highlighters. I much prefer Bootycall to Foxy as I think its a nicer colour and it suits my skin tone better. I find Foxy is a little too yellow for my liking. My most used colours are Tease, Snakebite and Suspect, closely followed by Pistol and Verve. However, my favourite colour in the palette has to be Busted which is great to use for the outer v or as a liner. The thin end of the brush, I find, is great for lining. My least favourite colour (after Half-Baked and Foxy which I think are too yellowy and make me look ill) is Blackout and this isn't because it isn't a nice black, but, out of all the colours it is the hardest to blend and so I find that it ends up looking patchy.

If you are a beginner when it comes to blending colours, I would say that this palette is not the one to start with. The colours are highly pigmented and you need very very little on the brush: I often choose to apply the colour I want all over my lid with my ring finger as it gives a smoother look. For accentuating your crease, I think the most important thing to do is to build. Start with only a small bit of product on the brush at the furthest out bit of your crease and lightly blend inwards in a windscreen wiper motion, but do it slowly - speed will not blend it quicker or better or anything.

The brush you get free with the palette is of reasonable quality: it is better than a lot of brushes that you get free in compacts/palettes/etc, but for blending, I would highly recommend you get a proper, good quality blending brush like the MAC 224 Tapered blending brush - this makes application much easier.

Also, when I got my palette which was near the beginning of this year (I think) it came with 4 trial eyeshadow primer potions (a small sachet of each) - these were the original, sin, eden and anti-aging primer potions. So far, I have only used the Eden primer and there is enough product for at least 4/5 applications as only a tiny amount is needed to cover the eyelid. My best bit of advice is to start my squeezing out much less than you think you will need and then build on it if you think you need more. However, don't use the primer if it has been open for more than a week: this would be unhygienic primarily, and it will begin to go clumpy.

Overall, I absolutely adore the Naked 2 palette. It's excellent quality, the range of colours is good and I have found that it lasts very well. The only downside is the price (£37) so if you're on a budget this may not be the best product for you, however I think that if you can afford it, it is worth the money!