Who HASN’T heard about this release yet? From the day it was available I read and watched all the reviews, trying to imagine the swatch tones on my skin and decipher if it is worth purchasing for myself. I mean I own a variety of eyeshadow palettes already, so do I really need another one? I hummed and hawed for weeks… I even added it in my Sephora basket and my Beauty Boutique by Shoppers Drug Mart basket just in case either one sold out (lol) but I didn’t hit the “ORDER” button until last week. I know…I’m so indecisive! My order arrived today and could hardly contain myself! I ripped open the brown box to get my slightly sweaty hands in it, and now I just have to add my review here 🙂

The focus will be on my initial reaction and swatches on my own skin, since there are already plenty of reviews comparing the prior Naked palettes to this one. Some of the reviews are so top notch I really have nothing else to opine on the palette differences.

At first glance – Beautiful packaging in a gorgeous monochrome colour scheme, and choice of material is soft and a little plush. It glimmers a little when the sunlight hits it.

The above and following two photos were taken in bright sunlight, I was hoping the colours would read as true to real life as possible. You can see the entire palette veers heavily on the warm side, which is right up my alley. My skin tone is light-medium and very yellow (MAC NC25-35 depending on season), so I tend to lean towards warm terracotta browns and bronzes for my eyeshadow colours.

On my skin, most of the eyeshadows compliment my skin except for Bribe, which is looking a tad cooler than the rest on me. I tried this on my brow bones to highlight today, and I can still make it work by blending really well. Blur, the last shadow in the palette, is so close to my skin colour it almost disappears! Still I think it’s a good base colour to lay down before adding in any other colour including the transitional shades.

Many other reviews said the worst shade is Dreamweaver due to it’s formulation, and I agree – It is so chunky and hard to lay down even to swatch the shadow! The above photo is telling of how I struggled to swatch that darn colour on my arm! I can’t even imagine what my eyeshadow brush will do to it..probably make a mess of my still clean palette or not pick up colour at all. I saw another reviewer said to use a damp, dense, flatter brush to work the colour so I may try this method when I test it out on my lids (so far I’ve avoided using Dreamweaver because of my initial struggles with it!)

I’ve gotten good use out of the rest of the shades so far: Barely Baked, Angel Fire (both for the ball of my eye and inner corners), Reputation, Burn, End Game (as my liner), Distilled, Bucked and Boundaries for a nice sheen of colour. The only shade I’m still figuring out is Retro, a bright coral shade. I’m simply intimated by this one, as I hardly where coral colours and unsure how to incorporate this into my daily looks. I’ll play around with this at home. Maybe I’ll find good use for this as a night-time punchy colour…but not so much for the office. 🙂

I included a couple more photos of the palette in different lighting for perspective. I always find this helpful when checking out reviews. Hopefully you do too!

Have you tried the new UD Naked Reloaded palette yet? What do you think?

-E