Hey all, before I get into the meat of this review, a heads up! I just signed up for MagicLinks, so from now on the links to makeup in these reviews will be affiliate links and if you make a purchase I will get a very small commission. I wanted to be totally up front about it! Buying makeup isn’t cheap, and these blog posts take a lot of my time to do, so if I can make a little money to buy MORE makeup, I feel like we all win, right? From now on I’ll have an official disclaimer at the bottom but since it’s new, I wanted to start this post with it so everything’s on the up and up. Cool? Cool. Now let’s talk GLITTER.
Moondust is a glittery eye shadow formula that has been part of Urban Decay’s line for a few years — and before that they had a similar one called Stardust. It’s a super fine glitter in a sheer eye shadow base. People tend to either love it or hate it — as a glitter fiend I’m in the love it category, but I almost never use the two I have because I basically forget about my eye shadow singles.
I had long wished that UD would come out with a Moondust palette so I could have a small amount of a lot of colors, since this is one of those “a little goes a long way” products! Finally they delivered, and not only that, but it comes in one of my favorite cases ever… Moondust is housed in a heavy glittery plastic (acrylic?) case with the logo cut out against a mirrored background. SO SHINY. And best of all, because the glitter is part of the plastic, it’s perfectly smooth and it isn’t going to shed everywhere.
The Moondust palette comes with 8 colors in a nice mix of neutrals and brights. Normally I’d complain about the amount of empty space here, but since these babies are pretty messy, it’s good to give them some room so they don’t cross-contaminate.
One reason why a lot of people don’t like this formula is that it’s a little high maintenance. You can’t just grab a brush and slap it on. You have to pat it on with a dry brush or your fingertips, or paint it on with a damp brush. And even damp you’re not going to get an opaque application with most colors (except maybe Lithium). These really look best applied over a base color, for added depth and sparkle. Also, because they are glitter, they are MESSY. This is one of those products where you might wanna do your eyes first, clean up, and then do your face.
I decided to be super thorough with these, so from left to right they’re applied dry over bare skin, wet over bare skin, wet over a NYX Milk Crayon and wet over a NYX Black Bean Crayon. I applied all of these with Q-Tips. Just like with the Aromaleigh pigments I don’t think Q-Tips are the most ideal tool, but I don’t have 8 identical brushes and it would take forever to wash one brush well enough to remove all the glitter between each use. So! Q-Tips it is.
This is the top row, from top to bottom: Specter, Element, Magnetic, and Lightyear. When I saw Lightyear I pretty much had to have the palette. It’s worth noting that it is a much warmer green than it appears in the pan. In the pan you’re really seeing the blue shift of the glitter, applied more of the grass green base comes through. I approve.
These are a little messier and a little blurrier because since I was doing them on my right arm, I had to apply them and take the picture with my left hand. You’d think all of the zilling and fan veiling I do with my left hand would make me ambidextrous but NO.
From top to bottom these are the bottom row colors, Granite, Lithium, Vega and Galaxy. Lithium is probably the highest quality color in the bunch, it’s really well pigmented and of course old gold looks great with everything. Applied over black, it gives you a really cool pyrite effect. Galaxy also looks really good over the black.
FYI, I now have black eye crayon smudges all over my arm, and a rainbow of glitter. I hope you guys appreciate my dedication to this blog!
For my performance this past weekend I wore Lithium applied with a damp brush (I used the one that came with the NARSissist Dual Intensity palette) over a dark bronzey eye shadow. The result was a really spectacularly sparkly eye with a lot of depth, and some glitter fallout. This image was taken after my show, when I’d been wearing this for 4-5+ hours and it looks pretty good!
And of course I had to wear Lightyear! This was applied over Urban Decay primer with the damp NARS brush again, and then I used a damp angled brush to use it as a liner under my eye as well. You can’t really tell in the photo but I also put just a little Magnetic in the center of my lips to give more depth to the matte color. That was just patted on with a dry Q-Tip.
My arms are a mess. The other four colors are on my right arm. #swatches #moondust #glitter #sparkly #glittereverywhere #beautybloggingforbellydancers
Finally, here’s an Instagram vid showing you a bit of the color play in the top row of colors. I really find that video helps give a better idea of what glitter is like than still images do!
In closing, personally I like this palette. At $49 it’s a little spendy, but you get 8 beautiful, sparkly colors. And if previous years are any indication, Sephora and probably Urban Decay will have pre-holiday sales in the next month or two, so you may be able to pick it up for a few dollars less if you’re patient.
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