Review by Joeybunny - Using Fyrinnae to dupe the Urban Decay Black Palette

It’s no secret that I love Urban Decay palettes. I’ve waxed poetic about the Book of Shadows palettes here on Pink Sith, and about the Summer of Love palette on my own blog. I can’t help it: I’m more than a little enamored with Urban Decay. It was because of my near-irrational love of their palette releases that when I heard about the Urban Decay Black Palette, I wanted it. Immediately. Without researching it. Eep.

Thankfully, I have Elvira to function as my makeup conscience. She’s much wiser than Jiminy Cricket, though, and she linked me to the lovely Charlotte’s posts about this palette on Lipglossing (her blog!). Charlotte did a really interesting experiment with the UD Black Palette; please reference her pictures for a comparison to mine. Before I describe it to you though, let me tell you about the colors housed within the palette:

There is one matte black shade, and five black-based shades (a gold, a green, a blue, a silver, and a purple). The idea is for a high-sparkle colored, smoked look. Ok, great! Sounds good to me.

Now, here’s where it gets interesting. Charlotte swatched the six shades over the UDPP Eden base that comes with the palette, and over UDPP regular. The colors were muddy, devoid of sparkle, and completely not worth their $36 price tag. It wasn’t until Charlotte used Fyrinnae Pixie Epoxy as a base that the colors really shined. The colored sparkles glowed against the black base, and the complexity of each shade came through. Lovely!

In discussing Charlotte’s experiment with Elvira, we (mostly Elvira, and I went along with it) came up with an idea: since I’m such a huge Fyrinnae fan, and I really wanted the UD palette, and the UD palette is expensive, and the UD palette isn’t even worth the money unless used with Pixie Epoxy...

WE WOULD USE FYRINNAE SHADES TO DUPE THE BLACK PALETTE.

AND GUESS WHAT BITCHES?

WE DID IT!

For $12 + $2 shipping (assuming you do mini sizes of each color, and only order the six colors since orders over $20 mean free shipping), you too can own a seriously amazing dupe of the UD Black Palette using the following Fyrinnae eyeshadows. And hell, you don’t even need Pixie Epoxy to make the colors look incredible - but it’d be better if you bought it anyway, because it rocks hard.

Original Urban Decay Black Palette image from lipglossiping.com Used with permission

Here are the shades you need to dupe the palette:

(FYI I keep my Fyrinnae shadows in bead cases from Michaels!)

• Fyrinnae Snow White - the darkest matte black ever, and holy hell, this is an incredible liner shade.
• Fyrinnae Kuroneko - a black base loaded with gunmetal sparkle; the shimmer is multicolored and this shadow is freakin’ pigmented. One dab can cover probably your whole body.
• Fyrinnae Freya - a black-based cool deep purple that has a pink/red lean (as you will see in my swatch pictures, the pink/red lean is most visible when the shadows is used over Pixie Epoxy).
• Fyrinnae Biker Chic - a black-based deep midnight blue. In my opinion, this was the most sparkly color (Kuroneko looks sparklier but the sparkle is more pronounced in Biker Chic, I think).
• Fyrinnae Bastet - a black-based antiqued gold shadow. Truly lovely and this is probably the most wearable shade. It’d make a lovely liner, methinks!
• Fyrinnae The Randy Ferret - a black-based deep green with teal and pink shimmer. The green shadow in the UD palette was clearly the hardest to dupe, but The Randy Ferret is a gorgeous green (it looks the most green over Pixie Epoxy).

So, here’s my attempt to duplicate Charlotte’s experiment. I don’t have UDPP Eden, but I have UDPP Sin and regular UDPP. Of course, I used the Epoxy as well. I’ll leave it up to you, my dear readers, to decide which base brings out the best in each color. I will tell you that I prefer some of the colors over UDPP Sin rather than Pixie Epoxy, but that’s only because Pixie Epoxy can really amplify some of the colors. A good example of this is to see how Freya and The Randy Ferret change over the different bases. Also, Pixie Epoxy and matte eyeshadows don’t play well - see what happened to Snow White?

Over UDPP Sin Eyeshadow Primer

Over regular UDPP Eyeshadow Primer

Over Fyrinnae Pixie Epoxy

Anyway, after doing this experiment I can in no way justify a purchase of the UD Black Palette. Fyrinnae mini sizes are quite large (it takes an average of 30 uses to finish one), and $12 is 1/3 the price of the palette. Throw in a full-sized Pixie Epoxy for $7 or a sample for $1.50, and you’re set! Furthermore, the Fyrinnae colors are much nicer - regardless of what base is used, they all shimmer and shine like they should! Thanks Elvira and Fyrinnae, for never disappointing this happy Bunny.