Mushroom by Urban Decay: Smoked Palette

Disclaimer:  I purchased this.

I've got some confessions to make.  I'm not completely in love with Urban Decay's eyeshadow, even though I own 84 of them.  I don't find myself reaching for them very often, in spite of the lovely colors and generally great formula.  After pondering on this, I think it's because so many of them seem well, frosty, to me.  We won't even talk about the glitter in some of them.

You can see the dips in Freestyle and Kinky, but the rest....

As I get older and my eyelids age along with me, I'm seeing that high shimmer finishes are not really doing me any favors.  But, I don't want perfectly good shadows to languish, so I'm determined to find ways to wear my more shimmery Urban Decay shadows that are flattering.

Mushroom

Here's another confession:  I've had the Urban Decay Smoked Palette for well over a year, and other than the two lightest matte shadows, I rarely touch it.  So, I've hauled it out for the past several weeks and am playing with the other shadows to see whether or not my disinterest is warranted.  Predictably, I started off with the more neutral colors like Mushroom.  Let's see if I can get this lovely brownish gray to work for me :-)

So, I used Maybelline's Color Tattoo in Barely Beige as a base shade, followed by Freestyle to minimize shimmer.  I then used Mushroom on top of that.  The color looks a bit more gray than brown to me, but I do like how it turned out! 

For this look, I used Maybelline's Color Tattoo in Audacious Asphalt as a base color and then topped it with Mushroom, which definitely amped up the gray tone and deepened the color.  I used Freestyle to soften the edges and Kinky as a brow highlighter.  

I know there have to be ways to get even the most metallic of shadows to work for me, it's just a matter of figuring it out :-)