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undertheashtree · 8 months

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Improving the Urban Decay Cyber Palette.

The Cyber palette came out a couple years ago, and it’s as disappointing now as it was then. The concept was promising, the packaging was pretty, but the execution was poorly done, in my humble opinion. Back when this palette was new, I knew immediately that it wasn’t going to be for me. Two-thirds of the palette is varying shades of pale peachy orange, leaving only four shades that add anything interesting to the color story. Even still, one of those things is a warm metallic pink and the other is a burnt orange.

There’s nothing wrong with a more monochromatic color story. Just look at ColourPop and their dozens of monochromatic 9-pan palettes which were hugely popular once upon a time, and are still widely raved about in the beauty community. I myself have collected many of their monochromatic palettes over the years. Although a lot of them aren’t a part of my life or collection now, I got a lot of use out of them and they have a special place in my heart.

While there’s nothing wrong with monochromatic palettes, they have to be done well. In my opinion, since you can’t get contrast and variation through multiple colors, monochromatic palettes require different textures and making the eyeshadows significantly different depths. The problem with palettes like Cyber is that they feel very monotonous and, therefore, boring (which is never something you want a palette to be. A palette being user-friendly, utilitarian, and/or basic doesn’t make it boring by default.).

I did attempt to keep my version of this palette as similar to the original as I could stand to make it, but I made some, what I consider necessary, changes, in order to make this palette more appealing to myself. Without further ado, here’s my version:

This is definitely one of those BYOPs that I find appealing because I know and love the eyeshadows in it, not necessarily because I love the look of them all together, or because the colors are particularly interesting to me.

If you compare my version right next to the original, you’ll notice that my palette is a little brighter, there’s a bit more color, and I’m obviously missing the metallic reddish shade that sits next to the matte burnt orange at the end. I do wish I had something to use in place of the metallic reddish shade—called Override—but I just didn’t have anything that wasn’t similar to other things I’d already put in the palette or that felt cohesive with the rest of the colors.

I’m only going to delve into the highlights for this one, simply because it’s not that exciting to me. The first three shades I tried to keep as similar to the original shades as I could, but my choices are slightly more colorful than Urban Decay’s. Also, my metallics are definitely shinier than what I can tell from multiple swatch photos of the Cyber palette.

For Electrode (first row, fourth shade), I opted for a glitter. Since I was trying to keep the colors similar, I decided to add some extra texture by using this peachy orange glitter from ColourPop (called Full Effect).

The brown to green duochrome that I used for Cyberspace seems pretty close, although I think the green flip in my eyeshadow (Crystal, from Beauty Bay’s Book of Magic palette) is much stronger than Urban Decay’s, making it much more obviously duochrome. The base color also seems more pink that the Cyberspace, which influenced by decision with what to use in place of Gadget.

Gadget looks very similar to Virtual in the brand’s swatches, the biggest difference being that Gadget is a bit more pink and Virtual is more orange. I decided to go with something more mauve-y to better match the base color of Crystal.

For Call I.T., Not A Bot, Static, and Y3K, I just went with more colorful versions of the Urban Decay shadows. They’re still toned down, but I think my options are more interesting, textured, and will perform better than Urban Decay’s.

With Override, I wanted to try to dupe it. I don’t have any metallics similar to it, and I didn’t want to use another glitter because it would be too similar to Full Effect. Instead, I decided to use this shade as an opportunity to add more texture and a little more coolness to the palette. I went with this glitter from ColourPop, called All Aura Again, and it’s got a mix of chunkier and finer iridescent glitter. It reflects purple, blue, green, as well as some pink and orange.

Finally, for Byte, I really wanted to keep this the same, so I went with this burnt orange matte from Natasha Denona (called Amhara). I wish there was at least on more matte with some depth, but I feel like this compliments the palette really well and adds some visual interest.

So there you have it, my (improved) version of the Urban Decay Cyber palette. If you’d like to see me build this palette, the video is up on my YouTube channel. I’ll also be posting a video on Friday showing three looks I’ve done with the palette. The link to my channel will be below the swatches.

Eyeshadows are listed in order of the palette (left to right, top to bottom).

Musk Rose - Ace Beaute Floral Vintage palette Peach For The Stars - Give Me Glow Pastel Dreams palette Samus - Kaleidos Club Nebula palette Full Effect - ColourPop single Crystal - Beauty Bay Book of Magic palette Vintage Taupe - Natasha Denona (from several palettes) Misty - ColourPop single You're My Only Hope - Kaleidos Club Nebula palette Tundra - E.L.F. Cosmetics Earth and Ocean palette Unexpected - J.D. Glow single All Aura Again - ColourPop In A Trance palette Amhara - Natasha Denona Peak palette

#build your own palette #building my own palettes #byop #singles #eyeshadow #eyeshadows

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