Urban Decay Holiday Nail Kit 2011 Swatches and Review

This year's holiday collection from Urban Decay is heavy on the sparkles, just the way I like it. There's the Stardust lipglosses, the Starlight glitter body art kit, the sparkling flavored body powders (which technically aren't new, but the packaging is different), and now the 2011 Holiday Nail kit. In my humble opinion, this is the best nail set they've done since the resurrection of Urban Decay nail polish.


The back of the tray they come in has a little description and ingredients. The polish is three free. The packaging also coordinates with the Book of Shadows IV with those little butterflies.

The shades are:

Barlust. This is a rich, velvety-looking brown shimmer, but it's not just a plain brown. It has all kinds of multicolored particles in it. You may need to enlarge the pictures to see it, but the dominant colors I see are gold, green and red.


Gunmetal. This shade was in the Apocalyptic nail kit from 2009. It's a soft, fuzzy looking grey with some brown tones in it. This year's seems to have less brown in it, but I haven't done a side by side comparison to be sure. Could just be by eyes playing tricks on me. The finish is slightly frosty so be careful when applying to avoid crooked brushstrokes.



Hot Mess. This is a bright but saturated magenta glass fleck. It's extremely sparkly because it's packed with tons of glass fleck particles and the jelly base really lets them shine through. There's even a slight pink and gold duochrome to the polish at certain angles. You can see it on my nails and in the bottle in the second picture.


Mars. A green glitter foil. This is a blue-toned deep emerald green. The finish is a foil base with a sprinkle of silver microglitter that sits on top of the foil and adds visual texture (but lies completely smooth). It's like when you see the first snowflakes of winter on the boughs of the pine trees.


Wrecked. A dark, vampy plum wine creme. Not the most unique shade, but still sexy.



Ziggy. A really shiny multicolor glitter. The most dominant color I see in the mix is gold, but I also see pink, green, blue, purple and silver. When the light hits it, the silver and purple colors come out (you can see a good example of that in the second picture). Otherwise, it looks mostly gold to me with pink being the second most noticeable overall color. Really fun color. Ziggy played guitar...

The formula on these was better than the formula in the previous sets, but still pretty similar. They're still a little thick, but have much less of that 'three free' thick texture that was present in the past sets. I had no real difficulty applying other than the slight thick texture in some shades (Wrecked and Barlove were the thickest). These are mini sized polishes so you really do have to load your brush more than you think you should, but once I got used to the amount of polish I needed for each nail, application was pretty normal. Dry time is on the long side.

I really do think this is the best set they've done. Every color is gorgeous, the formula is improved and I just overall really enjoyed all the details of the kit. Mars is especially nice to see in this kit. Barlove and its tiny multicolored shimmer is also much appreciated by me. The only thing I really didn't like about this kit is the Gunmetal repromote. I would have rather seen one more brand new color instead of one I already have. I know I say this EVERY SINGLE TIME I talk about Urban Decay nail polish, but... A Toxin re-release would have been cool, too. I'd even settle for Id. No one makes colors like that anymore. Ah, well, now I'm starting to ramble...


This limited edition set of six mini (5ml / 0.17fl oz) nail polishes is $28 and available now from Urban Decay.

(This was sent to me for review.)