Category Archives: Makeup
Mary Kay Illuminating Drops (Review & Swatches)
If you’re looking to up your glow for the coming warmer months (if you’re in the northern hemisphere, that is!), then you may want to take a peek at Mary Kay‘s new Illuminating Drops.
The Illuminating Drops come in three different shades (Silver Sands, Golden Horizon and Bronze Light) and contain 15 mls of product – which is a TON! The average foundation bottle has 30 mls of product, so you’re getting half of a full foundation!
The application method for the Illuminating Drops is, as you would expect with the name, dropper-style. I’m used to facial oils being in dropper-style bottles which are far less viscous than these drops, so I found it was best to push down the nozzle when you have the whole cap off the product, insert it into the bottle and then release it so that the tube can fill up. If you push the nozzle down and then release when you have the cap on, it just forces air into the bottle and you won’t actually collect any product when you release the button.
That being said, you don’t need the tube to scoop up much product for using on your face, because a little goes a very long way with the Illuminating Drops. There are three shades which (with my lack of MUA knowledge) will be able to suit the majority of skin tones.
- Silver Sands: a pearlescent pink with a soft silver cast.
- Golden Horizon: slightly golden, but not that strong in colour on my skin. Every time I look at this shade, the first thing that comes to mind is BECCA’s Champagne Pop.
- Bronze Light: the one shade that won’t really work on my skin tone because of the depth. This is a gorgeous deep bronze with golden highlights.
Silver Sands has a lovely soft pink hue that tends to come across quite silvery. I opted to pair this with cooler toned eyeshadow looks as I felt it worked best with them. It can appear quite pale at times, so I think this would work best for fair to very light skintones.
Golden Horizon initially surprised me as I thought it would be too dark for my skintone. When you blend it out it loses a lot of the pigment that’s inherent in my swatch shot above. It still maintains a golden hue, but I found it more wearable that Silver Sands just because of how it paled down.
I found these both applied best when I dropped a little bit of product onto the back of my hand, tapped it out with my finger to disperse it a bit, and then tapped it on to the tops of my cheekbones with my finger tip. A brush seemed to disturb my makeup underneath, so I definitely prefer to use my finger. I’m not generally one for finger application, but this seemed to work just fine and it blended out incredibly easily without much fuss.
Final Thoughts
These are beautiful! The Mary Kay Illuminating Drops are an easy no muss, no fuss highlighter to wear during the warmer months (or any time really) when you want that lit from within glow… but with a little bit of an extra boost of shine. It’s a healthy glow – the kind that reminds me of a beach-y face that’s been wearing sunscreen for a while and has a hint of gleam from that product. Golden Horizon was definitely my favourite of the two I tried (I didn’t try Bronze Light because it’s too deep and I just wouldn’t wear it even as a bronzer to be honest).
The products featured in this post were sent to me for consideration.
Swatch Sunday: ColourPop Ooh La La
These 9 pan colourful palettes by ColourPop are seriously delightful!
This is the Ooh La La palette which is heavily focused on pink. And it’s only $12 USD!
ColourPop Ooh La La Swatches
Post contains affiliate links.
Benefit Cheekleader Palettes (Review & Swatches)
I’ve been long lamenting the fact that I haven’t been enjoying many face palettes in the last few years. I feel like ever since Tarte released their Off The Cuff palette (in 2013 for crying out loud!), I just haven’t been happy with anything else. And since it’s six years later now… well, I can definitely say I’ve been looking a long damn time for something fresh and new that could even come close to rivaling that Tarte palette. Well… I think I’ve found it!
And it comes to us courtesy of Benefit taking some of their existing blush shades, whacking them in a new format of palette and tossing in brand new highlighters. While I’ve always been interested in Benefit‘s blushes and bronzers, I’ve never been attracted to the box packaging. (So much so that I had a Hoola bronzer and ended up decluttering it because I just couldn’t get down with the box.) So this packaging immediately drew me in because of so many factors: no boxy packaging, no brush (honestly that weird straight cut “brush” they put in their boxes is just garbage) and it’s in cardboard packaging which is a personal favourite of mine. Heck, I even like the name Cheekleaders. How cute is that??
I was *EXCITED* to try these out!
The first Cheekleaders I ended up playing with is an all in one face palette. This is the Mini Bronze Squad and it comes with their traditional Hoola shade, their Gold Rush blush, and a brand new highlighter called Cookie.
I already knew I liked Hoola from having had it in the past, so that was a win. I was impressed with the reflective ability of Cookie, and then I was kind of like “well okay” to Gold Rush since it seemed like such a boring shade. I should’ve known better though…
…since some of my most loved blushes look the most boring in their pans. And sure enough, the combo of Gold Rush, Cookie and Hoola was a frigging knockout! I love how Gold Rush adds a bit of colour to my cheeks without going overboard, and then Cookie comes in with a glowing ethereal bang!
So the Mini Bronze Squad trio? Amazing. My compliments to the chef!
Although I tried the bronze squad first, I was the most intrigued by the Mini Pink Squad. Likely because Galifornia is MY kind of coral, and I’d heard that Dandelion was a lovely every day shade.
Sure enough, Galifornia is an absolute stunner. Although I have to say Dandelion seemed kind of dusty in a swatch. Tickle, the highlighter, while it fits the pink theme of the palette, is definitely a colour I don’t tend to reach for as much. It’s a pink/lavender shift with a slight gold reflect to it. It’s actually fairly unique, and once I got used to the concept of the shade, I ended up loving it too.
For this look I’ve got Dandelion on my cheeks with Tickle as a highlighter on top. I feel like Dandelion performed a lot like Gold Rush does, albeit pinker. It definitely wasn’t the dusty mess that the swatch led me to believe. It’s a soft “boring” shade, but it does wonders on the cheeks to liven them up. Tickle is definitely a softer highlighter when compared to Cookie from the previous palette, but I think it works out well with the more pink tones of the blushes in this palette.
And finally – my favourite shade – Galifornia. This is definitely the strongest blush I’ve used by Benefit – it’s incredibly pigmented, so be sure to go in with a light hand.
If you can believe it, the Tickle highlighter actually helped to subdue a bit of the colour of the blush which was kind of interesting. It grounded the blush a bit more than I think a super bright highlighter would’ve done.
All in all though? Another fantastic trio!
Final Thoughts
Holy crap, am I ever in love. I had initially liked the look of these Cheekleaders palettes before I even played with them, but once I got to using them on my face I was even more impressed. The colours just work together, and I didn’t feel the need to reach for different face products outside of these trios for a few weeks. I know Benefit‘s boxed powders aren’t anything new, and many people have been loving them for quite a long time, but as I said at the beginning of this post – I was so turned off by the box packaging that I just never bothered to pick any of them up outside of Hoola. Now that I have them in a mini compact form I am so, so in love with them. And what’s exciting about these is that they retail for $40 CAD each – which is the price of one of their regular size bronzers or blushes (which, unless you’re pummeling through only one blush year ’round – you will NEVER finish). So for my $40 CAD, I’m getting three powders at 2.5 grams each which I think is frankly incredible. Well done Benefit, I love these so, so much!
The Benefit Cheekleaders Trios can be purchased at sephora.ca for $40 CAD or on benefitcosmetics.com for $30 USD.
The products featured in this post were sent to me for review. Post contains affiliate links.
Swatch Sunday: Urban Decay Alice Through The Looking Glass
Before anyone gets too excited – this isn’t a new palette! The Urban Decay Alice Through The Looking Glass palette was launched in 2016 for a limited time only.
I’m swatching it now because the lovely Hailey was decluttering this palette from her collection and I snapped it up!
Urban Decay Alice Through The Looking Glass Swatches
