I’ve always been super keen to try out Tarte‘s face palettes – their 2013 Off The Cuff holiday launch is still one of my favourites to date, so I’m always eager to see what else they’ll put out in the face department.

New out in the face palette department for the brand is their Tarteist Pro Glow + Blush palette. It features four shades of blush, a highlighter and a bronzer. There is a definite emphasis on glow in this palette – all the blushes have a shimmery edge, and the bronzer does have specs of glitter throughout the formula that are readily apparent on the skin.

The palette retails for $59 CAD/$45 USD and each pan contains 5.6 grams of product. They say the product is their traditional Amazonian Clay formula, although I found the formula on these to be not as stiff as their regular Amazonian Clay blush singles. I usually use a duo fiber stippling brush for those singles, but with these I found a normal powder blush brush worked the best.

Swatched out, you can see the varying levels of shimmer inherent in each powder. The highlighter is very reflective, whereas I’d say only two of the blushes have a LOT of shimmer – the others are more on the subtle/softer side.

In all of the shots below I’m wearing the bronzer in Solo and highlighter in Hi-Fi. Only the blush colour changes.

Electric is an easy-to-wear pink with gold shimmer.

Beat is a peach with gold shimmer.

Tempo is a golden mauve with high shimmer. I was surprised by this one! Given the shade in the pan I thought this might be a touch dark, but it actually worked out well when I used a light hand.

Amp was my favourite of the bunch because it’s a coral with gold shimmer.

Here’s a more direct face shot so you can see how it plays out on a full face. I feel like the bronzer is quite seamless on my skintone, but I have to point out that the shimmer specs in it are actually tiny particles of glitter and I was surprised as heck when I noticed the random glitter on my face at one point while I was doing my makeup. I thought I’d accidentally used glitter without realizing it. That being said, it took me a long time to actually notice it (third time I was using the palette), so I wouldn’t say it’s something overtly obvious.

The previous face shot was in warm-toned lighting, whereas this one is more cool-toned, and I feel like the bronzer still looks good despite the tone change.

Final Thoughts

Although I was surprised that the Tarte Tarteist Pro Glow & Blush palette was all shimmery, I can see how it works considering that “glow” is in the name of the actual product! If you’re someone who prefers a matte blush and bronzer, then this is most definitely not the palette for you. If you’re up for all the glow, then this is definitely worth looking into. If you’re a deeper skintone than me I feel like the blush and highlight shades will work for you since they’re quite pigmented and veer on the golden side of things. The bronzer may work for skintones a bit deeper than mine, but if you’re deeper than a medium I don’t think it’ll look like much.

I found myself pleasantly surprised that I liked the shimmery blushes so much. There are varying depths of shimmer (the deeper tones definitely have more of it) which I think make it more interesting since I don’t necessarily want all shimmer all the time. The highlighter works really well with all of the blush shades since all the shades do have quite a golden edge to them. The bronzer blended in seamlessly despite the tiny glitter specks too, which made me really happy.

The Tarte Tarteist Pro Glow & Blush can be purchased on sephora.ca for $59 CAD or on sephora.com for $45 USD.

The product featured in this post was sent to me for consideration. Post contains affiliate links.

Over a year ago I missed out on the Tarte Treasure Pot Glitter Gel from another collection they had launched… and I was so annoyed! When I first saw it online I was IN LOVE with the shimmery, glittery-ness of it… as well as the huge nostalgia factor. Sadly, I put off buying it for too long and somehow it got snapped up by other people before I was able to purchase it. To this day I am still confused as to who the heck is out there buying glitter gel so quickly that I wasn’t able to get it… this kind of products is not what I would ever call a hot ticket item!

So when Tarte recently launched their Treasure Pot Glitter Gel in Moonwalk… I BOUGHT IT IMMEDIATELY. I wasn’t going to be bamboozled out of owning this one let me tell you. I *needed* to own it. Back in the 90s I was obsessed with these kind of jelly glitter products. I had a few in tubs, but most of them came in massive roller balls. I used to cover myself with them and I loved the effect so, so much. I’ve (thankfully) long since thrown all of them out, so I was more than happy to get my hands on Moonwalk – a shade that appeared to be quite silvery and holographic in the promo pictures online.

In person, Moonwalk is very, very different than what I saw in the promotional shots. It’s much more of a translucent jelly base with see-through particles. There are tiny pieces of particle glitter in the base, but there’s also large flecks in varying shapes. The most predominant shape is a hexagon, but there are moon and star shapes in there as well. The flecks appear to be rather iridescent cool tones in certain lights…

But if you catch the product from a different angle, it actually becomes quite the rainbow!

I think this swatch best represents the effect that you get with this product. The top half of the swatch is where the product curves around the top of my forearm – it’s more of an iridescent cool-toned reflection of the flecks there. But the bottom half was facing the camera a touch more and you can see the flecks suddenly become a rainbow spectrum instead of iridescent.

Capturing the effect of this product on the face became quite the task. What I see in the mirror is the iridescent cool toned flecks… but whenever I photographed it all I saw the rainbow colours.

The slightly sad thing about this product is that the moon and stars flecks are completely translucent. They do not show up at all unless you happen to catch the light at the right angle and even then it’s only showing up because it’s glaring against the light source.

For application, I found this worked best if I spackled it on with a metal makeup spatula. If you use a brush, it only pulls up the tiny glitter sparkles and none of the larger chunkier pieces. When I first apply this I use a brush to lay down the tiny flecks of glitter as a base, and then I use my metal spatula to lay the larger chunks in place. I’d recommend spreading this in a thin layer because if you build this up too much, you end up with globs of the gel in places that don’t look that flattering.

Final Thoughts

I love the fundamentals of this product – glitter gel is so much fun to use and I’ll definitely be getting a lot of use out of this for special events like Pride.

BUT… the promo shots are nothing like the actual product. On Sephora’s web site this looks like a silver holographic glitter product and in practice it’s nowhere close to that. Their model shot also shows that the moon and stars are very visible on the skin, but they’re really not because they’re completely translucent. The promo shots are very misleading and kind of disappointing in the end. Don’t get me wrong – I do actually like this, but I wanted the silver holographic product they displayed online instead of the one I got.

The Tarte Treasure Pot Glitter Gel in Moonwalk can be purchased on sephora.ca for $23 CAD and on sephora.com for $18 USD.

 Post contains affiliate links.