Hard Candy has recently put out some fun highlighters, and I was definitely game to try! I’m up for anything that has a bit more of a colourful tint… and even moreso when it has fun embossing on the pan! (What can I say, I’m a sucker for packaging.)

The Just Glow Highlighters are a 3 in 1 powder highlighter that claim to have a creamy, silky formula that will blend smoothly onto the skin. They retail for about $6-7 USD/CAD and easily found at Walmart stores in North America.

The shade I was the most excited to try was Fairy Dust – a pink, blue purple combination that looks absolutely freaking stunning in the pan.

Swatched out I was really impressed with how strong the pigment is on the individual shades – I wasn’t expecting that at all! And while you could use each shade individually, I think we can all acknowledge that most of us are going to be swirling our brushes in the whole pan, so we’ll more than likely end up with the shade on the far right – a soft, silvery lavender.

On the cheeks the pigment is surprisingly intense. The lavender-silver comes across *very* strongly. While I found the product a bit dusty in the pan (you get a lot of kick up), I was impressed with how softly it applies to the cheeks. It does deposit a lot of colour and you will need to either tap off your brush and/or buff the extra product into your face a bit more, but the overall effect is quite pretty!

The other Just Glow Highlighter I tried was 24K Gold. There’s a small sliver of white, but the predominant colour scheme is more gold/copper.

The colours are even stronger than the Fairy Dust highlighter, but there’s a lot more flakes and chunks in this shade, and I think most of that is coming from the gold in the center. The gold has all of the the sparkle/shimmer bits and they were definitely quite dusty. Swirled together they make a soft bronze-copper, although you can still see some definite gold chunks that stick out.

Fundamentally, the 24K Gold highlighter will work on me, but it definitely deepens up the outer edges of my cheekbones and changes the colour of my blush quite a bit. And that’s simply because I’m of a light skintone and the reflective quality of the product is not quite as strong as Fairy Dust is on me. I can get away with this highlighter, but it’s not something I’d find myself gravitating towards because a) the colour isn’t *quite* right, and b) I’m not a huge fun of the chunkier particles in this formula.

Final Thoughts

The Hard Candy Glow Up Highlighters were a bit of a mixed bag for me. Fairy Dust was definitely my favourite due to texture and colour, whereas 24K Gold was on the darker, more dustier side for me. That being said, although I liked Fairy Dust, I have to say that the texture of it doesn’t come anywhere close to their (now discontinued) Tiki Bronzer (which was basically a highlighter). The texture and colour on Tiki was phenomenal and I’m surprised that Hard Candy has recently discontinued it in favour of a product that doesn’t deliver the same kind of quality. While I think the packaging and the colours of the Glow Up Highlighters are fun, it’s really left me longing for more from their baked range.

The products featured in this post were sent to me for consideration. Post contains affiliate links.

There are a lot of brands trying to capture the magic of the Stila Glitter & Glow Liquid Eyeshadows… but none of them are drugstore brands. So imagine my surprise and delight when I realized Hard Candy had a new product called Glitterazzi!

The Hard Candy Glitterazzi Liquid Sparklers are defined by the brand as a glitter top coat for eyes, lips or cheeks. They can be worn alone (and definitely have enough pigment to do so) or layered on top of other products to enhance their duochrome effect (all three I tried are either pearlescent with changing colour reflects, or truly duochromatic).

The brand also indicates that they’re longwearing and, interestingly, that they feel lightweight and *dry*. I was intrigued to read that as most brands don’t point that out. I think most of us EXPECT our liquid shadows to dry down, but that isn’t always the case. I was happy to discover that these do in fact completely dry down to a foiled yet slightly textured-appearing base. These are the CLOSEST liquid eyeshadows I have ever encountered at the drugstore that are damn near crease-proof. I experienced no creasing on one shade, extremely minor creasing on another, and slight creasing on the last shade. I’m exceptionally prone to creasing even with regular eyeshadows, so this was an extremely impressive display by these products and I’d venture to say that they wouldn’t crease on someone with normal eyelids (and by normal, I mean anyone that can use a single eyeshadow primer and have no issues with powder eyeshadows).

The Glitterazzi applicator is a standard paddle-foot applicator with a decent amount of flex. It works well *enough* to apply the shadow to your lid, but I found I struggled a little bit with fading the colour out from my lid out to my outer corner. A brush may help to disperse the colour a bit better.

As you can see in the swatch the colours are more pigmented than a product of this nature would suggest, and the shades have a ton of dimension. There’s actually so much reflect that my auto-focus struggled a bit to get decent eye shots (sorry in advance for below!).

• Twinkle is a stunning lavender with teal reflect.
• Aurora is mostly a pale white, but it has hints of pink and purple shimmer in the base.
• Star is wild – it’s a nude/slight rose base with gold shimmers. So pretty!

Twinkle was definitely more pigmented than I was expecting. I love how it shifts from lavender to teal. I had the faintest whisper of creasing with this shade after having worn it for 8 hours.

Aurora was definitely the most sheer on application in comparison to the swatch. I applied it over a pale lavender eyeshadow and I would say that mostly sparks of pink showed up depending on how the light hit my eye. This one didn’t crease on me at all.

Star was easily my favourite shade. It looks gold/champagne in the look above, but in person it was shooting off gold, silver or pink depending on the light.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I’m incredibly impressed with the Hard Candy Glitterazzi Liquid Sparklers. I know I mentioned some minor creasing, but I truly expected so much more with this kind of product (especially given that it’s drug store). I tried out three shades in this post, but Hard Candy has four additional shades in case you’re looking for something a little bit different. I’d also say that these are more of a shimmer topcoat than they are a glittery ones, and that’s simply because the glitter specks are smaller and end up giving your eye a bit more of a foiled look. If you want to create more of a softer glitter look, try dabbing your fingertip on the applicator and then lightly tapping it on to your eye (or wherever you’re putting it) for a more dispersed look. I applied it straight from the tube in the looks above and it definitely gave a more solid and opaque shimmer look than a glittery one.

TL;DR – These are the most impressive liquid shimmer/glitter eyeshadows I’ve seen at the drugstore and I’m extremely impressed. Well done, Hard Candy!

The Hard Candy Glitterazzi Liquid Sparklers can be purchase on walmart.ca for $7.98 CAD and on walmart.com for $6 USD each.

The products in this post were sent to me for consideration. Post contains affiliate links.

Lip gloss is making a comeback it seems, and Hard Candy is there to help you fill in the gaps in your collection (if you’ve been on a matte lip kick like I have, that is!) with their Plumping Serum Volumizing Lip Glosses.

I believe these Plumping Serum Glosses were recently repackaged but the formula remains the same. Hard Candy promises us “an outrageously shiny, volumizing, hydrating lip gloss that is formulated with [our] exclusive Plumping Serum System.” Thankfully, the plumping serum isn’t overly aggressive and I didn’t feel like my lips were being stung by bees (seriously – some lip plumping agents are horrible). You will feel a slightly cooling/tingling sensation on your lips while wearing these, but nothing extreme. Interestingly, these don’t smell like mint (I find a lot of plumping serums do) – these have more of a honey/caramel scent that is really, *really* appealing to me.

The tube contains 0.12 oz/3.55 ml of product and retails for approximately $6-7 USD/CAD. Hard Candy is available exclusively on their own web site as well as in stores at Walmart (USA & Canada). The wand is your typical doefoot applicator and you’ll find you need to dip back into the tube a few times to get full lip coverage.

While Hard Candy has a plethora of shades available (~20!), I tried three shades out that covered the range of the spectrum – a pale nude (First Kiss), a dark brown-red (Skin Deep) and a medium purple (Dirty Mind). The colours had roughly medium coverage in a swatch, although I’d venture to say the lighter shade was more opaque than the darkest one!

Hard Candy Plumping Serum Volumizing Lip Gloss Lip Swatches

First Kiss ended up  being my favourite shade out of the three I tried. It’s a bit on the milky side of things, so you will get a little bit of colour gathering where your lips crease, but I still loved how this one looked on me. It’s an easy to wear shade that I can grab on the go – love!

Dirty Mind really surprised me – in the tube it looks more like a grey-purple, whereas on the lips it’s much more of a purple with some pink it. Beautiful shade.

Skin Deep was the most problematic and I think it’s simply because of the colour of it. With any dark lip gloss shades I inevitably run into issues – the pigment slides around and won’t ever really stay “put” where I want it to. The colour is beautiful, but this would work best on top of a lipstick. Sadly, the packaging on this one actually broke on me after first use – the stopper stuck inside the cap and even when I re-inserted it back into the base it still popped out the next time I used it.

Final Thoughts

If you’re looking for an easy to wear lip gloss that has a little bit of plumping (but is honestly not *that* visibly apparent), then the Hard Candy Plumping Serum Volumizing Lip Glosses are a good pick. They’re comfortable to wear, have a lovely scent and are fairly inexpensive.

The pale to medium shades are definitely more my pick than the darker ones, but I will basically always say that about any lip gloss on the market simply because I find dark lip gloss pigment too difficult to work with (I said the same thing about the Bite French Press glosses). Now that might be a skin tone problem – I may fundamentally be too pale to wear shades like that and have them look good on the lips by themselves. (If you’re a darker complexion and wear deep lip gloss colours, please let me know how you feel about those kinds of shades – I’m super curious to know if you can wear them without a lipstick or lip liner underneath!)

The Hard Candy Plumping Serum Volumizing Lip Glosses can be purchased at walmart.ca for $6.98 CAD each or on walmart.com for $6 USD each.

The products featured in this post were sent to me for consideration. Post contains affiliate links.