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.
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