little white truths

Well, I'm thrilled to report that I've finished the Laura Mercier bronzer that's been on my list since I started Project Pan 2018 at the end of January. It was also on my list for six weeks last year, and I  actually finished it over a week ago now - it's just that it's taken me a while to get around to this post.

That's right. I finished an entire bronzer in the space of three months, and I'd barely used it when I started panning it. And considering that 04 is the darkest shade (when in theory shades 02 or 03 would have worked better on my light/medium to medium skintone), that tells you how bad the pigmentation is.

Now I personally prefer my powder products to be less pigmented so I can build them, but in this case, the pigment was getting towards non-existent. Plus the powder itself was so damn dry and I think that's why it fell off my face by lunchtime, so I was often doing twice-daily applications with it during the panning period.

Erk. I'm glad it's gone. It wasn't awful and I did have good things to say about it (see my review here), but it wasn't the right bronzer for me.

I've included the above shot to show you that you can indeed pop these Laura Mercier baked pans out of the packaging if you want to. Mine came out very easily (with no damage to the compact), and I popped mine out at the beginning of February (I was having a bad day with the kids so I took my anger out on the compact instead - so damn satisfying ; )).

I think this info is useful to share because I'll be keeping the above pan for my daughter to use as a kind of 'stamp' when she wants to paint. (Anyone else remember doing paint stamps with uncooked potatoes that your mum had cut into different shapes? That's my thinking here.)

Anyhoo. Here's what I'm replacing it with:

Yep, another one: the Laura Mercier Matte Radiance Baked Powder in Highlight 01.

Now I know that this highlighter is a beauty-community favourite and I can see why: it applies and blends well; it doesn't emphasise texture and it doesn't contain chunks of glitter. 

Indeed, my main issue with it is that the colour doesn't suit me - it looks too frosty on my yellow-based colouring and therefore too unnatural - so please don't hate me for wanting to pan it! ; )

The other thing I don't love about it is that it looks dry on me when I try to build it on my eyes (I had the same issue with the bronzer), and because I like to use highlighters and bronzers on my eyes, that's a problem for me.

If you're interested, I've reviewed the highlighter here. The highlighter is the better product because the bronzer is much drier and also less pigmented, or at least that's how mine was on me.

The reason why I've chosen this highlighter is because it doesn't have a permanent place in my collection (as I mentioned, it's too frosty on me to be flattering). 

But I also chose it because, as you may know, I'm currently panning my Hourglass Ambient Lighting Blush Palette via Pan that Palette, so I can use the three shades in that as mixers to swing the colour of this Laura Mercier one so that it's more flattering on me.

Of course, this will also mean that I'm less likely to get bored while I pan this: I can mix and match this with the Hourglass palette and come up with however many combinations, and since I do like the formulas of both the Hourglass and Laura Mercier products (they don't contain chunks of glitter and they don't emphasise texture), they should work well together.