little white truths

I've been promising myself for ages that I would start reviewing my 'pedestal' products because I've been shying away from doing this - partly because I don't have great photography equipment yet and partly because I find it harder to review the really good stuff (how do I describe just how amazing this blush is?!).

One of the benefits of my spending ban I suppose is that, soon enough, I'll run out of products to review - so I'll need to review every last item I have!

I have three Hourglass products: this blush, the Ambient Lighting Palette and the Ambient Lighting Blush Palette. 

Since I deliberately included this one on my current Now Playing list, it's the first one up for review. While I love the bejesus out of it, in terms of colour, I prefer the peach blush from the palette - but I still love the pants off this one.

I love everything about my Hourglass products - the look and feel of them, the packaging, the products themselves. 

I've seen others complain that the packaging shows up fingerprint marks so easily but I don't mind this - I'm rather happy to polish the compacts off like fine silver whenever I use them anyway ; )

It's my honest view that no one does blushes like Hourglass - not even Nars. While you can't beat Nars in terms of range and they're obviously good quality products, they don't hold a candle to these puppies in terms of how they diffuse light and make your skin look like it's lit from within (same goes for the standard Ambient Lighting Powders). There's nothing else quite like them on the market, not that I've found anyway.

Plus Nars can't seem to get over shimmer and noticeable glitter (same goes with the eyeshadow duos - my golly, they'll shimmer you into the next century), so while most Nars blushes are too shiny or sparkly for me, these find a nice balance between matte and sheen, and you can always add a dose of shimmer if you want to with a highlighting product. These give you more options.

Anyhoo!

I'm sure no one who knows me is surprised that, of the available colours, I picked the coral one. Dim Infusion is described as 'subdued coral', and I reckon that's an accurate description. 

As you can see from the wrist swatch below, it's so subdued that I couldn't get it to show up on my arm - I applied so much of it and you can barely see it! Fortunately I don't tend to wear blushes on my arm and it shows up much better on my face ; )

Hourglass claims/product details:

There we are on my face, above and below. I've applied it as I would wear it - so just a small amount. Click on the images if you want to enlarge them. 

The blush makes my cheeks look a little fuzzy (that's the light diffusing thing), meaning they conceal imperfections like open pores and make my skin look so much better than it is.

Verdict

Ok, so these are expensive - but they're so worth it. I'd rather give up the rest of my blush collection if it meant I could have a few of these. Every time I use them I wonder why I would ever wear anything else!

Often hyped-up high-end products don't really deliver (hello Coralista), but sometimes they do. These totally do.

All the product claims are true and they're definitely like nothing else on the market. As mentioned above, they really do diffuse light and make you look lit from within, and they conceal my open pores like nothing else I've tried.

As to quality in general, they're finely milled and apply like a dream, they're light as air and they last well enough. Plus they're so damn pretty! Every time I open this little compact, I feel happy (how sad ; ) ). And I can't help studying myself in the mirror when I'm wearing it, asking myself how on earth Hourglass managed to make my skin look like that (how sad again).

If you'd asked me a year ago if I wanted one of these, I would have said 'no way' to the $46 price tag. But then I fortunately had the good sense to stop spending at least that in Priceline every couple of months, ever growing a collection of stuff that I couldn't hope to get through in this lifetime. Buying one item like this every few months has become, for me, the way to go. When my spending ban lifts, that's how I plan to approach my makeup hoard from now on.

I used to like having a bigger makeup collection; I now prefer having fewer items. They're not all as pricey as this one, but they're ones I really put time into and didn't buy on impulse.

Beyond amazing.