Blushes So Good I Needed Another…part 2

This is an update to my post from September 2020 where I’ll be showing my newest shades of blushes I’ve already reviewed before and loved so much that I wasn’t content with having just one shade. I needed more!

KVD Everlasting Blush in Peony and Foxglove

I already talked about how much I liked the shades Poppy and Snapdragon in Part 1 to this post, so I surprised myself that I actually bought two more. I always suspected Foxglove could work for me and Peony looked borderline like I might be able to pull it off during winter or early spring when I’m usually at my lightest. I was shocked that they ended up looking as nice as they do! Those two shades were clearly not intended for someone with dark skin but they have enough pigmentation to make it show and not look ashy!

Peony is cool toned, but this kind of pink still somehow looks nice on me. After about 3-4 layers, it doesn’t show any stronger on my skin tone, but I like how it looks with even just 2-3 layers. Foxglove doesn’t show as strongly in the photo above, but that’s because it’s a more toned down dusty rose type of pink and I prefer not to build it up beyond two layers. While I would say I consider a very pigmented blush to show on me in 1-2 layers, the fact that these are so pale in the pans and swatches, but still show this much on me speaks volumes.

Of the four blushes, I think Foxglove is my new favorite.

Pat Mcgrath Labs Skin Fetish: Divine Powder Blush in Electric Bloom

I purchased this perhaps a month after the initial blush launch. I wanted so many shades from the collection that I told myself I was only allowed to have one more, so I went ahead and made it this vibrant coral shade. It’s the kind of color that is debatable whether I can pull it off or not, but always calls to me. If I had just waited a little longer, I would have seen that it was listed as a dupe for Colourpop’s Aloha Honey blush shade on Temptalia’s blog and therefore I didn’t need the almost identical blush color. To be fair, I haven’t used the Colourpop blush enough to say how it compares in terms of quality because I always reach for Electric Bloom over Aloha Honey.

Paradise Venus is still my favorite shade of the three I have from Pat Mcgrath.

LYS Beauty High Standard Clean Cream Blush in Inspire

I hope anyone who reads my blog regularly isn’t tired of me going on about how much I love this cream blush formula, but I feel it deserves to be gushed over. I always had plans to eventually get this beautiful coral-orange shade, but I wanted to wait until I made more progress in my overall cream blush collection. However, I had some store credit built up via the Ambassador program with the brand, so I decided to go ahead and cross that off my wish list! Half of this blush was paid for via credit and the other half was paid for out of my own pocket. For full details about my affiliation with LYS, please see my About Me page and scroll to the near bottom.

Inspire performs just as well as the others. I cannot decide which of the three is my favorite because I keep changing my mind every time I use a different shade!

Wayne Goss The Weightless Veil Blush Palette in Bright Poppy (Sunny and Golden Glow)

Unlike the other blushes I’ve listed, which are among my top favorites, I decided to try Bright Poppy because the colors are better suited for me than Vivid Azalea and I wanted an answer as to whether the blush shade would be insanely pigmented in this duo too. Sunny is not quite at the unbelievable pigment level of Shocking, but if I tap once into the blush with my Smashbox Buildable Cheek Brush, it’s enough to thoroughly cover my cheek. An additional half layer is the maximum amount I would want to use. Otherwise, my option would be to tone it back down using a finishing powder on top.

Sunny is pretty on the cheeks. Golden Glow is a nice highlighter formula that is very complimentary to my skin tone. I prefer to apply my blush and highlighter separately, but Wayne suggests that anyone who likes shimmery blush formulas could apply the highlighter to the entire cheek and then blend the blush on top of it. This technique worked for me with Vivid Azalea because the combination of the two shades turned the blush into a lighter color. I tried this with Bright Poppy and did not like it at all because the shimmer color and blush color don’t match. This means the particles in the highlighter stand out a lot more and I don’t like how contrasting it is. Whether I applied the highlighter to the bottom or the highlighter on top, the end result was the same.

Colourpop Super Shock Cheek in Matte, Satin, and Pearlized finishes.

Colourpop’s Super Shock Cheek line includes both blushes and highlighters, so I decided as a bonus to review all the ones I own here since I’m a huge fan of them. They have the benefit of looking and applying to the skin like creams, but without feeling heavy, sticky, or greasy on the skin like some cream blushes on the market can do.

In the Matte finish we have Over Dramatic, a “mid-tone pinky nude,” and Swift, a “rich deep warm brown” shade. Both are very close in color and practically look the same on my cheeks. Calling Swift a deep and rich shade is quite the exaggeration on Colourpop’s part. I have to build them up a lot in order for them to show in photos, but I bought these specific colors so I could have some brown leaning blushes, which aren’t as prevalent in my collection. Swift is from the Make It Black Collection when the brand partnered with Pull Up For Change. It’s a bit stiffer in consistency than Over Dramatic and because Swift is more of an orange-brown than pink-brown, it blends in with my skin a lot more. It’s on the borderline of blending in too much, considering it’s such a nude shade for me already. For that reason, I do prefer Over Dramatic because of my personal preferences.

I just have one Satin finish Super Shock Cheek and it’s in the shade Georgette which is described as a “bright apricot with a warm sheen.”

Georgette has the right amount of brightness that isn’t obnoxious. Also, I’ve always struggled to find orange tones of blush that look flattering on my skin tone. I tend to like the ones that lean more red or pink. This apricot shade is more on the yellow side, but I like it. So now, I think it’s just true oranges at the 50/50 split between yellow and red that I don’t enjoy as much. My quest to figure it out continues!

I have five shades in the Pearlized finish, starting with the two that came in the 2020 Lunar New Year set called the Lucky You Super Shock Cheek Duo.

I kept these unused for so long because of the pretty pattern in the Super Shocks. When I finally used them, I was a little disappointed that Drop of a Hat was too sheer to work as a blush for me. It’s better if I consider it a pink highlighter or blush topper. Goody Two Shu is pretty but a little sparkly, so I decided it wasn’t worth continuing to ruin the embossing. I just keep these as collector items now.

Voile is another Super Shock I stopped using. I kept trying to use it because the shade reminded me of Benefit’s Kiss of Rose and Charlotte Tilbury’s Walk of No Shame, which are both shimmery blushes I find to be beautiful. However, the shimmer level of Voile in person and the way the “copper sheen” sparkles on my cheeks is too much for me. It’s far more sparkly in person than it appears in the photo. I’ve realized that I prefer Colourpop’s matte and satin finishes for the blush shades. The only pearlized blush I enjoy is Cheerio and that’s because it seems to be a pearl-satin hybrid! Cheerio is a repromoted shade, which I bought from the Wine & Only Collection. The back label on my blush has “Pearlized” printed on it, but on Colourpop’s website it’s listed as a satin and it doesn’t have as many sparkles as the others in that formula. Or, perhaps I can’t see them if most of the sparkles match the color of the blush. What I see are some silver flecks.

I have to use a very small amount of Cheerio because it’s a deep shade. It’s easy to overapply and my specific blush arrived partly shriveled (which I pressed back into the pan). So, it’s a little drier than it should be and not as easy to spread evenly on my cheeks, but I can still make it work. Colourpop did send me a replacement, but I realized I preferred the cream blush from Natasha Denona’s Bloom Cheek palette a lot more, and that color is similar to this one, so I gave the replacement to my sister.

Lastly, we have my absolute favorite Colourpop Super Shock Cheek. It’s a “peachy gold” shade that I use for highlighting called Parasol.

It looks extra sparkly in the photo above because I used it over the Georgette blush which also has a sheen, but this highlighter is very smooth and wet looking. It blends into my skin very well and is the kind of tone I like for highlighting. I’ve used it quite a bit, even though it doesn’t look like it in the photo from the top down angle, but it actually has a dip in the center.

This concludes the post! I tried to keep it short since all of these (minus Colourpop) have been reviewed on this blog before.

Are there any blushes you have been loving at the moment? The blush and highlighter categories are the reason I haven’t been able to post Best of 2020 and Best of 2021 posts. I was constantly trying new products, loving the majority of them, and not able to use what I consider my favorites consistently enough to rank some over others. This year, I’m committed to getting a lot more use out of my older products. There are still plenty I haven’t even reviewed yet! I hope you’ll return to see the progress on that! Thank you for reading!

-Lili

Wayne Goss, Charlotte Tilbury, and Patrick Ta Blushes

It’s my birthday! Because this has been the year of blush for me, I thought a high-end blush post would be fitting for today.

Wayne Goss Weightless Veil Blush Palette in Vivid Azalea

Wayne Goss released four blush duos, but this one was the most unique to my collection, so I chose this over Bright Poppy. The magenta shade is called “Shocking” and the white gold highlighter is called “Pearl.” In Wayne’s announcement video, he mentions that customers can utilize these duos in the traditional way, or even apply the highlighter directly onto the cheeks and blend the blush over it to create a unique shimmery blush shade.

I loved the way the highlighter-under-blush technique looked on other people in videos I’ve seen, but I think I prefer to just use them the traditional way. The highlighter formula is fantastic. The blush is pigmented. I cannot emphasize this enough. It is the most pigmented blush I have ever come across. I can use my softest squirrel brush to do one gentle tap into the blush and the minor amount of powder on my brush is still enough to be overkill. Just one dab! In order to get the pigmentation level you see in this photo, I had to do one single dip into the pan and then dab it once on the back of my hand before applying what was left on the brush to my face. Then I spent a fair amount of time blending. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but apparently there is such a thing as too much pigmentation, and my goodness this the prime example of that! Here is a photo from Instagram of what a single tap in the pan produces, even after plenty of blending.

This shade of blush can be splotchy if the brush isn’t coated evenly in that first dip, so even though you don’t want much on the brush, I advise still trying to pick up enough to cover all the bristles and then do a few extra dabs onto the back of your hand or a napkin to take some of the excess product off.

The blush duo costs $45. You’re getting a monster 19 grams of product, but I could use this blush regularly for the next five years and not even put a dent in it considering I use a maximum of one dab per use. Looking at this per gram, the duo is a decent price, but considering the cost only, this is more expensive than the $38 Natasha Denona Blush Duos, $38 CoverFx Monochromatic Duos, $30 ABH Blush Trio, etc. I personally would have been happy to see this priced around $35 for even half the amount of product. I can’t say it’s worth $45, or at least not this particular blush in the line. I bought this during the Beautylish Gift Card event, which is the main reason I’ve decided to keep it anyway. It’s still an interesting product and I especially like the highlighter.

I have one other item from Wayne’s line, but this is a blush post so I won’t go too much in-depth about it. It is a lip pencil in the shade Mauve. The price was $14, which I think is fair for what you get.

Patrick Ta Monochrome Moment Velvet Blush in She’s Seductive (mauve plum)

I saw plenty of reviews before buying this blush, so I knew ahead of time that this range was on the softer side and not super pigmented. This is the darkest blush in the line and as you can see in the swatch, it’s lighter than my skin tone, but I still like the way it looks. Something about the tone of it is very flattering to me. For the price though, I don’t know that I’d necessarily recommend it considering how many other nice buildable blushes there are of equal or better quality, yet for better prices.

Patrick Ta Major Beauty Headlines – Double-Take Crème & Powder Blush in Oh She’s Different (rich plum)

Similarly to the Wayne Goss Blush, I’ve heard that Patrick Ta says this blush can be worn the traditional way with the cream below and the powder on top, or his advised way of having the powder underneath and the cream on top to maintain the natural skin-like dewiness.

Perhaps I’m not using these in the correct proportions, but I don’t see much of a difference between using the powder on top or the cream on top. If anything, I still prefer having the powder on top because I feel I get more coverage that way. I feel comfortable using the powder alone, but the cream portion is even less pigmented than the Fenty cream blushes, so it takes a bit of building up. However, both are decent products. I like them, but if I ranked all my blushes, this would probably fall somewhere in the middle.

Charlotte Tilbury Cheek to Chic Blush in Walk of No Shame

I’ve heard of these swish-and-pop blushes before, but what enticed me to try one now, and in this particular shade, was the number of Youtubers saying how much more inclusive this shade was in the line. I was initially excited when I had it in person but was surprised when I swatched it and did not get the level of pigmentation I was expecting.

The outer “berry” ring is quite light on me, which I don’t mind, but mixing it with the inner “champagne” ring on my cheek lightens it up even more to the point of being a whisper of color with a whole lot of shine.

Both rings have shimmer, so that is unavoidable, but the champagne one is intentionally more shimmery. I’m glad I have it because it works as a subtle highlighter similar to the subtlety of Hourglass Ambient Powders and Guerlain Meteorites. As a blush product though, I only like using the outer ring, which presents a challenge as only my smallest blush brushes can pick up the color without touching much of the middle. This blush is also harder pressed which adds to the difficulty.
I’ve come to the conclusion that I like this blush, but I would have loved it if it was more pigmented. A few times I’ve actually used a mixture of both colors with the At Night blush from Hourglass on top to add more color without as much extra shimmer.

That’s all for today! Thank you so much for reading, liking, and/or commenting. It helps to keep me motivated to post consistently. I do this because I enjoy it, but it feels especially good to see the stats and know that my words are being seen.

-Lili