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Base
- Dior One Essential City Defense SPF 50
- Dior Backstage Face and Body Foundation in 1N
- It Cosmetics Bye Bye Under Eye Concealer in 13.0 Light Natural (under eyes)
- Ulta Full Coverage Liquid Concealer in Light Cool (on face to improve coverage of foundation)
- Too Faced Born This Way Multi Use Sculpting Concealer in Almond (as eyelid primer)
- Laura Mercier Secret Camouflage in SC-1 (to spot conceal)
- Hourglass Veil Translucent Setting Powder
I really like the combo of the first two products here. The City Defense acts like a primer and makes the foundation go on even smoother. This foundation isn’t very high coverage and it doesn’t look the best when I attempt to build it up on its own. Over the City Defense I am able to layer it up just a little bit more without ruining the finish.
The setting powder keeps the skin from looking too matte. Looking very closely at it, there are some illuminating particles in there but they are so incredibly fine, they don’t translate to sparkle or shine on the face.
Brows & Lashes
- Mac Shape + Shade Brow Tint in Taupe (the liquid side only)
- Tarte Tarteist Lash Paint Mascara
The Mac Shape + Shade has a liner-like liquid brow color with a brush tip applicator. The formula is very sheer so it’s forgiving if you accidentally deposit color where you don’t want it. Likewise, I can build up color by layering if I want more definition in a certain area.
Sculpt
- NYX HD Blush in Taupe (cheeks, hairline)
This has been my go-to contour shade recently. It just has a nice neutral-to-cooler tone that works well for my complexion.
Color
- Clinique Get Cheeky Holiday Palette (used the shade “Nude Pop” as blush)
- Almay Lip Vibes Lipstick in Worry Less
- bareMinerals Aurora Lights Palette
- Delightful (transition)
- Wavelength (crease, diffused on lower lashline)
- Perspective (close to lashes on lower lashline)
- Forcefield (outer lid, blended up into crease)
- Dazzle (layered over Forcefield for dimension)
- 500 Thread Count (inner lid)
Nude Pop from the cheek palette is a VERY light shade and it is quite sheer as well. I had to go in pretty heavy handed with it to get it to show up. It has a very subtle sheen but not so much that I feel like it emphasizes texture. The lipstick is a thinner, lightweight formula with semi sheer opacity. It feels comfortable and non drying but it doesn’t seem to last very long. Just chewing some gum and eating a snack wore away a noticeable amount. I was able to reapply right on top of itself without it looking bad. It had a very lightly sweet fragrance.
I have only just begun to dig into the Aurora Lights palette. For this look I used almost all of the matte shades except for Venus. Wavelength was pretty decent as a crease color but I felt like I needed to blend a bit more than I usually do with this type of color. Forcefield was pretty hard to blend out and apply in a way that looked even. I had to layer it up quite a bit and work very slowly and carefully to blend the color in with the crease color. There was a significant amount of fallout from this shade as well.