Illamasqua Cream Pigment in Hollow

Hi!

Long time no post.  Sorry.  Festivus is upon us and I hope you're all having a wonderful holiday season!

Now, on to the review ....

Illamasqua cream pigment in Hollow is a very cool toned light brown.  It's been all over YouTube for the last couple of months and the people who love it seem to REALLY love it.

Sadly, I'm not one of them.

\

Being on the pasty side of pale, I'm always looking for something that I can use to contour that isn't too orange or too dark.  I was particularly interested in this product both because it's a cream (with my super dry skin, I will almost always prefer a cream product over a powder) and because it can do double duty as an all over lid color.

On the whole, I've been very impressed with Illamasqua products.  Their nail polishes are phenomenal and their blushes are fantastic.  While I love the way the packaging on this product looks (it's not too fussy and the shape lends itself well to storage - unlike MAC paint pots), I think that the packaging actually ends up working against the product.

My Illamasqua cream blush has very similar packaging, but the cream blush formula is more emollient.  I haven't noticed any issues with the blush drying out.

With the cream pigment, however, the large amount of surface area relative to the total amount of product in the container means it dries out.  I haven't had any issue with it pulling away from the sides of the container or cracking (though I suspect it's only a matter of time), but it does seem to get almost a film on top of the product.  If it hasn't been used recently, I sort of have to scrub off the top layer in order to get to the emollient product.

The color is nice for contouring.  I, personally, didn't have much luck using it as an all over lid eye color.  It looked phenomenal on other people, but only succeeded in making me look tired.  It did, however, wear well, both as a contour and as a lid color, no creasing.

Initially I had also wanted to pick up the cream pigment in Delerium, but after how poorly Hollow has performed, I took it off my wishlist :(  I am curious to see if other colors perform better, but not curious enough to plunk down another chunk of money for it.  Overall, I don't hate this product, but I also don't love it.  I think MAC paint pots and Maybelline Color Tattoos perform better (if only I could find the LE Mattes!!).

The Illamasqua Cream Pigment in Hollow contains 8 grams of product.  It retails for $26.  I purchased mine at Sephora.

Overall:  5/10

Illamasqua Cream Blusher in Dixie

(day bulbs)

Illamasqua is yet another of those brands that I have been curious about forever.  No one local to me carries the line, so I ended up ordering site unseen from Sephora.  From the descriptions, this isn't necessarily the first blush I would have picked out, but unfortunately  Sephora seems to often be sold out of a number of the Illamasqua cream blushes.  So of the colors they had in stock, I chose Dixie, which is described on the Sephora site as "warm coral pink".    

(sunlight)

As you can probably tell from the swatches, I had a hard time trying to really capture the color of this blush.  In the pan, I think the description definitley holds true.  It is a warm coral.  However, once applied to the skin it goes on shockingly sheer and considerably pinker.

The cream blush formula does set quickly, though not to a powder finish.  But it's not sticky and that's the important thing for me.  As I said earlier, it does go on surprisingly sheer, but it's fairly easy to build it up.  I applied the blush and easily got 9 hours of wear out of it before it faded noticeably.

Illamasqua cream blushes contian 4 grams of product and retail for $26.  I got mine at Sephora.

Overall: 8/10