Hourglass Ambient Lighting Powder in Mood Light

I picked up the Hourglass Ambient Lighting Powder in Diffused Light when the line first launched and I was not impressed at all.  It was a translucent powder.  A fine powder, but nothing special and certainly not special enough to justify the $45 price tag.  I eventually got rid of my Diffused powder and wasn't interested in learning more.

Then I saw Dustin Hunter's video overview of the line.  Like me, Dustin is on the pastier side of pale and he mentioned that he liked Mood Light as a blush.  I swatched it in Sephora one day and it swatched dark enough on my skin that I was intrigued.

In the pan, Mood Light looks like a very gray purple color.  Like Diffused Light, it doesn't have any detectable shimmer.

The pictures here do not do this product justice.  It definitely has a color.  A subtle color, but still noticeable on my skintone.  I could see deeper skintones using this as an all over setting powder.  That wouldn't work for me at all.  I'd look crazy.

On my skintone, this works as a blush, subtle and natural looking, but with enough oomph to provide definition.  It has good wear time.  I get a good six hours out of it before it faded at all and nine hours before it was gone.

Like the other Ambient Lighting Powders, Mood Light contains 10 grams of product and retails for $45.  It's a baked powder, so it does require gentle handling as it is easy to break off a piece of the product.  Mood Light is available wherever Hourglass is sold.  I picked mine up at Sephora.

Overall:  8/10

Givenchy Healthy Glow Powder in 1 Premiere Croisiere

I absolutely love bronzers and blush.  This is a known fact.  And lately I've been really curious about some higher end, harder to find brands, specifically Rouge Bunny Rouge (which I will talk about in a separate post) and Givenchy.

Givenchy is available exclusively through Sephora, but is not carried in my local Sephora, so there's pretty much no way to see before you buy.  So in a fit of impulse buying the other day, I decided to pick up the Givenchy Poudre Bonne Mine Healthy Glow Powder, which Sephora categorizes as a bronzer.

It's lovely, by the way.

And the description sounds lovely.  Sephora says:

 "Totally weightless and invisible on the skin, this creamy formula provides ultimate softness and a light-as-air natural finish. With a consistency that’s easy to blend, this bronzer can be applied alone with the Givenchy Kabuki brush or over Mister Radiant. Use it year-round to smooth pores, even the skin’s texture, and provide a healthy glow."

I will fully admit it's my own fault for not looking up swatches first.  (Here, go look - Karla Sugar has some fantastic swatches.)  I made an assumption based on the Sephora description that this was indeed a bronzer (it may be if you buy it in one of the darker shades, but it doesn't seem that the line as a whole is a bronzer line).

I think this is more of an illuminating finishing powder, much like the MAC Mineralize Natural line, Guerlain Meteorites, Hourglass Ambient Lighting Powders, etc, etc.  And like the Guerlain and Hourglass products, it is hella expensive.  $50 for 7 grams of product.

Don't get me wrong, it does look lovely.  I'm sure it looks nice on the skin.  I don't know.  Because I need another illuminating finishing powder like I need a hole in the head, so I returned it (without swatching, not that you would have been able to see anything even if I did swatch it.).  

I wanted a bronzer.

Even for my pasty pale skin, this shade is certainly not a bronzer.  I probably would have had to get the darkest shade if I wanted something approaching a bronzer, but that doesn't really seem to be what this powder is designed to do.

I'm not going to bother rating this product since it seems designed to do something vastly different than the purpose for which I purchased it.  I am thankful that Sephora did give me my refund without any hassle (though I did get a dirty look, which whatever.)

I was really curious about Givenchy.  I picked up several different products (reviews coming soon) and it was really hit or miss.  At this price point, I expect more.  The packaging is underwhelming and it is really irritating not to be able to see it in person before purchasing.  

Hourglass Ambient Lighting Powder in Diffused Light

I had heard people raving about the new Hourglass Ambient Lighting powders, so I decided to pick one up in Diffused Light.  Hourglass describes the powder as "a soft, warm, pale yellow powder that reduces redness and gives skin clarity – like a soft ray of morning light".

This is indeed a beautiful finishing powder.  It is super finely milled, applies like a dream.  It sets makeup beautifully without making you look like a disco ball.  In fact, I really couldn't find any detectable shimmer at all to the powder, though once the whole face was powdered, there was a bit of a ... I guess you could call it a luminosity (nothing terribly glowy and definitely not shiny or oily looking ... just nice).

I'm more than a little skeptical about the yellow powder neutralizing redness.  I really don't think there's enough pigmentation in the powder to really do that.  In fact, it was hard for me to even tell the powder was supposed to be yellow.  It looked like a translucent pressed powder to me.

As I said, this is a beautiful product.  And I am intrigued about the rest of the line.  However, after a week of use, I was soft of left feeling flat.  I really didn't feel like I got incredibly different results from this product than I get from my MAC Mineralize Skinfinish Natural or even my Sleek Luminous Pressed Powder (both of which have better price points.)  Don't get me wrong, this product is discernibly more higher end than either MAC or Sleek.  But for me, the results were not dramatic enough to warrant the price difference.

Other colors in the range are supposed to have more obvious effects and are intended to be used more as highlighters or even bronzers.  I am much more interested in the colors Dim (neutral peach beige) or Luminous (champagne pearl).

Hourglass Ambient Lighting Powders contain 10 grams of product and retail for $45 wherever Hourglass is sold.  I got mine at Sephora.

Overall:  7/10