The Beauty Within

I had planned on writing a review for this a long time ago. I actually started, but it’s been at least 4 or 5 months since I wrote the first part.
So what is in this kit: A moisturizer that’s supposedly filled with vitamins, 2 different shades of foundation, one mineral veil, one warmth, one concealer brush, one kabuki brush, and one face brush. It also comes with a DVD and a booklet describing how to use all of their products.
At first I really didn’t get how to use this thing to tell you the truth. Tap, swirl, buff.. wtf? The first few times I used the foundation, I really did not like the coverage. It was just not enough compared to MAC’s Studio Fix, and it didn’t give a fresh dewey look like Nars liquid foundation.

I think I finally got a better hang of it, and I got it to a point where I had sufficient coverage. Now the problems began:

- After about 30 minutes, I’ll start looking very cakey and oily. I have oily skin, and I’m normally walking around campus or in lab, so I do sweat. I don’t know if it’s the oil mixing with the foundation or what, but it looked gross.

Other people who used this also told me the same thing. Not enough coverage, and either their whole face starts looking very shiny or cakey. I was contributing my cakiness to my oily skin at first, but guess what? The people with those same complaints have different skin! Some dry, some normal, some oily, some combo.

Now, I guess if you have all the time in the world to blot or to put multiple layers of crap on your face in the morning, then perhaps BE will work for you. But in the real world, there’s no time for that.

So I switched to a simple tinted moisturizer + pressed powder. This gives slightly more coverage than the BE foundation (weird huh), and it’s so much more natural looking. I can skip the pressed powder part if I want to look more dewy, but if I want to look more matte, a little tiny bit of pressed powder is all I need.

Anyhow, these are just my opinions of Bare Escentuals. It seems to work great at first, and your face does feel very nice, but the cons outweigh the pros a lot for this product. I still recommend people to try it, because it’s not an awful product. It’s just not the product for me (and other people I know who tried it).