Lou's Reviews- Warm Toned Highlighters

Aloha Bloggerinos,

Sorry my posts have been a bit 'bleaugh' of late, I have been feeling a bit under the weather mentally and physically and lacking in sparkle. Today it's Monday and I am determined to shake this fug and pull myself together!! Hurrah!

So, to give us all a bit of sunshine, here are my current 'go-to' highlighters that frankly, I don't think I could live without!

The first is MAC Iridescent Powder in "Belightful" which retails at £17.00 for 8g of product. I first bought this little beauty in December 2008 and this is my second compact, so I think it has reasonable lasting power.

It is a powder highlighter than can also be used as a bronzer. It is a warm toned bronze with incredibly finely toned flecks of gold. The MAC website says that the gold flecks are actually "jet milled mica" particles, which would go to explain why the quality is oh-so-lovely!

I apply this powder either with my MAC Duofibre (I suspect it is a fake- bloomin' eBay!) or a dense kabuki brush. I have tried other brushes and have found the denser the better- they seem to pick up the mica better.  This highlighter stays on all day and is beyond versatile. I use it as a bronzer over foundation, as a highlighter if I have my 2True bonzer on underneath as it is darker (see my review on 2True HERE), on my collar bones and decolletage to add some shimmer, on my shoulders to look sunkissed and I have even wizzed a bit in a line down the centre of my legs to make my (fake) tan look a bit my snazzy.

As always with MAC packaging it is smooth and sophisticated and this compact comes complete with a mirror which is rather handy indeed.

I will definitely be repurchasing this, it is my favourite and my benchmark.

My second favourite is a newbie to my collection and it is the MeMeMe Beat The Blue Sunbeam, which retails for £4.50 (I think, I have given the receipt to the Messy Fairy, just like everything else I want to keep hold of! gr). It is VERY similar to the famed Benefit MoonBeam but for a fraction of the £16-£17 price tag.

I apply this with the little nail varnish-eqsue brush and then pat (with my fingers) onto the apples of my cheeks and a teensiest bit on the bridge of my nose to carry the gold through. It is a thick milky gold liquid, slightly thicker than that of Benefit High Beam (a cool toned pinky highlighter). Whilst it is gold and sheeny, it's not quite sparkly so I have been using this for the office with confidence that my face doesn't look like a disco ball.

I suppose the only fault, and I'm clutching at straws here, would be that it could get a bit messy and cacky round the bottle opening if you weren't careful, or if you dropped it on tiles it could smash because it's glass. Although saying that, I like glass packaging, everything nowadays seems to be plastic so glass has a certain quality to it that I relish.

When this runs out I think I would repurchase as a more toned down alternative to my MAC Belightful, and when my Benefit Highbeam runs out, I will probably buy the MeMeMe version instead.

Just for a brucey bonus extra, here is a picture of MeMeMe and Benefit side by side. You can see the difference between the warm and cool tones. I prefer warm tones because they make me look a bit more alive and perk up tired or dull skin.

Have you tried any of these? What did you think?

Don't forget to enter my Nifty Nail Contest below, so far, only one person has guessed the right answer!! (Will you all work it out now? hehe)

Toodlepip!

xx