Benefit's Girl Meets Pearl Review

I recently grabbed a Benefit Sweet to Meet Ya 500 Point Perk from Sephora and it comes with a full sized Girl Meets Pearl, a pinkish gold liquid highlighter, Benetint and BADgal Lash Mascara. Girl Meets Pearl was the reason why I picked up this perk so naturally this is a review on the product! :)

It's been 3-4 years since I've used any sort of liquid shimmer highlighter. I avoided the vast majority of shimmer face makeup when I was still doing filming so I was really looking forward to trying Girl Meets Pearl.

Product Description and Ingredients from Sephora

What it is:

A soft, golden pink, liquid-pearl highlighter.

What it does:

For a delectable glow, fancy up with this golden-pink liquid pearl luminizer. Its sheer, light-reflecting formula in a fresh, raspberry scent glides on smoothly for a breathtakingly radiant complexion. Wear it alone for a youthful dewy glow, or over makeup for lustrous "pearlessence."

What else you need to know:

This product contains moisturizing sesame seed oil and skin-soothing raspberry, chamomile, and sweet almond seed extract to improve skin firmness and smoothness.

Golden Pink

Water (Aqua), Octyldodecanol, Mica, Cetyl Dimethicone, Glycerin, Glyceryl Stearate, Titanium Dioxide (Ci 77891), Phenyl Trimethicone, Tapioca Starch, Potassium Cetyl Phosphate, Cyclopentasiloxane, Phenoxyethanol, Sesamum Indicum (Sesame) Seed Oil, Tribehenin, Caprylyl Glycol, Behenyl Alcohol, Cetyl Alcohol, Polyacrylate-13, Prunus Amygdalus Dulcis (Sweet Almond) Seed Extract, Carbomer, Peg-100 Stearate, Polyisobutene, Aminomethyl Propanol, Iron Oxides (Ci 77491), Benzophenone-4, Butylene Glycol, Sorbic Acid, Lentinus Edodes Extract, Bht, Disodium Edta, Fragrance (Parfum), Anthemis Nobilis Flower Extract, Rubus Idaeus (Raspberry) Fruit Extract, Sorbitan Isostearate, Carmine (Ci 75470), Polysorbate 20, Sodium Methylparaben, Chondrus Crispus (Carrageenan), Sodium Propylparaben, Sodium Ethylparaben, Methylparaben, Linalool, Propylene Glycol, Butylparaben, Chlorphenesin, Ethylparaben, Isobutylparaben, Propylparaben, Citric Acid, Sodium Dehydroacetate. N° 05131/N.

Just so you are aware. There are parabens in this product.

 

The product comes in a tube that resembles a glue stick with a twist bottom and two double top caps. You turn the bottom until product comes out through the top. When you use the product for the first time you will need to twist the cap several times until you see product. After this first time, product comes out with just half a twist to the bottom. Click to enlarge the photo on the right to see the color of the product. It's a pinky gold liquid shimmer.

When applied to skin, the pink seems mostly blended in and what you see most is the gold shimmer from the product. Girl Meets Pearl is designed for highlighting areas on your face where light hits first like your cheekbones, bridge of your nose, center of the forehead, area above your cupid's bow and chin. When these areas are highlighted with shimmer, it gives you a dewy look or a luminious glow- whichever you prefer to call it.

For this review, I choose two very different makeup looks where I used Girl Meets Pearl to show how the product can be used for day or evening occassions and still look natural. My makeup was fairly neutral in this photo. I used peach and oranged-toned eyeshadow and blush to match my outfit for that day. You'll notice in this photo that my cheekbones, the bridge of my nose and forehead is "shiny". What you are seeing is the shimmer being reflected when light falls onto these areas.

This is the look I wore to a party in the evening. Girl Meets Pearl placed on the same areas as the photo above.

You can apply the product on top of your makeup as you would apply blush after setting powder. I like to put on all my liquid or cream makeup first and then move on to powders (with the exception of makeup finish sprays) . Just like my foundation, cream blushes and concealer, I put the liquid highligther before applying setting powder. This serves two purposes:

1. The highlighter will last much longer - 10 hours easy.
2. It looks more natural and you can hold off looking oily as the day progresses.


Girl Meets Pearl is like any other liquid shimmer highlighters on the market. There are lots of variations of the product and the one to choose depends on the color of shimmer you prefer - from ivory pink to golden bronze. Used properly, you can easily achieve a luminous glow to your face. I don't recommend this kind of shimmer highlighter if you have oily skin because it'll only serve to make you look more oily. For oily skin, use a matte liquid (or matte pressed powder) highlighter with either a matte blush or a blush with a satin finish for a bit of shimmer. And always remember, for photos and filming, matte is the cake and shimmers are only the cherry on top.

Also, if you wanted to, you could use this on your entire face. Benefit does have shimmer face primer which I don't see how it differs from Girl Meets Pearl too much. While putting this on your face is perfectly fine, I am not fore it unless you specifically want to look very shiny for a certain look. Just beware that you will potentially tired in person and particuarly in photos with all the shimmer.

Retails for $30 USD
Where to buy: Benefit online or at any major retail stores.

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Zuzu Luxe Oil Free Liquid Foundation Review

Here is my Zuzu Luxe Oil Free Liquid Foundation Review as promised. My Giorgio Armani foundation is running low so I have been slowly searching for a foundation made with mostly natural ingredients. I didn't want a foundation to contain parabens or any of the Dirty Dozen named by the David Suzuki Foundation. You can read about the Dirty Dozen here and how these chemicals commonly found in skincare and makeup products are harmful to the human body.

There is a great little online shop called White Rabbit Beauty that sells over a dozen different makeup/skincare brands that do not test on animals and out of that handful are some brands that are also dedicated to creating natural products. The other nice thing about White Rabbit Beauty is you can order samples to try- a very useful service. You can order 4-5 colors to see which one best matches your skin. You'll see below that the samples are large enough to see 3-5 times.

I ordered:

Zuzu's Luxe Liquid Foundation in L-6 and L-11
Alma Pure Mineral Foundation Powder in Neutral 2, Beige 2, Beige 3 and Warm 2
100% Pure White Peach Tinted Moisturizer

My samples came in some cute packaging with a hand-written note. I thought it was very thoughtful of them to write a note.

My skin has yellow pigment with red undertones so it's not always clear to me which color would be the best fit. Zuzu's L-11, to my surprise was nearly a perfect match to my skin tone. They call it a neutral color but it has the right amount of red in it to be a good fit.

Zuzu Luxe Oil-Free Liquid Foundation comes in 9 different shades. The lightest is Light/Ivory (L-3) to Dark Skin (L-24). In the swatch above, I have two colors, L-6 which is for light skin with neutral undertones and L-11 is for Light/Medium skin with neutral undertones. L-11 is the best fit for me.

The foundation is advertised as a medium coverage foundation but I would say it's more light to medium coverage. Unlike Armani's Silk Lasting Foundation that covers most of my blemishes, Zuzu's Liquid Foundation barely covers them. My skin looks fine from a reasonably close distance but if you pay attention, you will see the blemishes. 

Not a fan of how you can still see the red patch and red dots (from allergies) on the left side of my cheek. The product also looks splotchy on certain areas of my face inspite of my efforts to apply the product evenly. In terms of texture, the foundation feels creamy and light on myskin. The color is also one of the closest to my own color. I didn't even have to mix it with anything else.

Although Zuzu didn't quite work out for me, it doesn't mean I don't recommend trying it.Gabriel Cosmetics, parent company of Zuzu does not taste on animals nor use any of the Dirty Dozen and that is the first and foremost reason I wanted to try Zuzu. The product itself feels great and I was amazed by the color match. The only instances where I can't recommend at least trying the foundation is if you have a lot of blemishes and need more coverage or if you have dry skin.

Further to Zuzu's non-toxic goodness, their products do not contain (taken from Gabriel Cosmetics' website)

 Cosmetics are formulated free of:

·        Coal Tar Derivatives or FD&C agents

·        Parabens

·        Mineral Oil

·        Lanolin

·        Talc

·        Propylene Glycol

·        Hydrogenated Oils

·        Gluten

·        Phthalates

·        DBP

·        Toluene

·        Formaldehyde

·        Nano/Micro sized particles

Retails for: $29.75 for 30ml
Where to Buy: Gabriel Cosmetics's website or White Rabbit Beauty's website.

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