It's Friday, Friday! Who's excited that it's finally Friday? Me! Tomorrow is the Mermaid Parade in Coney Island, which I only realized today and now I'm scrambling to find someone to go with! So far, no takers. Eh, if I have to go by myself, I'll go by myself. I just want to see the mermaids ... who are mostly dudes in drag, haha! Anyway, where am I going with this? No where, stay on track Jess!
Today I'm talking about the finishing powder made for all beauties, but that'll also work nicely on dry skin beauties! Before getting this powder I was all over the NARS Light Reflecting Powder, but after talking to my friend Julia she suggested I try Tarte's Smooth Operator, which is a micronized clay finishing powder. It's a translucent powder, that's supposed to not only mattify your skin, but also minimize the appearance of your pores and replenish your skin. The 'replenish' part is what reeled me in. I love powdering my face because it helps my foundation last that much longer but sometimes that just means I'm going to make my face look that much more dry. The magical Amazonian clay does about a gazillion beautiful things for your skin, which is why Tarte loves using it in so many of their products! Amazonian clay in this powder makes your skin smoother, mattifies it, and at the same time hydrates your skin so that the appearance of dryness and flakiness is reduced. They not only say that, but it actually does that!
Smooth Operator makes my skin feel and look smooth. It can look a bit flaky if my skin is feeling particularly parched and I haven't moisturized that day, but other than that it looks great - no dry patches around blemishes or around my nose. This is exceptionally good for setting under eye concealers and brighteners! It keeps the concealer put throughout the day and prevents it from creasing. Since it's summer and I haven't been wearing too much foundation, or a heavy layer of it, using it to set my under eye make up has been my favorite way to use it. Also, just buffing this on its own on my face slightly evens out the redness on my face, controls the gah-ross sweat and still smoothes my skin!
I leave the packaging for last because it is gorgeous but may be the reason you hate this product if you don't do your research. The powder comes in a typical twisty-top pot? mini-jar? (see below, haha) with a really nice palm tree design on the cover! Now when you twist off the cover you'll notice the sifter and then you'll notice it comes with one teeny whole. Yes, the sifter is one teeny hole. When I first started using it I couldn't get ANY of the product out. You can hold it upside down and tap it all you want but nothing will come out. *I almost returned it because of this* but I really wanted to try it and didn't want to have to take off the itty, bitty sifter to do it. So I dug a little deeper, read reviews on Sephora and found out you have to push down on the sifter with your thumbs to get the product out. When you push down the powder just puffs out of the sifter. Problem solved! (but don't push too hard because then you'll end up with powder everywhere) At first it was bit strange to have to push to get my product out of a tiny sifter but it means that I can toss this in my bag and don't have to worry about it exploding! I'm still getting used to the fact that it's a powdered-power instead a pressed powder, but other than that's it's really lovely on the skin and the fact that I don't have to worry about looking flakey is a big plus for me!
What do you think? What are you favorite finishing powders?
