Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Let's Get Real Here, Almay....

I can't even..what..I don't know
Can I tell everyone how much I hated the new Almay Wake-Up Liquid Makeup?? As you can already tell, this is not going to be as nice and as well put-together as my last review. Many apologies in advance for how.......crass this entry seems.

I was so excited when I saw it at CVS (which seems to be exclusively where it's being sold right now, haven't seen at Target, Walmart, or Walgreens), I went back the very next day and bought it. Fifteen dollaroos.


I really liked the Wake-Up powder. Minus the glitter, of course, which seems to have been pretty much everyone's gripe with it. It went on really nice, the colour was perfect and I really liked the coverage it gave me.

And then there's this. This......liquid. Stuff. Like I said, I saw it at CVS this week, and haven't been able to find ANY information on it anywhere else. Even Almay's website has nada. Weird. Bought it, same colour as I got in the powder, 010 Ivory. Got home and immediately took my makeup off, washed my face, moisturised and primed.

Click Read More to see the rest of my adventure!



It looks alright, right? 
OH GOD IT DOESN'T BLEND IT
JUST SITS ON MY SKIN.

I took some swatches and photos, as you can see above. The colour seemed nice, not quite spot-on, but nothing ever is perfect for my paleness.
The problem lied within...the blending. In that it doesn't. At all. It just spread all over my hand and got goopy and gross. In the picture on the right, I had even wiped off a good amount and tried to blend it. Then I noticed the glitter. You can't see it in the picture, but there's flecks of glitter. Not huge chunks like in the powder, but when I put it on my face it was fairly obvious.


I thought, "okay well since I primed my face and stuff it'll be way different on my face..." WRONG. I couldn't even bring myself to take pictures of it on my face. It was that bad.

Let's start with the good things:
-the consistency was nice, pretty smooth and before I looked in the mirror I felt it was going on really evenly
- the colour is neutral enough that I think this shade could work with both slightly cool and slightly warm toned skin.

That's it.

The cons...oh man, where do I start? I tried applying this with a foundation brush, a flat top kabuki, a stipling brush,  a sponge, my beauty blender, my fingers....nothing could blend this in. It sat on my skin like mud. Mud with some water in it. The amount I put on my face originally is what is in the swatch above on the left. I used that small amount on my whole face. I wiped a ton of it off with a tissue and tried blending again. No dice. Washed my face, moisturised and waited about a half hour before trying to apply again---this time without any primer. My primer is silicone based, so I thought that could possible be the culprit of the inability to blend.

This time I used about a third of the amount you see above for my whole face. By using less I feel the glitter was more apparent, and I still couldn't blend it out for the life of me. I looked like I had massive amounts of MAC Studio Tech caked on my face and made no attempt to blend. It was horrible.


But I powered through and let it sit for about 15 minutes and took another look in the mirror. Holy blotches, Batman!! Places I thought I had put my brush were bare, and my nose was oompa-loompa coloured. And settling into wrinkles? Yes, like no other foundation I've ever tried. And the sparkles. All the sparkles. Sparkles that I cannot wash out of my brushes now.




All in all, I give it a 1.5 out of 5 stars. And that one and a half stars comes from the smooth consistency of it, and the colour (before oxidisation).
★☆☆☆


Would I recommend this product? No. Not in a million years.
Needless to say, I went back to CVS the very next day and got my precious $15 back.

Have you tried this? Are you curious about it? Know a good/better dupe? Comment below and tell me what you think!


This is normally where I'd write the product ingredients, but since I returned it and I cannot find info online ANYWHERE.....I'll have to update it when I do get my hands on some.

1 comment:

  1. Um. Well. I think it's safe to say I'll never, ever use this product :D??

    ReplyDelete