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I saw a very peculiar thing this week, my husband sitting at our desk staring deep into one of my compacts for what seemed close to a minute. He only stopped when I asked him what he was doing and he replied “I never looked at this stuff before so I wanted to see what was up.” Stuff meaning makeup, of course. And “what was up” meaning why I spend a majority of my waking hours dedicated to it. So, I asked him what he thought about it, to which he answered “Is it all this pretty?”
No sir, it is most certainly not…
For the compact he was staring into was the Hourglass Ambient Lighting Blush in Diffused Heat ($35). And I’m afraid it has set a very high bar for all future blushes that both he and I see.
I could write this whole post about the compact itself; the asymmetrical latch, the sleek updated logo, the muted gold shade, the perfect square shape and size. (In fact, Hourglass was the line that spawned a category on we heart this called “packaging porn!”)
But it’s what lies within that’s really amazing.
Within you will find the same “magically flattering light” we talked about in the Ambient Lighting Palette review. But this time, marbled with color.
Marbled is pretty accurate description, really. These powders are hand-made with what is called an advanced miscelare technique, meaning “to mix” in Italian. No two look alike, like a geode or some beautiful thing you’d expect to find in the earth.
Diffused Heat is described as “vibrant poppy.” Diffused refers to the Ambient Lighting shade; a pale warm yellow, and Heat refers to the poppy; a bright coral pink. Swirled you get an ethereal, subtly shimmering shade that looks like it’s lit from within. When light catches the lighting powder at different angles it almost twinkles.
That’s right, I said twinkles!
The powder is all you’d expect from Hourglass; softly milled and velvety. And the pigment is amazing. One swirl of the brush and you pretty much have what you need (though feel free to build more color if you want, it does that well.) I wasn’t sure I’d get that much color with the large amount of highlighter in it, which is way more than what you’d call a “vein” (like I do with most products like these.)
But that’s just the thing, Hourglass Ambient Lighting Blush is really a class of its own. A breathtaking class of its own. And I’m thisclose to purchasing all six of them.
Diffused Heat in sunlight
and indoors
So blush lovers, who’s meeting me at the Hourglass counter?
Stef is many things. Amongst them: co-editor of we heart this, photographer, condiment connoisseur, Philly girl in the California desert, borderline hoarder and a hardcore beauty junkie.
skin tone: NC 25/30
skin type: oily with a fear of rosacea
favorite beauty product: high-end skincare and lip products
(c) we heart this – Read entire story here.