To Highlight or Not To Highlight, That Is The Question.

It's pretty obvious that highlighting is a massive trend in the beauty world at the minute and in true Tarnya style I'm about 10 years behind with this trend. The main reserve I have about highlighting is that I normally like my makeup to be pretty matte because I get quite oily and I don't really like the 'dewy' look on me. So the idea of adding something to my face to make it look even more oily and shiny has been putting me off trying highlight.

However, I don't think I can truly judge a trend unless I try it out for myself. So I decided to pick up the new Sleek - Solstice highlighting palette and attempt to highlight everyday for 2 weeks and see what my feelings were like afterwards. 

Before I begin I just want to give a quick review of the palette itself. I decided to pick this up because it's absolutely beautiful! It comes with 3 powder and 1 cream highlighters all in different tones, I thought I was bound to suit one of them. I won't be using the brush though because I tried it on the back of my hand and I didn't like it, it picked up too much product and was quite wide. 

Week 1.

So the first thing I found quite hard adding highlighting to my usual make up routine was where exactly to put the highlighter on my face. I've watched about a billion videos of people applying highlight but putting it on your own face is a whole other story. That and the fact that putting highlight on my nose and cupids bow is a no-no for me, I wear really simple and basic make-up and this just looked like too much make-up for me, so that was scrapped after the first day of beaming.

After trying a couple of the powders I decided to try the cream highlight shade, I think I prefer this one so far because it's much easier to apply with a beauty blender. It just makes it much easier to blend in and the shade suits me much better, it's definitely the more subtle out of the four.

I also have no idea whether cool or warm toned things suit me better so I'm still not sure which of the colours are best for me but I know for certain that I won't be wearing the pink one. I think a pink highlight is a little too much colour when I'm trying to keep my make up look simple.

Highlighting didn't really add much time to my makeup routine or anything, I just added a tiny bit to the high point of my cheekbones after everything else was done, for the powders I used a Real Techniques - Settings brush which is quite small and narrow, so wouldn't leave it slathered across my entire cheek.

Conclusion to week one is meh, it's alright but nothing mind blowing, it's a nice little touch but I don't see it changing my life.

Week 2.

After trying the cream highlight for the back end of week one I was really quite liking the highlight effect, I think it just adds a subtle sheen to the cheeks. I do find it quite hard to make it work as I like a really matte finish to my face because it gets quite oily but I do think it adds an none oily looking shine.

After digging around in my drawers I found a little bottle of NARS - Orgasm illuminator that I used to wear all the time as a kind of blush/highlight, so I've been wearing this for pretty much the rest of week 2. It's a nice pinky/peach colour with a bit of shimmer in it but as it's a liquid I find it much easier to blend than the creams or powders, specially as I user a beauty blender. I think this is much easier to wear for me and if I do invest in a highlighter at any future point I'll definitely consider a liquid instead of a powder/cream as I can blend it so much more seamlessly.

Although I wasn't too impressed after my first week, I think after wearing something a product I liked much better I'm more impressed with the results and I certainly will be wearing this more often, I'd even consider re-purchasing the NARS illuminator once it's ran out because I really do like that product but I have to say regrettably I'm not enjoying the sleek palette as much as I thought I would.


Overall thoughts.

I can't say I'm a 100% highlight convert, I can see why people like it but for me I think it's a nice little touch if you've got the time but it's not something I would wear everyday. I think for me it's tough because I'm so shiny due to oiliness that adding extra shine seems weird to me.

I do think this palette is absolutely stunning though and I would highly recommend it if you were interested in trying some highlighters, it has a good range of colours and the packaging is super pretty but unfortunately for me I just prefer liquids. I will attempt to use up the cream contour though as I did genuinely like that one from the palette and wouldn't want it to go to waste!

I hope you enjoyed this post from me, it's a little different to my usual beauty review style posts.

What are your thoughts on the highlighting trend? Do you have any liquid highlighter recommendations for me to try?




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