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.
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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