REVIEW: ELF Contouring Blush & Bronzing Powder (St. Lucia)

A few months ago, I never thought that I needed bronzer because I always assumed that bronzer is for pale girls only who wants to look like as if they just came back from vacation in a tropical island. I live in a tropical country, I don't have pale skin, looking bronzed is never been a trend here because most people still think clear-bright skin is one of the definition of "pretty". Until I realized most of my bases are all a tad lighter than my skin tone. It makes me look pale and flat. That's when it hit me, I need bronzer in my life.

Picking one bronzer to buy was really hard. I don't know which one would work on me yet. I can't find anything in my local drugstore since bronzer isn't our thing, so I had to buy online. This ELF Contouring Blush & Bronzing Powder is actually had been in my wishlist for awhile, ever since Kathleen Lights mentioned it in some of her videos. I wanted the Sunny Bronzer from NYC too because it's completely matte, but considering the price for Sunny Bronzer is slightly higher than ELF, beside the ELF one got a blush too, that's why I decided to go with ELF. And I chose St.Lucia because even though there's a matte one called Fiji, it just doesn't seem like the bronzer will show up on my skin.

If you're familiar with ELF's studio line, you know how sleek, sturdy and expensive (think about NARS) it looks. The only thing I dislike about packaging is it gets dirty rather quickly, you can see it on the picture above. When opened, you can see how beautiful the shades are. A peachy pink blush and a medium brown shade that looks like complimenting each other and will suit light to medium skin tone really well. It has a huge mirror which I really love. Then here comes the swatches... the bronzer shade is the perfect shade for my skin tone, it's either too dark, too light, or too orange. Although there's a slight shimmers in it but it don't bother me because on the skin it looks more like a sheen instead of shimmery. Mean while the blush didn't turn out as good as it seem on the pan, it come out to be light peach on my skin and the golden shimmers are kinda chunky, it slightly affect how it appears on the camera as well, hence it seems to be a bit orangey on the swatch.

The pigmentation of the bronzer is really nice, though a lot of people say it is super pigmented, I don't think it is, maybe it's because the shade is not that dark for me, so I don't see the need to use a light hand to put this on my face. But the blush is just horrible, the texture is so hard even if I have rubbed it with all my power to swatch this thing, it's nearly impossible to make the color show up in a single swatch, layering it wouldn't really help too because it only makes the shimmers piles up and it definitely don't look good on my big pores. The combination of the two is actually look good, it creates the perfect bronzed, sun kissed look to the skin, but I just wish the blush is not as sheer and the shimmers would be less chunky. And if you notice any fly outs around the pan, it is because the bronzer is powdery, there are fall outs everywhere right from the first time I opened it, but the blush is not powder due the hard texture.

I honestly like this product so much! I use it everyday, but only the bronzer. If only the blush had better quality.. Do you have any suggestion for drugstore bronzers? I really want to know because I can see this ELF Contouring Blush and Bronzer will be used up quickly, and I'd love to try other brands, let me know in the comment below. Thank you for reading, I'll see you in my next post :)