100% Pure Fruit & Cocoa Pigmented Luminizers

Good news for anyone who has <30 seconds to sculpt a cheekbone, get a bronzed glow and/or accomplish the whole blush and highlighter combo before heading out the door. And if you're not the best at applying makeup, you'll be especially glad to be acquainted with these two pans as they are virtually fool proof. 

The Fruit Pigmented Luminizer (the pink pan) is really a blush for light to medium complexions – think Nars Orgasm blush. It's loaded with golden shimmer to offset the pink and a blush/highlighter in one. It's hard to overdo it, the effect is pretty and just healthy. I work in a tiny bit on the apples of my cheeks and the color just blooms, then I use a Kevyn Aucoin trick and lightly apply a tiny bit across the bridge of the nose, forehead and just below the chin. 

Note that the swatch photographed below comes off looking more powdery and cooler looking than in person. It's actually quite warmer.

The Cocoa Luminizer is a bronzer for lighter complexions, and a brilliant highlighter for deeper complexions. There's none of those orange, reddish that often makes bronzers look like, well, bronzers. It's closer to golden taupe, making it more believable and harder to mess up. I use it as a finishing powder, after applying powder foundation, I use the same brush to lightly sweep this across my cheekbones, temples and bridge of my nose. 

Dr. Hauschka Bronzing Concentrate

When Sephora first opened in Seattle, it carried Dr. Hauschka. My first introduction to the line was back in 1999. Gwyneth Paltrow had been in the store earlier that day, apparently, because someone ran off with her toiletry bag while she was traveling to Seatac. Before heading up to Vancouver to shoot scenes for The Talented Mr. Ripley, she stopped at Sephora to restock her beauty essentials, to the collective joy of the staff there. Per the movie's principal make up artist's orders, she was using a regimen of Dr. Hauschka before and during filming so her skin would look incredible without makeup in the close up shots outdoors. 

I also heard from the same salespeople that the bowls to mix Dr. Hauschka's formulas are blessed with ceremonial feathers before batches are mixed, as well as the some morning rituals before they start their work day. I'm not sure how credible any of this is, but I can confirm with certainty that the line is no joke. And one of their hero products, a star of their line, is their Bronzing Concentrate.

The color is spot on, not too red or orange. Mixed with either a facial oil or moisturizer before application, it turns winter pallor into a credible summer glow. Like you've been doing sun salutations in the actual sun. In a garden. In August. There's a faint suggestion of shimmer, and the texture is silky and weightless (First ingredient is water, the second is olive oil). One pump infuses the skin with delicate color, two to three pumps gives a bronzed up glow.