Review: Hard Candy Blush Crush Baked Blush in Honeymoon

It took Canada a long time, but we finally got Hard Candy at our Walmarts recently. For those that aren't familiar with Hard Candy, they used to be a more high-end brand that was sold at Sephora. I remember their nail polishes personally, the ones adorned with the plastic colourful rings. Now Hard Candy is exclusively sold at Walmart, and for affordable prices, and there are many products available.

I picked out one of the Blush Crush Baked Blushes in the colour "Honeymoon". It was $7 CAD. The first thing that I noticed about it was the gaudy packaging, if you are a fan of Ed Hardy type stuff you may like this, otherwise you might not. The blush crush blushes are a marbleized baked blush, that resembled the MAC mineralized skin finishes. The Hard Candy site says these are "baked for eight hours, the texture is easy to blend and natural looking." Honeymoon is a popular product, so I decided to pick up just this one for now to see if I like this brand. This blush definitely looks pretty in the pan, a peachy pink dome with a tiny bit of purple veining. Your veining will differ depending on which one you happen to pick up.

Unfortunately if you want this to act as a blush (which I was hoping for) you will be disappointed because this has very little colour payoff, it works more as a highlighter. When swatching it on my hand after a few swipes you do get colour payoff, which is pretty. But on the face when picking up with a brush I just get shimmers, and a very light peach-pink highlight that needs to be built up to be noticeable. I actually think it's quite similar (see pic above) to MAC's Shell Pearl Beauty Powder (came out recently with the Liberty of London collection), although Shell Pearl is more of a peach colour, whereas Honeymoon is more pink. Of course it is nowhere near as smooth and pretty as Shell Pearl however, but the colour payoff I would say is similar.

I like the look of the Living Doll crush blush from Hard Candy, but after seeing the performance of this one, unless someone tell me otherwise, I think I will pass and save my money on something better.

Have you tried any of Hard Candy's cosmetics?