DHC Rose Beauty Shimmer Cocktail Powder Q10

This DHC Rose Beauty Shimmer Cocktail Powder Q10 (bleh...what a name!) is an illustrious case of how great packaging can sell a product. I'm generally a practical consumer. I do have a preference for small and functional packaging, and I very much dislike big and bulky packaging. But most of the time, I don't really care and don't really mind if a product has plain and simple packaging. After all, my attention is on the stuff inside and not so much on what's outside.

That was not the case with this DHC powder. This powder is one of the rarer items I actually bought for its outer packaging as well as the powder itself. Take a look at that pretty pearly iridescent pink rose embossed compact, isn't it pretty? It's a tad big and a little too bulky for my taste, so it's certainly not ideal, but given its uniqueness, I'll give it a break on the sizing aspect. May be there are similar compacts out there, but I sure haven't seen any, so I'd say this compact is pretty neat :P Each powder compacts comes with a mirror and puff, and the compact itself feels substantial and not flimsy.

All pictures taken indoor with flash.

Unfortunately, the actual powder frustrates me. It comes in 2 "colors," Pink and Yellow, but I don't know why they even bothered with colors at all, because these are really just translucent powders that are on the pale side with subtle brightening function. My biggest beef with them is the obvious gold shimmers that are scattered about the otherwise matte-based powder. When I say matte-based, I mean the powder itself is matte, having no super fine-milled shimmers or pearl powder blended in. If left alone this way, it would have made a nice mattefying powder that also brightens somewhat, being on the pale side. But no, they had to go and ruin it by mixing in gold shimmers that aren't big or chunky glitters, but at the same time aren't finely milled enough (or at all!) and end up just "floating" around in the powder!

Pink

I can't help but wonder what the hell they were thinking when they made this powder. Honestly, to me those shimmers seem more of an afterthought, like they thought they had made a boring matte powder, and so to make it more "interesting" they threw in some gold shimmers at the last minute. In my opinion, it is these shimmers that turn this powder from being somewhat useful to kind of pointless. It's no longer mattefying with the scattered shimmers drawing in enough light to give off a sheen, and yet at the same time the shimmers themselves aren't fine enough to make the powder into a soft-focus highlighter, nor there are enough of the shimmers to make the powder into a shimmery highlighter! So yeah, this powder is a bit of a half-ass on every front, so it's not exactly a finishing powder by any means.

Yellow

All that said, I don't hate this powder, though I honestly would not have bought either colors (and I bought both!) had I known the powder is matte-based with mere "floating" shimmers. I thought I was buying a full blended shimmery highlighter :( Anyway, now that it's not so hot and humid anymore, my skin does need shimmers to avoid looking dull. And since this powder is not quite there on either the brightening, highlighting, or shimmering factor, I have to apply it with a kabuki brush to bring out a little more of everything. I would never ever use a kabuki brush to apply a full blend shimmery highlighter, unless I want to look like a disco ball, but I guess in this case the powder needs the help of such heavy-handed application and blending ^.^