The Body Shop Matte & Shimmer Cheek Colour

Right before I packed up and moved to Japan I saw these Body Shop Matte & Shimmer Cheek Colour on sale for a ridiculous 3/$10 at my local store, so I picked up both colors 01 Pink & Gold and 02 Bronze & Gold as they were gorgeous. Then I proceeded to pack them away think I wasn't going to need them anytime going, moving to the land of cosmetics and all. It wasn't until this past holiday that I finally brought them back to Japan with me.

Unfortunately, these pressed powder blusher/bronzer didn't turn out as I had expected. My first and foremost complaint is the quality of their packaging, and apparently I'm not the only person with a broken, crushed, shattered Matte & Shimmer Cheek Colour compact. This seemed kind of odd, because it's not like The Body Shop to put out such flimsy packaging, and I know this because I own a lot of Body Shop eye and cheek compacts. But not the case with these, I guess. Not only the powder pan was not glued well to the compact, the powder itself wasn't pressed firmly enough. 

01 Pink & Gold and 02 Bronze & Gold. All pictures taken indoor with flash unless otherwise noted.

Getting home from my trip back in December, my luggage had been inspected, which means no matter how carefully I packed my things, they were dug out and were probably thrown back in a hurry. Opening up one of my makeup bags, to my horror something had shattered, rendering all the contents in said bag covered in a bronzy brown powder. That something turned out to be this 02 Bronze & Gold compact, and it was literally milled like a loose powder! Thankfully, the 01 Pink & Gold compact survived. The powder pan shook loose from its crappy glue, but the placement of the compact in the bag prevented the powder pan from being thrown around in its own compact and the powder didn't get smashed up like the 02 Bronze & Gold. It wasn't anything a tiny pin's head dollop of super glue can't fix, but I no longer have the 02 Bronze & Gold to play with. And after swatching the 01 Pink & Gold, I'm not sure I want to replace it paying E(vil)bay price.

- 01 Pink & Gold: disappointingly sheer. The powder is smooth, and all 4 colors are swirled together for a rather pale peach color. It gives me a fresh and brightening glow and that's pretty much it. For those who are fair it might be a pretty peachy blush, however for everyone else it will probably be a mere highlighter, if even that. This makes me ponder what-ifs with the 02 Bronze & Gold, after all, it did seem darker and perhaps might have been more pigmented. Yep, this is how E(vil)bay gets to me. Every time.

- Left: matte, very pale powder pink that barely even shows on me.

- Top: peach pink with satiny gold sheen. A gorgeous color, if only I can see better...

- Right: matte, a translucent champagne with a touch of yellow that blends right into my skin no matter how much I layer on. Can you see that swatch? No? I could barely see it myself in natural light!!!

- Bottom: rose with satiny gold sheen. Again a very pretty color, if only there were more of it, it might have made a decent blush. But since there's only a quarter of it mixing with 3 other sheer colors, the results is...well, not quite visible.

These swatches were done very heavily, so as you can see it's really quite sheer. Far left swatch is the 4 colors swirled together, with the rest of the swatches follow the order of the colors as they appear in the pan. Picture taken in natural light without flash.

- The 02 Bronze & Gold that could have been. It didn't look half bad, did it? Boo. Hiss.