Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Review: Cover Girl Advanced Radiance Age Defying Makeup with Olay #105 Ivory

I don't recall why I picked out this foundation at the drugstore. The Cover Girl Advanced Radiance Age Defying Makeup SPF 10 comes in an attractive plastic pump bottle. It retails for about $13 at local drugstore (less at places like Target and Walmart). I picked up the lightest shade in the range, #105 Ivory. You can probably tell from the bottle shot above that this is nowhere near pale.
So even though there's a fairly hydrating ingredient towards the top of the list (glycerin), this baby is chocked full of silicones. I immensely dislike foundations with tons of silicones (some I can handle) but this has dimethicone crosspolymer, some other special dimethicone with some numbers (sorry, I'm not a chemist by any means), regular dimethicone, methicone, another special dimethicone with different numbers... whew. Basically, this is a story of me picking a foundation without reading the back, likely carrying too many things in my hands and feeling rushed.
So even though the color is all wrong and the ingredients kind of scared me, how did this perform? If you need absolutely no coverage and want to use this as a base for your makeup with a tint, then it's fine. You can see it blended in on the right side of my hand. It slightly cancels out the redness in my hand and doesn't look obviously dark and off. I'd liken this to something like Origins Vitazing though I've never tried it.

If you want a foundation that actually covers anything, then you're going to have a problem. The above is my attempt at a second layer. First of all, it doesn't smooth over the first layer easily, it cakes up and goes all patchy. And of course, you can start to see just how yellow and off the foundation is for me (though my hand is a bit more pasty than my face). It's just all wrong. I've been battling some "time off the month" breakouts and this made my face look horrible. When I went to ""blend"" (major air quotes there), it kind of mushed the product around. It just wasn't attractive.
Basically, it looked like I had applied something on my face, but I hadn't applied foundation, if that makes any sense because it didn't cover anything but you could definitely see it! So unfortunate.

So, if you like silicone primers and you want one with some kick or you have perfect skin and shouldn't be wearing a mask of silicone anyway (but that's just my opinion) maybe you would like to try this? At close to $15 with tax, it's on the pricey side.

I returned mine thanks to the awesome CVS Beauty Guarantee. Sorry Cover Girl. This was not easy nor breezy.