Mineral Makeup is NOT for me!

Mineral makeup is all the rage. You cannot turn on the telly without seeing an ad with B-list celebrities promoting a new brand of mineral makeup.

For months now, I’ve wanted to try mineral makeup, but every single time I run to a cosmetic counter to try this new wonder makeup I’m always told the same thing: “I’m sorry, but we don’t have your shade”.

Some companies have shades that will only suit very fair skins and when companies do have darker shades, they are either too red or too ashy.

I was stopped dead in my tracks as I was running to the gym when I noticed in the windows of Holt Renfrew (the Canadian equivalent to Neiman Marcus in the U.S. and Selfridges in the U.K.) that Prescriptives had a new mineral makeup collection.

I should preface by saying that I’ve been wearing Prescriptives foundations and powders for a decade now because they are dead on. I mean no other makeup company comes close to matching my skin tone so perfectly … and I buy the off-the-shelf colours … I don’t get the custom blends.

I returned the very next day to try the mineral makeup to figure out which colour I needed to get. I cannot tell you how very excited I was to finally understand all this enthusiasm over mineral makeup.

I tried two different shades and from two different colour families (Prescriptives has shades in warm and cool tones). The beauty expert who helped me used this special little brush created specifically for the application of mineral makeup.

The first colour we tried was too dark, the second from the cool family was too ashy. She went down one shade and it worked on my cheeks and the rest of my face, but forehead was incredibly ashy looking so she went back to the darker shade to compensate.

When I looked in the mirror I could see that the mineral makeup was superb at hiding my acne scars. The beauty expert invited me to step out of the store and check out the finish in broad daylight. I did take her up on that offer and I must say that mineral makeup gives you an incredible finish and your skin looks like porcelain.

When I asked my beauty expert from Prescriptives if she was wearing the mineral makeup she responded that none of the shades were light enough for her perfect and fair complexion. This is a problem my fair-skinned-half-Irish girlfriend Natasha has been lamenting about since mineral makeup started becoming popular – she could never find the right shade.

The conclusion is a sad one for me – I cannot wear mineral makeup because the finish was way too ashy. When I got back home, I could tell that the colour made me look ill … which might not have been the idea.

Mineral makeup gives you a wonderful finish if you can find the right shade for your complexion.

The new Prescriptives mineral makeup is a weightless long-wear powder foundation that comes in 18 shades (nine warm shades and nine cool shades).  I love everything Prescriptives because it always works for my skin tone, but I have to say that not even Prescriptives was able to come out with a shade of mineral makeup I could wear.