Formula Overview
The formula is supposed to have “buildable coverage” with a “hint” of dewiness that can be applied with fingertips, sponge, or a duo fiber brush and is recommended before powder products. I struggled to apply the formula. I tried using fingertips, sponges, and various brushes over foundation, under foundation, over bare skin, and even over powder (which is the opposite of what they say to do!).
For me, it seemed like the issue was that there was way too much slip in the product, so instead of applying and blending out, the color was just pushed around. It had the worst application when I used my fingertips, which I’d apply by patting and pressing the color (gently!) onto my cheeks and using the edge of my fingertip to soften it. This is my go-to method with cream-based cheek colors, and it usually works, but I couldn’t get the color to stay and place.
I tried using a sponge, but it seemed to absorb a lot of the color, making it hard to get detectable coverage. I found a stippling brush to work better, and I gently flicked the brush against my cheeks to deposit color, waited 10 seconds, and then tried to diffuse and even out the color. This worked somewhat sometimes, but it did not always work; unfortunately, there was almost no visible color when it didn’t.
Since it seemed overly emollient, I squeezed out the product on the back of my hand for most of my application attempts, so I could swirl or pick up the product as it had dried out a little bit, but this did not help much! The “best” method I found was to dab the product onto my cheeks using my fingertips gently, let it sit for five to 10 seconds, then use a synthetic brush to soften the edges with the gentlest touch and only do each area once and then leave it alone and accept whatever the outcome was.
It did not play well with the various base products I tried–a mix of liquid foundations and tinted moisturizers, both set and unset–as it was prone to sliding them around or lifting them. They were better than bare skin, but they were a real challenge. They were also not buildable in my experience, as this resulted in the first layer moving around, lifting away from the main area, and leaving a raised edge of the product.
The consistency was very fluid to the point where it felt runny; it would slide down the back of my hand with gravity and do so quickly. It took a while to dry down, and it was somewhat movable with light dewiness in its finish but wasn’t tacky. They lasted around six hours on me before fading visibly. Browse all of our ColourPop Cheek Dew Serum Blush swatches.