Review - MAC Marine Life Highlighter

I’ve caved into the crazed on MAC To The Beach Collection as part of their limited edition release for summer 2010 and manage to get my self only a few items from the collection. I bought Marine Life Highlighter, Hipness Blush, Bronzer, and Float Away Kohl online and received some of them through mail about 2 weeks ago.

I’m loving my Marine Life Highlighter so much so I thought I’ll write up a review on it. You might have heard that the gold embossed sea horse on the highlighter disappeared after a few swipes. So I actually ordered two Marine Life Highlighters. So I can use mine and have a spare one just for me to stare at! ^__^

I tried to swipe the pan ever so lightly the first time I was using them, but my MAC 129 brush manage to lift nearly half of the gold cast from the embossed sea horse in one go *sob*. Here’s what it looks like just after one time of usage (so it’s two swipes, one for each cheek).

The color is defined as coral. I never really had luck with coral blushes before. Most of the blushes I owned just turned pink or red on my cheek, so I wasn’t expecting any brightly coral cheek after applying the Marine Life Highlighter. But boy wasn’t I surprised. It actually came up a perfect coral on my check… just perfect for my summer cruise holiday next week! What I love even more is that the gold cast lifted from the pan give my cheeks a nice golden shimmer that doesn’t look too OTT (I think I found a perfect solution for my beach babe make up, buy a gold shimmer for highlighter instead of bronzer!). I tried to take a picture of the golden shimmer on my cheek, but the camera just couldn’t capture how gorgeous it is on my skin.

The formulation of this highlighter (or it can also be blush for those with fairer skin tone) is consistent with other MAC blusher, where the powders are finely milled and pressed hard enough so you end up with the right amount of products on your brushes in one swipe. The size of the highlighter is the same size of MAC Beauty powders and MSF, so it’s bigger than MAC regular blushes.

I’m still not sure how it would look like on my cheek after all the gold cast is used up. Whether it will look like a flat coral blush, with no shimmer at all, or whether MAC has mixed in enough shimmer into the highlighter to give your skin a subtle glow when applied. But right now I’m loving my Marine Life Highlighter and glad I purchased two of them as a back up. That way I wouldn’t be too disappointed when my first sea horse is gone. I guess by the time I’m using my second pan of Marine Life Highlighter, MAC would’ve released some other blushes or highlighter worthy as collectibles.

XOXO,