Review - Physicians Formula Nude Wear Powder in Light

Hello Princesses!

Today I'm going to be talking about the super cute Physicians Formula Nude Wear Powder that matches the Physicians Formula Nude Wear Blush I talked about last week! I purchased both of these little compacts from Iherb and was super duper excited to try them out because this powder looks like the perfect little contouring quad for pale skin! 

Just like the blusher, this powder has four different coloured powders housed in a cute beige bow clad compact. The Nude Wear letters are embossed with a silvery over-spray which makes the powder incredibly glittery for the first 5ish uses. The compact has a magnetic closure at the front to access the actual quad, and a small back compartment which houses a little brush and mirror.

This picture accurately shows the colours in the quad as I can see them, including the glittery letters. The first square is an almost white highlight colour, the second is a pale yellow colour (banana like, if you will), the third is peachy (great for brightening dark circles) and the fourth is a warm toned brown (strangely great for bronzing).

Just like the blusher, this powder quad is not at all pigmented, and very chalky. The brown shade seems much more pigmented than the other three only because it's substantially darker than my own skin tone, whereas the other three are around the same colour (more or less!).

The instructions on the powders packaging suggest that I should swirl all four shades together to create a flawless base. I say no to this because obviously it would look too dark for my skin all mixed together. I have no use for the banana and peach shades because they just don't show up on my skin whatsoever. 

I can use the bronze powder for Bronzing/Contouring, and the white powder for highlighting. Since the darkest powder is warm toned, I would usually use it to bronze rather than contour (personally I think contouring looks best with a cool toned brown to create a natural shadow) but the little square is so small I can't fit a bronzing brush into it, so it turned into more of a contour than a bronzer for me! You can barely see the bronzer, and you can't see the highlighter at all.

Since the bronzer is so light it does provide a good everyday contoured look for me and works really well for shaping my forehead (my forehead is really short and square) so the bronzer is a win for me. However, I have full sized bronzers that work just as well and the other three powders in the quad are just awful.

What I Love

- Bronze shade works really well

- Cute packaging

What I Don't Love

- I have no other use for the other three powders

- Lighter powders aren't very pigmented

- Layering the powders looks very chalky and tacky

Final Thoughts

This powder quad was a massive fail for me. I had imagined that it would be amazing for a cheap little contour travel kit but in reality only the darkest powder shows up on my skin for bronzing and mixing all four powders together just results in it being way too dark for my face, since the most pigmented powder is the bronzer shade! This quad was just as disappointing as the blusher quad, and for almost $15USD I was expecting it to be substantially better.

Have you been disappointed or had your expectations exceeded by Physicians Formula products?

Store Review: IHerb

Hello Princesses!

Today I'm going to be reviewing a slightly weird store, but a super handy store nonetheless, which is Iherb! Iherb is a really interesting store that sells Supplements, Herbs, Bath and Beauty, Skincare, Grocerys, Sports and Pet goods. I've personally only shopped in the Beauty section, but I hear that the Grocery section is also amazing. The Beauty section contains the cheapest ELF, Real Techniques and Physicians Formula products that you can find in New Zealand. If you live outside of New Zealand then your prices are probably lower, and therefore you probably don't need to shop here, who knows!

Price Comparison

The Elf Undereye Setting Powder is $3USD ($3.69NZD) plus shipping off Iherb. Or $10NZD from my local K-Mart which is the only place that sells ELF in NZ. Obviously if I only want one product I'll drive down and buy it locally, but if I want  to buy bulk ELF, IHerb is the cheapest way!

Shipping and Packaging

I chose the second cheapest shipping, which was the tracked DHL. Choosing the tracked option is always the best since you know where your package is, and this is a very very cheap option at $8USD! It took one week to get to me which was wonderful, but I was NOT happy with the method of packaging to keep my products safe. They literally packed the box with the products, and chucked a loosely scrunched piece of paper on top! I didn't have any glass products or anything like that, but if I had, they wouldn't be very safe :C

I limited myself to three brands that were hard to find locally, ELF, Real Techniques and Physicians Formula.

Products

First up are my ELF basics! Each of these products were $3USD, which is super cheap! I'm really happy with the overall quality of the ELF products and I've written up a quick review of each! Let me know if there is anything that you want full review on!

Eyebrow Kit - Medium

This is an amazing product - I can totally see why this is so hyped and raved about! I've had mine for only a couple of months, and have already hit pan in the gel! The powder is a great crease colour, but I can't use it on my brows since I have the medium colour (Dark was out of stock).

Powder Blush - Candid Coral

I love this blush too, a quick brush of the product will pick up quite a lot, so it's really necessary to tap the brush quickly before applying, but for $3 and the beautiful big colour range I will definitely be purchasing more!

HD Blush - Headliner

I like this blush, but it is a little bit of work to blend! The pump disperses WAY too much product, but I do hear that this is a dupe for a Makeup Forever blush! Either way, it's a great product for a super cheap price!

Next up are Real Techniques! There are no stores that sell Real Techniques in New Zealand (that I know of!) and the easiest and cheapest place to buy them is IHerb! The separate brushes cost $9.99 and the Brush Set cost $29.99 which is a very reasonable price for brushes that are so good! I'm totally in love with all of these brushes, they're totally worth the price!

Lastly I have two products from Physicians Formula. I picked these two products because of the adorable packaging, but honestly the packaging is more of a pain than it is cute.

Nude Wear, Glowing Blush - Rose - $12.43

The colours in this blush are really beautiful, but the blush is just so powdery and chalky that it doesn't look good on the skin. It's a little hard to get the blush to pop since it's not so pigmented, it's such a weird blush. I really don't like it and don't recommend paying over $10 for it.

Nude Wear, Glowing Nude Powder - Light - $14.35

I like this powder even less than the blush. The light colour is good for my face colour and the darkest colour is good for contouring, but it's just so hard to pick up either colour without touching the peachy shades in between. It's really powdery and has a lot of fallout and in all honestly I wouldn't pay $3 for this.

What I Love

- Cheap, fast tracked shipping

- Discounts for first timers

- Discounts for larger orders (bulk buying)

- Cheap prices

- Restocks very quickly

What I Don't Love

- Bad shipping packaging

Final Thoughts

I'm quite 50/50 with this store. Putting aside how much I love the Real Technique and ELF products in comparison to how much I dislike the Physicians Formula products, I quite enjoyed shopping with IHerb. I really wish that the shipping packaging was a lot better though, because I'm really cautious about grabbing other products that might break in the post. But then again the ELF products are $3 and it's just so tempting!

If you do end up making an order through IHerb and you want to take $10 off your first order you can use my code FQB347 to get the discount!

(Full disclosure, the coupon code is an affiliate code, and you can actually get the discount without using the code automatically by being a first time purchaser. However if you want to support me, please use my coupon code! If you don't want to, don't. No big deal ^.^)