Sparkled Beauty

Isn't this brush set screaming "ME" or what?

Long and thin metallic rainbow handles, black bristles and a half moon black acrylic base to stand them all. Definitely a display piece on your vanity! Appearance gets an A+ already.

This is Sephora Holiday Light Show brush set which is incredibly hard to photograph. In natural lighting, it tends to reflect me and my camera, while with flash it blurs out. A day in the life of a beauty blogger :)

The set comes with 7 face and eye brushes:
- Powder brush
- Foundation brush
- Face contour brush
- Concealer brush
- Shadow brush
- Crease brush and
- Slanted eyeliner brush.

The rainbow on the handles shows gold, pink and purple near the bristles, graduating into blue, teal and green as it gets to the tip of the handles. Beautiful!

The black bristles are a plus too, at least to me, as they are less prone to staining. I know there are good soaps out there to clean stains, but less staining is still better :)

No details on what type of hair the bristles are - some natural, some synthetic as far as I can tell, but they are very soft, no scratchy or irritating feeling.

I did not experience any shedding or colour bleeding during the few weeks of testing either. Let's see what each brush can do!

The Powder brush, the big brother of them all in the set, is not intensely dense. As a result, it mostly does the final dusting of finishing powder for me - which I don't have to do too much during this cold weather. Comes summer, I'd be pulling this one out often for sure.

You can definitely use it for a sheer powder foundation application too, if you have good skin already.

The Foundation brush is of a good size with longer (synthetic) bristles than a typical foundation brush. I can apply a liquid foundation on faster with this brush and it does not leave any streaks or uneven patches.

I can see the flat foundation brushes taking a back seat when flat top kabukis are so popular, but I do not have any complains about this brush. It gets the job done!

The Face contour brush is like a mini powder brush with more flared out and shorter bristles, a tiny bit more dense too.

I prefer a flat/ narrow brush for contouring, so I use this brush the way I do with a small stippling brush. It sheers out cream and powder blushes perfectly on my cheeks for a natural look. I love it for that!

I found the Concealer brush a little stiff, won't use it on the face other than spot concealing. However, because of its synthetic bristles, it is great for applying cream eyeshadow base (hint - Maybelline Color Tattoos), quick and easy. And you know I use Color Tattoos every day, so this brush was popular :)

The shape of this Shadow brush does not make it a good brush for my eyes. It flares out at the tip and a little wide for my small eye lids.

However, it is an awesome concealer brush for my under eye areas. It is soft enough and blends out my cream/ liquid concealer beautifully. The width of it, in this case, makes blending fast and effective. Totally recommend it as a concealer brush :)

For someone who loves doing eye makeup, the Crease brush is a natural draw. It is longer than my current blending brush, beautifully tapered at the tip which allows details crease work.

My favorite way to use it is with a transition colour above the crease though. It helps to erase those harsh lines between my eyeshadows and the highlight shade, a must for those who have smaller eye lids like me. I thought my blending brush was good, until I met this Crease brush.

Lastly, the Slanted eyeliner brush. I know you can't tell from the pic but the bristles are longer and softer than a typical eyebrow brush, so if I use it on my brows, it is to blend out the product. Also, the bristles are not firm enough for precise gel liner application, so I use it to push the liner to my lower lash line only. This brush is one to be used the least in my book.

I think this brush set has a good thing going, in terms of packaging and quality. The only not so good thing about it is the price - The set retails $82 (values $192), Limited Edition. My hope is Sephora will put it on sale like most of its holiday products after Christmas.