Posts Tagged Benefit Bella Bamba
Something to Amuse You While I’m Gone: My Blush Collection (Part I!)
Posted by Latoya in Benefit, Blush, Chanel, Illamasqua, MAC, Make Up For Ever, Make-up, My Collections, NARS, theBalm on April 9, 2012
Since it’s a well-known fact that blush addiction is 1) contagious, and 2) that it spreads quickly, I thought I’d leave you with a little *something* while I’m away this week – my gift to you 
It’s truly scary how quickly one can go from owning a handful of blush to moving into double-digits in an alarmingly quick fashion. At the beginning of the year, I think I had 8 (plus a handful of highlighters and bronzers, so around 14 total), and in three short months I have pretty much doubled that number – yikes!! I was so easy to judge when it was someone else, but I see how quickly things can go downhill. It’s a fun ride slippery slope, but gosh are there ever some beautiful shades out there! It’s so easy to fall prey to their powers.
The first installment in what will be a week-long series, are my pink and peach/coral shades. It blows me away how some of these looks so similar in the pan, yet look nothing alike when swatched/worn. I played around with the groupings a bit, but am fairly satisfied in how I divided them in the end. Let’s begin with the pink blushes:
Clockwise from top left: Benefit Bella Bamba, Chanel Blush de Horizon, MAC Madly Magenta, theBalm Down Boy
MAC’s Madly Magenta, a matte cream, is really too violet for this grouping, but it’s the only one of it’s kind in my stash, so it’s joining the team. I bought it well over a year ago, but the other three were bought or acquired over the past four months. Benefit Bella Bamba is a shimmering ‘watermelon pink’; Chanel’s Blush de Horizon is a shimmering cool-ish pink, and theBalm’s Down Boy is a matte baby pink.
All swatches taken with flash. Left to right: Benefit Bella Bamba, Chanel Blush de Horizon, theBalm Down Boy, MAC Madly Magenta
Over the past few months, I’m coming to realize that what looks like one thing in the pan might be something else entirely when worn. I thought for sure that Down Boy would look chalky on me, but it doesn’t at all – it’s just a lovely subtle pink flush. I was surprized and slightly disappointed to see how close Bella Bamba and Blush de Horizon was, though Bella Bamba does have more pink pigmentation. I’m still working on MAC’s Madly Magenta…maybe when I’m more tanned I’ll figure it out.
Next up, we have my peach/coral shades – my favorite color of blush. I find myself always looking at these when I’m shopping, but so far I’ve been able to stop myself from buying more, until I can confidently say it’s a color I do not own.
From top left: NARS Torrid, Illamasqua Tweak, theBalm Hot Mama, Make Up For Ever #12 First Kiss
I know that Illamaqua’s Tweak (described as a deep hot pink) looks far too pinky to be here, but it’s too warm to be included with the ‘pinks’ group, and again it was one of a kind, so here it is. It actually wasn’t so far off from NARS Torrid, a ‘warm coral’ with shimmer, so it seemed to fit. MUFE’s First Kiss HD Blush is a bright apricot (which is the only recent *purchase* out of this group), and theBalm’s Hot Mama is a pinky-peach with shimmer.
All swatches taken with flash. From left to right: theBalm Hot Mama, MUFE #12 First Kiss, NARS Torrid, Illamasqua Tweak
It still blows me away every time how light Hot Mama is, when it looks so similar in the pan to Torrid. Also, comparing Torrid in the pan to Benefit’s Bella Bamba, they look so close, and yet Torrid swatched/worn is SO much deeper than it looks – it’s shocking. I was also surprized at how much more orange-leaning MUFE’s #12 First Kiss looks when compared to other shades – when I bought it I thought I might have repeated something else in my stash. I’m please to know that I didn’t 
As a bonus shot, here’s what Illamasqua Tweak looks like when worn (on me):
Sunlight
Artificial light
In these shots, it looks like it should be with the pink family, doesn’t it?
So, there you have it – Part I of my ever-expanding blush collection! I hope you enjoyed it – stay tuned tomorrow for Part II!!
Do you own any of these shades? Were any swatches surprizing to you too? What is your favorite blush shade?
A Blush Smackdown: NARS Torrid vs Benefit Bella Bamba vs theBalm Hot Mama
It’s interesting how you develop ‘cliques’ even in the online world. From my experience so far, they’re much more open and welcoming than the same cliques you might find in the ‘real world,’ but they’re there, just the same. In the group I seem to be running with, blush is the current obsession of choice (which, it seems to me, started with blush fiend numero uno, Tracy ). The love of blush seems to be spreading like wildfire over the past few months, and it doesn’t take long before you’re swept up in the mania, too. A year ago, blush was probably the last makeup item I desired – while I absolutely must wear it, as I have no natural flush to speak of, it just never interested me that much. Flash-forward to current day, and I suddenly am having to hold myself back from buying every brand of blush I come across. It’s madness I tell you, madness!
…ANYWAY…
As I intensely dislike having dupes in my stash, but very much like shopping for makeup, I went through my blush collection to see what shades I should/could pick up ~if I so desired~. I noticed that I seemed to have a number of pinky-peach shades, and of course my blogger-brain started working and I thought I’d do a little comparison of them. The shades (and their official descriptions) are: NARS Torrid – a warm coral with golden shimmer; theBalm Hot Mama* – a pinky peach; and Benefit Bella Bamba – a watermelon pink with shimmering golden undertones. Mainly I was interested to see how Hot Mama and Bella Bamba compared to Torrid, the mother of all pinky-peach shades. Naturally, I had to swatch each of them to see just how similar they were.
I’m going to forgo much chatter here because this is about to get ridiculously picture heavy (I was bored a couple weeks ago and this is what happened). I’ll discuss the nuances of each shade in between briefly:
NARS Torrid vs theBalm Hot Mama
Indoor light
Natural light
Sunlight
In all lighting, Torrid and Hot Mama look quite similar but not identical. However, the difference in the two shades is much more prominent once swatched:
(Torrid on left, Hot Mama on right) Indoor Light
(Torrid on left, Hot Mama on right) Sunlight
The sunlight photo is a bit blurry, but I wanted to capture not only the shade difference but the shimmer capacity of each – Torrid has much more prominent shimmer particles, while Hot Mama is more of a shimmer product overall (I would probably use this as a highlight in the summer due to my darker skintone).
I couldn’t get over how different the two were – two totally, completely different shades! It taught me a lesson though – always swatch before you buy. Sometimes I’ve passed things up thinking they wouldn’t work for my skintone, other times I’ve bought items thinking they’d show up and they turn out to be rubbish (for me). Good to know.
Next, we have Torrid vs Bella Bamba. I didn’t expect them to be too close because Bella Bamba is a fair bit pinker, but in the same family with the golden shimmer:
Benefit Bella Bamba vs NARS Torrid
Indoor light
Natural light
Sunlight
The difference between Bella Bamba and Torrid was the most apparent in sunlight; in the other two shots, it was a bit trickier to spot. Even so, I still felt like when these were applied, they’d look similar when blended out, because they appeared to be close in pigmentation even if the shades weren’t identical:
(Torrid on left, Bella Bamba on right) Indoor light
(Torrid on left, Bella Bamba on right) Sunlight
Errr! Wrong again. Bella Bamba is so obviously lighter and vastly more pink than Torrid, I almost felt silly bothering to compare them at all. They’re shimmery – that’s where the similarities end. And again, Torrid contains shimmer particles in a matte base, whereas Bella Bamba is shimmery as a whole. So…nope, no dupes there.
Regardless of the fact that I seem to be color-blind, I’m still happy I did the comparison, as it justified my ownership of each shade, and actually made me better aware of what look each imparts. It also highlighted the fact of just how crazy-pigmented NARS blushes are; during the summer months, while Bella Bamba and Hot Mama will be stashed in the back of my drawer (there’s no way they’ll be showing up on my tanned skin), Torrid remains a prominent player in my blush rotation. That’s not to say it’s better, just that it is a great addition and value in my collection as I can wear it year-round.
Do you own any of these blushes? Do you ever buy replicas of shades, or do you try to get colors that you don’t already own?
*Thanks to Liz of Beauty Reductionista for generously giving me the Balmbini Palette: Babies of the Balm, which contains the Hot Mama shade – you rock!!
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