Bare Minerals

So this week I contacted my friend Kerrie Urban (www.kerrieurban.com)... She is a hair and makeup artist based in NYC with Artists by Timothy Priano. I contacted her to help me with my blog because I knew she used Bare Minerals cosmetics on a regular basis.

To be perfectly honest, I was never really a fan of Bare Minerals....I found it drying on my own skin which is already dry and sensitive, and that it didn't photograph very well on photoshoots. I found that the faces were reflecting a lot of light and almost looked metallic. Then I saw that one of the ingredients in one form of their loose foundation powders was Aluminum. I was surprised by that because La Bella Donna, another mineral makeup line that I LOVE, does photograph well, is not too shiny and does not contain Aluminum. The aluminum made me nervous and a bit ticked off that they were calling themselves a mineral line which they very well may be (obviously) but that they were still using relatively harmful ingredients.

Having said that, when I saw that ingredient, it was at a photoshoot with kerrie 2 years ago. Since then I've shopped at Sephora many times, furiously reading the ingredient list on the Bare Minerals packaging and never once saw Aluminum again on the list.

So I made the decision to start trying Bare Minerals. So far I've tried the Foundation Powder, Mineral Veil, Moisturizer and Eye Cream. They are all really nice, good quality products.
One thing I'll say about the foundation powder and mineral veil is that for photography purposes you have to be careful because of the light. In my pictures of Kerrie I used natural light which seemed to not have too reflective of a result so it was fine...but for studio light i'm wary because it almost casts a film that looks greasy.

But for everyday use here's what kerrie said, " I like using bare minerals for my everyday foundation because it's not too heavy. It doesn't clog my pores and it doesn't dry me out. I have oily skin so the nice thing is that the powder absorbs some of the oil but not so much that I look made up. What I do wish they'd do is create a travel compact of the foundation powder because it just get's so messy in my bag carrying around the loose. It would be nice to have a compact with a mirror and a little application brush, that way I can touch up at work and not worry about getting powder everywhere on set." Kerrie Urban 2010 (www.kerrieurban.com)

I'm looking forward to trying more of the bare minerals line and getting back with more info....stay tuned for more on Bare Minerals soon.....