Putting The $8 e.l.f. Soft Glam Foundation To The Test

“As I get older, I find myself gravitating towards tints and light foundations over true coverage foundations because I think they look better on my skin. When I first swatched this on the back of my hand, I was concerned it would be cakey on my dry skin as the texture applies more medium coverage, but dotted on in small amounts over a hydrating primer — my choice is MAC Studio Radiance Moisturizing + Illuminating Silky Primer — it actually looks quite beautiful. I used a dense flat brush to blend in the foundation, being sparing with the amount of product. It clung a little to the dry patches on my nose, but honestly, I’m hard-pressed to find a foundation that doesn’t. By going in with a lighter hand, though, I was able to minimize this, and it blended in easily over the top of my primer. Being a satin finish, it didn’t need powdering. It set down nicely and gave my skin some natural glow in direct light, but wasn’t overly glowy or oily-looking. It appears skin-like in the level of sheen you get, which is my favorite type of finish — and even better that I didn’t need a powder to achieve this (quite a fear in the London humidity, too, if you ask me). Just for the sake of putting the foundation through its paces, I applied it under my eyes in place of concealer and was impressed by how it looked there, too. I wore Saie Dew Blush over the top and blended that out with my fingers, and it didn’t disturb the foundation — again, impressive, as sometimes I find the Saie blush to be a bit finicky over other products. By the time I went to wash my makeup off, my skin looked almost as fresh as it did when first applied. So if you’re a dry skin girlie like me, you can make this work. I wasn’t expecting to keep this in my makeup bag after testing, but it’s earned its place in there now! My only real gripe is the shade descriptions online are hard to make an educated guess from. I got lucky with the shade I picked, and while it wasn’t my best match, it was close enough. Do your shade swatching in store, if you can!”