Summer 2009: Lunasol Shining Face Color EX03

This year's summer collection from Lunasol didn't catch my eye really. The 2 palettes are colors I can't pull off and the lippies and glosses are nice but not outstanding.
However one item peeked my interest right away: the Shining Face Color in EX03. I have the other 2 Shining Face Colors (an ivory/golden one came in the holiday coffret of 2007 and the other lavender/pale pink one was an LE for spring 2009)... and I like them as they are pretty good highlighters.


The new Shining Face Color is a soft bronzer if you're light-skinned or a subtle highlighter if you're more tan. It's interesting to see Lunasol coming out with this as bronzers are a rare thing to find in Japanese brands (rather many items are for whitening not getting more tan!)

The Shining Face Color comes in a sleek compact in Lunasol's signature color (a choclatey bronze metallic). Unlike the cheek colors or face powder the compact and brush are included. The top layer contains the brush whereas powder and mirror are stored below.


I dig the brush! It's buttery soft, wide and slim and picks up just a little color so I can't overdo... I am a bronzer-phobic so anything that packs too much color on and could make me look too dark is a no-go for me.


The powder itself consists of 4 shimmery colors:
The main color is a neutral soft light-medium bronze brown, the smaller strips of color are a light ivory gold (great as a highlighter), a deeper bronze (top right corner) and a beautiful rosy brown on the right which balances out the browns very well.
Even though this is shimmery it's not dramatical so it manages to look polished when I use a light dusting all over my face.
I usually swirl my brush across the whole thing to mix the colors and then apply in swirly motions. I use a bit of the light golden highlighter shade on top of my forehead, my nose, below my eyes on my chin.
I can achieve a healthy very lightly sun-kissed look so I a very happy with this product!


This is only lightly pigmented so I am sure everyone from very fair to tan will find a good use for this powder.

All in all I recommend this item! I got mine from Adambeauty for HK$350 (about US$50). It's definitely not cheap but will last for a long while!

This is only the 3rd bronzer that finds its way to my Japanese beauty stash! The other 2 I like are from Shu Uemura (the lighter one from 2 years ago, I think it's Glorious Sunrise or so) and the LE one Maquillage released 2 years ago (the summer my youngest was born hehe).

I am waiting for a bronzer from Sonia Rykiel which I scored for cheap on eBay... I am curious how this will compare!