Hourglass Ambient Lighting Powder Palette Edit Volume 3 Review

This holiday season calls for an Hourglass Ambient Lighting Powder Palette Edit Volume 3 Review! This Hourglass Holiday 2017 palette is one of the most coveted holiday makeup collection launches this year, and it is not hard to know why.

Hourglass Cosmetics has always been known for their lit complexion artistry and deep understanding in facial silhouettes. But what makes this limited edition holiday compact even greater is that it takes you from looking natural, fresh and dewy in the day, to looking like your skin is candlelit from within during the night – all these with this one palette, AND with minimal effort. I’ve demo-ed what I meant in this short video; watch if you’re interested.

Hourglass Ambient Lighting Powder Palette Edit Vol. 3 (Holiday 2017 Limited Edition)

Packaging

It may not look anything like rose gold in the left picture, but the Hourglass Ambient Lighting Powder Palette Edit Vol. 3 is housed in a rose gold mirrored compact case. The good news is that you could check yourself in this generous area without opening it up to do so (even though there is another good sized mirror on its inside flip side. The bad? Be prepared to keep wiping those fingerprints off.

Shades

This Hourglass Ambient Lighting Edit palette comes in 6 smaller-than-single-sized pans of products, 3 of which are from their existing range, i.e. the 2 finishing powders – Diffused Light, Dim Light and bronzer – Luminous Bronze Light. The 3 new shades added to this collection are the highlighting powder – Hypnotic Strobe Light and the 2 blushes – Surreal Halo (a deep berry) & Pure Effect (soft, warm pink).

No one shade is one dimensional; even for the finishing powders. They all have lighting flecks in them so very evenly distributed they shift the areas where light hits and contour your facial structures subtly but surely.

How to Use the Hourglass Ambient Lighting Edit Volume 3 Palette

You will know I literally use the Hourglass Ambient Lighting Edit Volume 3 Palette to its fullest if you watch the short video demo above.

Day Look: I use Diffuse Light to dust all over the face to blur pores and even my skin tone. Then I use Dim Light to basically, well, dim those areas that I’d like to play down, such as my wide jaw and big face by doing light contours on the jawline as well as under the cheekbones and a little up on the temples. I have a huge nose and a low nose bridge. Not that these lighting powders will do wonders but their ability to shift where light bounces and scatters…they do make the nose look a little better to sport with (see the ‘Before’ and ‘Day Look’ photos below). I also use Dim Light to contour my eyes by building a soft crease on the upper eye socket. Next I stipple the Pure Effect blush lightly on to the apples of my cheeks.

Night Look: I use the Luminous Bronze Light bronzing powder to further build on the facial silhouette by ‘carving’ deeper into the hollows of the cheekbones, jawline and temples. Then I go in with the Hypnotic Strobe Light highlighter powder to apply on to the high points of the face, including the sides of the chin. Next I use the Surreal Halo blush to accentuate the cheekbones by dusting it between the apples and the hollows where I’d sculpted earlier. Lastly, I use the purple pigment of the Surreal Halo blush to deepen the outer corners of the eyes as well as dragging it along my lower lash line to make the eyes appear deeper-set, before putting on eyeliner and mascara to really see the difference they bring.

These photos basically capture the stages at which I’ve used the Hourglass Ambient Lighting Edit Volume 3. The looks here are just powdered; I’ve yet to put on eyeliner, mascara and a lip color. The complete looks are in the video as I have put on the eyeliner and mascara off camera.

Hourglass Cosmetics Ambient Lighting Powders VS Palette Edit Vol. 3

Hourglass Cosmetics ambient lighting powders are built to be multi-functional if you really pay close attention to what they can do to your skin.

I have owned the Hourglass Ambient Lighting Powder in Diffused Light for close to a year now, and it does what it says – diffusing the skin’s texture. It doesn’t correct my redness in particular like what it claims, but it does blur pores quite well. The thing about Hourglass Cosmetics Ambient Lighting powder formula is that, you can’t really tell the pigments apart from one another (unless when they come in swirls like their bronzing powders and blushers), they all look like they come in homogeneous formulas but when you sweep them on your skin – bam. Just like that they give you some serious facial planes and angles you’d never thought exist.

The Hourglass Ambient Lighting Palette Edit Vol. 3 offers not just one but 2 finishing powders of which you can use interchangeably depending on your skin tone if not for light contouring like I did. The 2 new blushes Surreal Halo and Pure Effect, if you know Hourglass Cosmetics blushes enough, are not just blushers but blushes with built-in highlights. They make even a small areas like your cheeks multi-faceted. Surreal Halo is said to be a topper for Pure Effect, but I used them in quite a different way in the video. The Luminous Bronze Light bronzer and the new Hypnotic Strobe Light highlighting powder are a match made in heaven in my opinion. They’re not to be compared with contouring makeup though. They don’t ‘sculpt’ necessarily, they’re just very good facial silhouette manipulators. Also, it may look like the lighter pigment in the bronzer is similar to the new strobe light, but no, the former dims; the latter lits. They really just belong to the same family.

The Hourglass Ambient Lighting Edit Volume 3 (Limited Edition Holiday 2017 Palette) retails at SGD$140.00 at Sephora Singapore stores for those who want to know. Totally worth making room in your makeup collection for this one if you ask me.