I remember buying my Porefessional after trying a sample, and justifying to myself that it was worth £24.50 because it worked really well. While I do still believe it works well at blurring pores, I no longer feel it is worth £24.50 to me. I never use it, mainly because I don’t bother wearing makeup every day and when I do, it’s minimal, and also because the Porefessional can get quite chalky on my skin which noone wants.
I read about The Body Shop All-In-One InstaBlur a few times in blogs and the reviews were really positive, but I didn’t think about getting it for myself. That is, until I went to buy their new Vitamin E Sorbet and got hugely swayed by the 3 for 2 that was on at the time. Oops. I’ve already written about my haul (here) and I included both my other buys in my Beauty Favourites but I’ve not posted about the Blur Cream so I thought I’d inform you now.
Gritty residue that needs working in
You can see just how smooth and matte this has made my hand!
According to The Body Shop website, the InstaBlur controls shine for 12 hours, reduces the look of pores, hides blemishes, unifies complexion and extends how long makeup stays. It also contains marula oil, but I really have no idea what that is.
Unlike the Porefessional, the InstaBlur is translucent. It’s also a lot thicker, and comes out the tube in a little phut. It’s quite thick and I needed quite a lot as I actually struggled to smooth this onto my skin without it getting bitty. Once I managed (and this did involve a lot of elbow grease), my skin did look a lot smoother, and my pores and scars had kind of smoothed over into one matte finish. Even my blemishes did seem reduced and smooth, although they weren’t disappeared. I fancied a lay in for work one day, so skipped my makeup and only used this and aside from the applying issue, my face looked smooth and matte and stayed so for the whole day.
Everything seemed great, until I put my makeup on over it. I have normal to combination skin, so I don’t struggle with foundation and dry patches ever, but when I put foundation on over this it went from my usual smooth finish to clinging to patches of my face and making it look like I had really dry skin underneath my foundation. This meant instead of looking like I had naturally smooth skin I looked like I had caked on foundation, and I’m the type of girl who would rather go not wear makeup than look like I was wearing too much so that was a massive let down.
I kept my makeup on as it was, as I only left the house for a coffee and to buy some things from Boots (obv) and my patchy dry look was only really noticeable if you were quite near me, but I felt really self conscious about my face the whole time which isn’t what I expect when I wear makeup! I checked back on my face around eight hours later and kudos to the InstaBlur, my skin was matte and my makeup was still on. My skin actually looked better than it did when I first applied it! I assume that’s down to my face grease from throughout the day lessening the dryness?
I don’t really know what I think about this, to be honest. It’s a pain to apply, but does definitely blur pores and smooth skin. I don’t like the way my foundation sits on it (and I asked my friend who also has it and she found the same thing), but there is no denying it keeps skin matte and makeup lasting for pretty much the whole day. I’m going to try this a few more times and see if I can make it work under foundation but if not, I’ll be using it for my makeup free days so I’m smooth and matte.
Have you tried this? What do you use to minimise your pores?
