Benefit Hoola!

Benefit Hoola is a product that has been out for a very long time now, but I wanted to swatch it anyway for you. My swatches show 2 fairly light swipes of product – a lot heavier than I would wear it but I wanted to show you just how pigmented it is.

All with flash, in different lights:

The colour is neither warm nor cool; it’s the perfect shade for a bronzer in my opinion (although I'm not sure my camera was 100% accurate, hence why I've shown a few different photo's) as I find that some tend to lean towards orange, which isn’t really a look that I want to be rocking. Hoola is also a great powder to use when contouring as it’s matte and when using at least a half decent brush (I’ll explain more about that in a minute) it creates a very natural looking contour.

No flash (on a very dull day):

I’ve had my box of Hoola for a long time now and it’s probably my favourite bronzer... now that I’ve learned the best way for me to use it. You see I bought it after having it used on me by a sales assistant on a benefit counter, however when I got it home I found that I could never get it to apply quite as well as it is quite pigmented, and whilst I’m not as pale as say Nicola Roberts, I’m certainly not anywhere near the same shade as the Hoola itself.

My first problem seemed to be that I was too heavy handed in application, I quickly learned that less is more where Hoola is concerned – this is probably due to the fact that I was used to using lesser pigmented bronzers prior to Hoola. My other problem was that I was using the wrong brushes; I (stupidly) tried using the brush that came with it but very quickly learned that this was no good at all and only achieved an uneven, striped effect on my face – not a good look.

I then used an ordinary (and cheap) powder brush that was too hard, even when I used the product sparingly I found that it placed the powder too heavily in one area which I had to work hard to try to blend on my face – it was actually around this time that I started to invest a little more in brushes, realising that they actually made a difference to how my makeup applied. I bought a set of Smashbox brushes and have used the powder brush ever since as it’s soft, but not overly so which helps me to apply Hoola with a lot more ease, and better results.

It’s available for around £23.50, but for that you get a huge amount of product that will last an age – especially if you are like me and use it sparingly for a more natural finish.