Maxfactor went really hard this spring to bring out some interesting products. I already mentioned their new foundation and controur/highlight wands, but a gel blush is a new teritorry for me personally. As I'm getting more and more into sheer cream blush, I was very curious to try this product.
The Maxfactor Miracle Sheer Gel Blush is a new product from Maxfactor, which aims at that natural glowy summer complexion. It's a cooling, sheer and buildable blush, which comes in a stick form. It's very similar to the new-ish NYX gel blushes. It comes in 4 shades, I only saw two in the drugstore though. And I purchased the shade 004 Glowing Sunrise. The other one they had was just way too pink for me, so I went for this more coral toned one. There's 8g of product and I got it for 299 Crowns. That's pretty pricey in my opinion, but it suit Maxfactor's price point.
According to the Maxfactor website, you can apply it straight from the tube and I assume that applies to application over makeup as well. And you can layer it up to achieve as intense look as you want. Apparently it's supposed to be a fool-proof blush. It smells very fresh with a hint of flowers but it's not too strong.
The packaging is very simple, it's just a twist-up black tube with a colored label which should represent the color of the blush inside. The blush stick itself is additionally protected by a little plastic lid so it doesn't dry out. That's pretty important because with cream and gel products it's more complicated to preserve their orignal texture when you own them for a longer period of time. Even more creamy shadows tend to dry out, so make sure you seal in all your products perfectly.
When swatched, you can see that one swipe really creates a very sheer wash of color, so don't worry about the initial color in the tube. It looks a little intimidating, but it doesn't come off like that on the skin at all. I tried building it up on my arm a bunch and it did work for sure. It wasn't budging or pulling too much on the already placed product at all.
Application
I tried applying it pretty much on my bare skin, just with a concealer on a couple parts of my face and it worked pretty well. I tried swiping but that's just not my speed, I think it only destroys the stick by piling up product on it so I used a sponge instead. It worked really well, I was able to build a soft blushed look, which is hard to capture on camera but it applied very well. I also felt the cooling sensation and it wasn't messing up the rest of my base. The only thing is...it stained my sponge. And I mean pretty badly. There's a pink splotch of color on the bottom of my sponge and it's not coming off. I tried washing it out multiple times now with different soaps and shampoos and it didn't come off, so beware. If I didn't have a light grey sponge though, I wouldn't even notice probably.
I'm sorry that you cannot really see the blush in the photo, it's just a hard thing to photograph. But trust me, it was there and it lasted the whole day pretty much in the same condition. I wore a mask the majority of the day so a bit of it rubbed off. But overall, I was able to see the blush when I came back home and that's what counts. I also tried applying it over foundation and it worked just as well.
Final thoughts
Overall I like this product a lot. It's sheer and buildable, the cooling is nice and it works well on top of skin and foundation. The price point is a little up there, but I feel like you really don't need a lot of product even if you want to build it. For me, I would rather have one blush stick like this, which actually works and lasts, than trying tens of new cream and gel blushes and owning a lot of them which don't work. So I would justify the pricetag and I really like this product because it's not cream so it doesn't slide around but it's a gel, so it can really stay in place and it does work well with powder on top as well.
Have you tried any of the new Maxfactor gel products? Let me know in the comments and thanks for reading!