The Best Products To Create A Glowing Skin This Summer

Ahh, the allure of the skin glow! Could anything be more insanely gorgeous than perky glowing skin in the summer? I think not! I’m all about that glow, and have been playing around with different products, to discover which ones are worth adding to your stash! Plus I’ll also share some tips, tricks and my favourite tools to get your glow on!

For A Subtle Glow…

You need: YSL Touche Eclat. Bear in mind this product wont give you crazy sparkle, but if it’s a subtle boost of fresh, glowing skin you want, then that’s exactly what you’ll get with YSL Touche Eclat. This product is everything, and if you use it correctly, you will never put it down!

How to use it: Apply to areas of the face you want to highlight and gently buff into the skin with a soft brush or dab it in with your finger until blended. The beauty of this product is that it blends seamlessly into your skin and looks amazing.

How I use it: I use it mostly in the centre of my face; so a bit on my forehead, brow bones, high points of my cheeks, tip of my nose, cupids bow and chin area. Then I also like to “blur” out my mouth lines, so I apply some there too. Then just dab it all in, over my foundation. The restult; a flawless glow that looks el natural yet catches the light in the most beautiful way.

For A Glowing Highlight

My favourite products for this kind of glow are Cindy-Lou Manizer from theBalm, High Beam by Benefit and The Highlighter (201) from 3INA.

theBalm Cindy-Lou Manizer is the most gloriously, peachy-pink, perky glow-manizer that helps you add a beautiful pop of subtle colour without looking too over powering. Think of it as a highlighter combined with a gorgeous, light-reflecting pop of peach and pinky hues. With this you can skip the blush and just add a beautiful light-reflecting luminance to your skin.

PS: theBalm is now available in South Africa thanks to the fab folks at Stuttafords. Selected Stuttafords stores across SA are stocking this gorgeous line of makeup, and you can go check out the full collection at selected branches.

Benefit High Beam is another pinky toned highlighter that gives you a glorious glow. If you prefer using liquid products over powder, then you’ll definitely want to add this gem to your collection. Benefit calls it their “Supermodel in a bottle” and why not? It accents your face for a beautiful dewy glow.

When applied under your foundation, or added into your foundation, it helps you create a gentle luminance – great for adding a bit of glow to your matte finish foundations. For a more noticeable pop of luminance,  apply it over your makeup as a highlighter to your cheeks, nose and brow arches.

3INA The Highlighter 201 is a gorgeous, golden glow powder that’s like a flashbulb for your skin! It combines beautiful highlighting micropigments that blend into the skin like a dream. Use it all over to create that lit from within look. If you apply it with your fingers, you can create a really intense glow like that of strobing. If you use a brush, you can create a more reflective, subtle glow that picks up with the light.

PS: The Italian makeup brand, recently opened their first store in Eastgate. If you’re in the area, be sure to pop past and check them out.

For An All-In-One Glow

The Urban Decay Naked Flushed palette is every makeup junkies new addiction. Inside, it contains a beautiful silky bronzer, a gorgeous pinky highlighter and a perky blush. Plus it has a decent sized mirror, making it a perfect compact for on the go.

The beauty of this palette is that you can use the trio of products individually, or if you want more of a natural, effortless glow, bronze and perkiness, simply swipe your brush across the palette and flush over your cheek bones. It’s full proof, easy and looks amazing on the skin.

For An Angelic Glow

I’ve had these MAC products for ages, and when I want to create really intense, angelic glow, I reach for these two. I actually picked up this trick from one of my all time favourite Youtubers, Kandee Johnson and it’s the most effective way to transform yourself into an angel!

For this you need MAC Cream Colour Base in Shell and MAC Silver Dusk. Kandee had actually done hers with MAC Cream Colour Base in Pearl, but since Pearl was too white for my olive skin, Shell was a perfect match.

Okay, so after you’ve done your foundation, with you finger, grab some MAC Cream Colour Base and dab, slightly pressing it into your cheeks. Then, with a veeeery light hand, and a super soft brush, dust a bit of MAC Silver Dusk Powder over it and watch your angel wings grow! You can keep layering Silver Dusk until you’ve achieved your desired level of glow. However, from experience, please do yourself a favour and check your result in different mirrors, under different light and make sure you need more before you actually apply more. A little goes a really long way. Too much and you will look like a disco ball!

For A Bronzed Glow

For a summery, faux tanned skin you can’t go wrong with a bit of bronzing! But I’m not talking powdered bronzers here, I’m talking “hello bronze” that melts into your skin.

My favourite, and undoubtedly one of the best bronzers on the planet is from Chanel. So gorgeous in fact, that I still rate it as one of my 7 Beauty Splurges Worth The Hype! Soleil Tan De Chanel is a beautiful, creamy bronzer that gives you the most natural, most flawless and most beautiful sun kissed glow.

I love buffing it into the outer areas of my face to fake a Mediterranean summer vacation, or to intensify under my cheeks for a quick supermodel face sculpt.

For a liquid bronzer, I love Benefit Dew The Hoola because it gives me a natural looking tan without looking like I’ve even applied bronzer. For an every day “holiday skin”effect  you could apply a layer on bare skin to give you an instant bronze. For a subtle bronzed glow, apply it under your cheekbones, along your hair line and down the sides of your nose, and to intensify it up a notch, you can dust over those areas with a matte bronzing powder.

For a multi-purpose glow and bronzer, I’ve been loving Maybelline Master Contour V-Shape Duo Stick as it adds a nice highlight while it contours your face. Apply the dark shade along the jawline and use the light shade to highlight the high points of your face, then blend, blend, blend!

The dark comes out pretty stark when you apply it onto your skin, but it buffs and blends out beautifully to create an even finish.

Tools

When it comes to brushes for applying glowing products, my favourites include the Urban Decay Optical Blurring Brush, the Real Techniques Contour Brush and The 27Pinx Blush Brush.

The reason I go for these is because they all have a nice rounded shape with soft, dense bristles that pick up a decent amount of product, yet allow you to blend the product flawlessly into your skin. With either of these three you can buff and blur product so well, which is exactly what I like to do with glowing products, otherwise I feel like they are “sitting on top” of the skin.

Of course you don’t need all three – but why not!

I’ve often used one for applying foundation, one for bronzing and one for highlighting, so perhaps all three isn’t such a bad idea after all.

Do you have any favourite glowing products for summer? Let me know in the comments below.

xo

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