Face of Australia and Jane Iredale Glow Time BB reviews (introducing the black paper test!)

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How to cite: Wong M. Face of Australia and Jane Iredale Glow Time BB reviews (introducing the black paper test!). Lab Muffin Beauty Science. July 5, 2013. Accessed March 28, 2024. https://labmuffin.com/face-of-australia-and-jane-iredale-glow-time-bb-reviews-introducing-the-black-paper-test/

I am head over heels in love with my Skin79 Super+ Pink Label and Gold Label BB creams. They’re everything I want in a base product – it applies great with your fingers, it has good coverage, you don’t need to prime, it has sun protection, and it suits my skin colour. But they come in limited colours, are hard to get a hold of in Australia, and contain skin whitening ingredients (albeit probably in a concentration too low to work), so they aren’t for everyone.

Luckily every company and their dog are releasing BB creams (and even CC creams)! Here are some I’ve tried out lately:

Face of Australia BB cream in Light/Medium and Medium/Dark (RRP $8.95)

These aren’t bad at all, especially for such a budget-friendly product! They don’t have the slightly grey tone of many Asian BB creams, but the coverage is light (which is both good and bad – good because the limited shade selection is wearable for most people, but bad if, like me, you have things to hide). It’s user friendly, but the coverage is a bit too sheer for me to use it daily, unless my skin’s being super co-operative.

Jane Iredale Glow Time BB in Shade #7 (RRP $72)

I wish this worked for me, I really do – so many other people seem to love it. But the shade doesn’t quite match my skin (as you can see from the blobby photo above, it’s far from the other shades I usually use, but it was matched by a Jane Iredale makeup artist), and I ended up looking glowy, but in a yellow way. It also sank into every mild crevice on my skin, and every pore – it might have been less problematic if it matched my skin better, but this shade made me look obviously made-up. It worked a bit better when applied with a sponge rather than the fingers (though I still had the 80’s cake-face thing going on) – perhaps using a primer before applying it would help even more, but for me, that defeats the point of a BB cream.

Coverage is amazing though – if you can find a shade that matches your skin exactly, it may end up as your HG, and it’s dense enough to be used as concealer.

Here’s my latest tool for testing coverage – I’m calling it the black paper test, and I don’t know why it took me so long to think of it! I’ve found that rubbing the BBs into a piece of black card gives a rough visual indication of how well the formula spreads, and how dense the pigment is:

As you can see, the Jane Iredale BB is super, super pigmented, and sinks heavily into the texture of the paper, while the Face of Australia BBs are quite sheer. I’ll be sticking to my Skin79 BB creams, but I’m still keeping my fingers crossed for a contender I can buy in a physical store!

These products were provided for editorial consideration, which did not affect my opinion. For more information, see Disclosure Policy.


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4 thoughts on “Face of Australia and Jane Iredale Glow Time BB reviews (introducing the black paper test!)”

  1. The black paper test is amazing. Do you have any of the Missha BB creams you could do a test on?

    I was eyeing up the FOA BB cream yesterday, thanks for the review.

    Jac x0x

    Reply
  2. What a great idea! You can really see the difference between the products. Definitely going to keep an eye out for your results for other products too.
    It’s been a while since I’ve used the Skin79 BBs, I may need to revisit them…

    -Mary

    Reply
    • You can find a mixed 4-pack of Skin79 BBs on eBay – it’s the only way I know to get them. I wish there was a place where I could try them before buying.

      Reply

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