soft honey & aquaPRIME

I have extremely oily skin and just recently, I dared to expand my make-up routine by adding foundation to my make-up kit. I'm sure many of you have already joined that club, but as someone whose pores leak oil at an alarmingly rapid pace, I always shied away from adding extra liquid to my already saturated skin. Yuck. (I'm gagging at my own words. How lovely.)

When I started wearing make-up as a wee-little thing, I used powder. Period. Matte, no shine, oil-absorbing were the only things I cared about. So anyway, just recently--after watching a billion online make-up tutorials--I broke down and I decided to expand my wings, venture out of my comfort zone and see what I'd been missing (if anything), with faith that modern times had produced something wonderful and oil-free.

After more than a couple of hours at the mall, I had finally found an oil-free foundation that actually matched my complexion, which is a lot harder to do than you think. I tried Makeup Forever HD Oil-Free Foundation (it jumped from being too ashy to too orange), Clinique (I didn't like the smell--smelled pasty, like paint), and Laura Mercier Oil-Free Foundation (it also jumped from being too ashy to too orange, but almost fooled me--ALWAYS go outside with a mirror and then decide on your make-up).

For me, the winner was CHANEL Mat Lumiere Foundation in Soft Honey, which, of course, is oil-free. The color's great but after wearing it out for the first time, I realized that it did nothing to stop me from getting oily. So a few days after getting my foundation, I decided I needed to try Foundation Primer, in hopes that it would eliminate some shine but NOT clog my precious pores.

I had already played around with Smashbox Primers on my hand and thought they felt amazing, but after doing some research both online and in store, I realized it might add to my oily-ness and break me out. No thanks. But I had come across LORAC aquaPRIME on the internet and decided to check it out. It's a water-based make-up primer--which I like-- that is oil, silicone, and fragrance-free--which I love. It's also free of parabens, sulfates, synthetic dyes, petro-chemicals, and phthalates. Yep, sounded pretty awesome to me too. I went in, sampled it, loved it, got it.

Yesterday was the first time I used the aquaPrime with my Chanel foundation, and I could definitely see the difference in shine and oil-production after 30 minutes. Seriously. I usually start to get oily after about 20-30 minutes, but I didn't really need to blot (I use Sephora's blotting films) til after about 4 hours. So far, I elle these two products.