Blurred Lines

Pores. The bane of most womens' existence unless you've been blessed by the angels with perfect skin that is. However, to aid those of us who need a little blurring assistance, beauty companies have launched an abundance of 'blurring' primers to fill pores, blur imperfections and prep your skin for a flawless base. This is a big task for one little product and some have been able to fill the task for my skin and others have given it a good go but have just underperformed.

I've tried a mix of affordable and high end primers that claim to blur imperfections and any fine lines. Here are my brief thoughts on those that I have tried, keeping in mind I do have combination skin and I am quite conscious of the pores next to and on my nose. Ain't nobody got time for foundation sinking into those crevasses on your face and looking like a hot mess!

Ps. Yes I also cringed at the title of this post but I just had to do it. #sorrynotsorry 

The Good:

Hourglass. I swear if I paid myself every time I wrote about this little gem I'd be a squilionaire. However, to avoid boring anyone that's read any of my previous posts I won't repeat myself. It's fabby fab fab. Go to Mecca or your equivalent (Sephora, Space NK etc) and get a tester or just try it on your hand and introduce yourself. Get acquainted quickly because the love affair will be intense. FYI this is bottle number two if you were thinking this looks a little too fresh.

Benefit Porefessional- Again a product I feel needs little introduction but I like to use this in conjunction with my Hourglass Veil as that does more for general smoothing then Porefessional swoops in and fills in any pores and creates the base I wish I had. Does great things for maintaining oil as well but I prefer to just use this on my nose and the areas beside it.

Body Shop Instablur- I bought this one on a bit of a whim; I was perusing the site for new body products and Instablur was being advertised on the home page at the time- obviously as it was newly released. I hadn't heard much about it at all so I did a quick google and read maybe one or two reviews and thought I'd try it out, why not?! At the time I bought it, it was $28.95 which is still half the price of Porefessional but now they've lowered their prices, it's only $21.95- a steal! This product does wonders for mattifying, pore filling and general smoothing of my base. I also find it works perfectly with Chanel Perfection Lumiere Velvet whereas that + Hourglass Veil is not such a good time. Once again I recommend heading into a Body Shop store and trying this out on your hand, it will look instantly better! Plus they advertise this as an Instagram filter for your face. You don't have to tell me twice! Now that the product has been out a few more months and they've done PR for it, I've seen a lot more positive reviews from beauty bloggers worldwide if you want to know more.

The not as Good:

L'Oreal Magic Blur-  I actually squealed a little when I saw this finally hit the shelves in Priceline. Bloggers in the US had been raving about this product for months and months before we even saw a glimpse of the range. However, it must be different. For starters our packaging is very different and from what I can tell from videos and photos, so is the consistency and texture. I found this was ok in terms of smoothing pores but did absolutely nothing for controlling oil, maybe even made this look a little worse..

Innoxa Skin Perfecting Pore Vanishing Cream- Why you got such a long name for?? I made this purchase on hearing it was a great drugstore alternative to Porefessional which I already owned so more wanted to do a comparison. From memory this is like a third of the price of Porefessional so would be a great more affordable option. It is slightly thinner than Porefessional, still skin toned and does an ok job of filling in pores but like the L'Oreal, I feel it did more bad than good for controlling oil in my T-Zone.

I'm not saying either of those products are horrendous, they're just not as good and therefore don't get reached for as much. Which are your favourite 'blurring primers'? Have you tried any of these?