Beauty,  Reviews

Fenty Beauty Match Stix Review

If you’re into makeup like I am, you probably are aware of the major release that happened last month in the form of Fenty Beauty:

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It’s taken over the front page of Sephora! Fenty Beauty is the makeup brand created by Rihanna, and the makeup world has been all abuzz about it since the line was announced. Most people were super excited that the brand was debuting with an unheard of 40 foundation shades – 3/4 of which are sold out at Sephora right now:

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I (like everyone else) was intrigued to see what the line offered. Welllll the screenshot above speaks for itself, and it’s been insanely popular. In addition to the huge range of foundations, Rihanna also released a number of highlighters, a blotting powder, a lip gloss, and several brushes. Pretty much every item is now on my Sephora wishlist. I fell in love immediately with basically all of it, but due to the fact that makeup costs money, I haven’t been able to get my hands on all of it quite yet. The only purchase I have made from the line so far has been this trio of matte and shimmer color sticks, aka Match Stix:

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These are a creamy stick of color that can be used for concealing, contouring, and highlighting. They come in two varieties like I mentioned (matte and shimmer) and each come in a huge variety of colors. You can buy them individually for $25 each or in that set of three for $54, which actually saves you quite a bit of money so that’s cool.

Sephora sells some pre-made sets for different skin tones, but on the Fenty website you can actually customize your own set of 3. I haven’t done that yet but want to in the future!

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Anyway, like I said I bought one of the trios from Sephora – the one I got is Light 100. The shades included in this set are Linen, Amber, and Starstruck.

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Something really cool about these is that the stix are actually magnetic so they snap together. It’s a neat feature that keeps them from getting jumbled around in my makeup bag and I imagine it would be great for travel too. They also make a nice aesthetically pleasing honeycomb shape.

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And speaking of aesthetically pleasing – how great is this minimal millennial pink packaging? I love it. Anyway – let’s take a look at the shades.

linen

Linen is one of the matte shades. It’s described as “fair to light cool pinky undertones” but imo it’s actually more yellow than that.

amber

Amber is a second matte shade, this time for contouring. It has cool undertones and is even slightly grey – it’s a pretty much perfect shade for contouring on pale skin like mine! Like Linen, this one blends out really nicely.

starstruck

The last shade is Starstruck, the shimmery stick of the set. It’s a cool toned pink highlight that’s sparkly but subtle, and you can build it up to be more glittery and bold. It applies smoothly as well but this one does have flecks of glitter so it can emphasize texture a bit if you have any. However I found that if applied carefully with a light hand it looked just fine.

Here’s what they look like all swatched together on me:

swatches

Each stick is 0.25g of product – here’s what that looks like:

amount of product

It doesn’t really look like a lot, does it? At first I was a bit miffed that I had paid like $4.50 for each gram of product, but that was before I had used it – a little bit really does go a long way, and I feel these will last me a decent amount of time. Or, at least long enough for me to feel that I got my money’s worth.

I wanted to swatch them all next to some similar products – Linen with some concealers, Amber with some contour products, and Starstruck with some highlighters. Here’s what Linen looked like next to some of my other concealers:

concealers

concealer swatches

I never realized how peachy orange that NYX one is…but it’s also a little old so perhaps it’s gone bad by now. Linen doesn’t appear to be an exact match for any of these, but I feel like it’s closest to the Sephora or that Shape Tape in Light? In terms of formula, it probably matches the MAC one the most because they’re both dryer/more of a paste and less liquidy than the tube concealers. However, Linen is very much a highlighting product and NOT a full-fledged concealer…it just doesn’t have the coverage necessary to properly be called a concealer and I personally wouldn’t use it as one.

Next let’s look at Amber next to my (very few) other contour products haha

contours

bronzer swatches

Again it doesn’t look to be a spot on match for any of them but I think it’s actually closest to that Lazarus eyeshadow, just darker. It’s so weird to me that it actually makes the NYX Taupe look red – I always saw that as one of my best neutral contour products, but clearly it was redder than I thought!

and finally, here’s Starstruck compared to some other highlighters –

highlighters

highlighter swatches

Not really any spot on matches here either! I think the closest in color is actually that Hourglass powder, but Starstruck is more glittery. In terms of formula, I think the trèStique is the closest but not quite as creamy and smooth as the Fenty.

highlighters

So now that we’ve looked at the shades in depth…here’s what they actually looked like on my face. Get ready for some weird pictures of half-made up me haha

So here’s the first day I tried out all three of the match stix. Here I had applied Linen to under my eyes, my forehead, and on my nose:

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The foundation I was wearing on this day was my Lancôme Teint Idole stick foundation. Idk, I’m into stick makeup products lately I guess haha. This photo is not very high quality so my face looks bad here lol but the foundation wore really well with the match stix, and looks better in other photos. You can also kinda see in this photo how yellow the Linen looks on my face compared to my pink undertones, but it looks fine blended out.

Next I applied Amber as a contour.

I had never used cream/stick contour before and I actually found it quite fun to draw on my face like that haha. Since it was my first time using a product like this I wasn’t sure exactly what method would work best. I also didn’t put on as much as I thought I would need just in case it didn’t blend out as nicely as I hoped.

After drawing it on my face, I used my Real Techniques Stippling Brush to blend it out.

I LOVEDDDD the result it gave me!! It blended out so beautifully and smoothly and didn’t disturb my foundation underneath at all – this one is a game changer.

Next I applied some blush and then moved on to Starstruck for the highlighter. For this one I really didn’t know the best way to do it – I didn’t want to risk dragging it across my face and messing up everything else. I had seen someone on youtube do it by applying it to the brush and then her face, so I decided to try that. The brush I used was a flat top kabuki similar to this one. This gave me a more subtle effect but I LOVED how it looked. It’s seriously stunning. In photos it just looks like a subtle glow but in person it popped more:

Also check out the wild difference in my before vs. after my brows/eyeliner haha. But you can see the sparkliness on my cheeks!!

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UGH it just looked so good. I also applied some to my cupids bow. On future applications I also used it on my temple and brow bone. It’s easy to go overboard because I just want to put it everywhere haha it’s soooo pretty!!

Of the 3, I feel like Starstruck definitely had the most “pull” on my face as opposed to the others. It wasn’t a big enough problem to even bother me at all really, but something I did notice when applying. I prefer to apply it to a brush and then to my face rather than using the stick directly on my skin.

Here’s some pics of me on another day so you can see what I look like fully done and not in my bathrobe haha:

Like I briefly mentioned before, something that also doesn’t translate super well in these photos is the coverage of Linen as a concealer. It’s definitely not something I’d use as a heavy duty concealer like I would Shape Tape or any other one – I’ve noticed after a few uses that it does crease slightly under my eyes even after being powdered. I’ll stick to highlighting if anything with this one.

all 3

SO my final thoughts: I LOVE Amber. It’s a perfect contour and I love how smoothly it blends into my skin. I really like Starstruck too, it’s such a pretty highlight and I love that I can build it up or make it subtle. As for Linen, I like it but I would not purchase it again. It’s just not the type of product I would normally use, but obviously I’ll use up the rest of what I have. I would definitely repurchase Amber though and I look forward to trying other colors of the highlighter!! I’m intrigued by Confetti in particular…it looks so pretty <3

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And that’s all my thoughts for the Fenty Beauty Match Stix! I am so excited to try other things from the line as well and she’s already teased her holiday line coming out soon…my wallet is going to hate me haha

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I definitely don’t need any of this stuff but I want it all lol

But that’s all for today! Have you tried anything from Fenty Beauty yet? I hope you enjoyed this post and let me know if you’ve tried anything what your thoughts are ^_^

xo! Kaela

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