Essence Holo Wow Sparkle Stick

Cream products are never really of interest to me, unless it is summer. For the warmer weather I love trying out liquid and cream cheek products that I usually stay away from for the rest of the year. Since we’re nearing summer once again, I have slowly been busting out those products again. The first product I started trying more was this holographic highlight stick by Essence.

Essence Holo Wow Sparkle Stick holographic cream highlighter
10 Sparkles in your Life

This highlighter stick comes in only one shade and it is supposedly holographic. It retails for just €3.59. That makes this a great, affordable option from the drugstore. Since it is only available in one shade, this may not be for everyone though. If you are too light or too dark, this will simply not show up much on your face. And as you will see later on in this post, this highlighter is not the mindblowing highlighter that you can see from space.

The Packaging

As most stick highlighters, this one is packaged as a twist up stick. It is quite handy to use that way. I would recommend not applying this straight from the stick though. It definitely needs some warming up on your finger tips, as cream products like this can be quite stiff. In the picture you can see the stick twisted all the way, so you do not get a ton of product, but still, you only need a little bit of this to make it work.

The Product

What makes this cream highlighter more special than others is the effect. It is no where near holographic as the name might suggest, but it has an interesting undertone. You can already see it in the stick here: it has a shift to it. In the stick it looks more peachy pink, but on the face it looks much more cool toned. When you move your face, there is a hint of sparkle to it, but I find that it pretty much blends away on the face.

The Swatch

So the swatch looks much more pink than peach. Another noticeable thing about this highlighter is that it has a very pink base tone to it. The shine on this is not very strong: it mostly shifts in certain lights rather than truly giving that beaming highlight.

The texture feels nice and creamy. Some stick products can feel quite greasy, but this feels more like a balm. I find it doesn’t mess with my makeup underneath as long as I warm up the product first. When I rub this onto my fingers and then tap it onto the face, the product goes on best.

The Application

If you think: Maaike, where is it? Trust me, it is there, but this is one of those highlighters that barely shows up on camera. On the cheek, this gives more of glossy sheen (as you can see in the video in which I already used this) than a kapow highlight. That is why it barely shows up in the picture.

Another reason why you can’t really see it in the picture is because the base tone of this just blends away into my skin. The pink base is too dark for my skin and what happens when your highlight is too dark is that the product pretty much disappears and does very little highlighting.

The Conclusion

While the glossy sheen of the Essence Holographic cream highlighter is pretty for an everyday highlight, I find the effect to be a bit lackluster. Perhaps this works better on a darker skin tone than mine and this may be great if you like very subtle, gloss like highlight on the face. It isn’t necessarily my taste, but I still think this is quite pretty for a very basic summer look.

What cream highlight is your favorite?