Guys…..I hate writing negative reviews because of course I want to love everything but this stuff was just so bad. I bought two of essence Cosmetics newest releases, the Fresh & Fit Awake Foundation for $6.99 and the Brighten Up! Banana Powder for $4.99. Before I bought the foundation I watched quite a few first impression review videos on Youtube. Nobody had an actual review video or blog post so I had to just go off first impressions which I usually don’t do. I think first impressions are useless, especially for foundations. I try out new makeup for AT LEAST a week before I review it. Before I get into my review keep in mind that this is just my opinion. If these products work for you then that’s great!

I bought this banana powder to use under my eyes to help brighten them. It claims that you can use this for baking or to set your highlight. This powder is so dry and chalky that it just clings to every line. This really ages my under eye area and I don’t need any help in that department. Also, since it’s a banana powder you would assume it would be yellow in color…it’s white. It has a yellow tint in the container but that disappears on the skin. You can even see in the picture above how terrible it looks on the lines on my hand. I definitely do not recommend this powder.

*Right after I wrote this, Jessica Braun from JAMbeauty89 on Youtube put up a video talking about how much she disliked this powder. I’m glad it’s not just me being bad at makeup lol.

Now for the most disappointing product of the two, the Fresh & Fit Awake Makeup Foundation. This foundation is supposed to create a healthy glow using a vitamin complex and cranberry water. My skin is combination that tends to be dry with acne and scarring. As always when I have multiple points, I’m going to make a bullet list.

Pros:

• The shade I bought, Fresh Ivory 10, was an almost perfect shade match for me. It has a yellow undertone.
• It went onto the skin very nicely and blended easily.
• It did not dry out my skin.
• Light to medium coverage, this could be a pro or con depending on what you want.
• This is a buildable foundation.
• Did not cling to dry skin or acne.

Cons:

• This foundation is available in a whopping four shades of paper white.
• This has a pretty strong smell and stung a few irritated spots on my skin.
• Transfers like I have NEVER had a foundation transfer. This is everything I tried on different days to try and make this work: set it with two different powders, used no primer, used two different primers, changed up moisturizers and tried two different setting sprays. NOTHING helped this foundation stay on my face. If I barely touched my nose a huge chunk of foundation would just be gone.
• This foundation lasted at max five hours and that’s being generous. It wore away from my chin, nose and forehead the worst. I don’t typically have oily skin so if you’re oily good luck getting more than three hours out of this.

*Left to right/top to bottom: no makeup, makeup first applied and then my makeup after around five hours. Click on each picture to see better. 

If you can tell, when first applied this foundation was so beautiful and glowy. I was very excited because I thought this was going to be my new holy grail. I was sadly mistaken. I’m in the process of trying out new foundations because so far I haven’t found one that is perfect for me. Two that are better than this one and in the same price range is the e.l.f. Flawless Finish Foundation or the Lalafox Foundation.

I doubt I’ll touch the banana powder again but I am going to keep trying to find a way to make the foundation work. I think I might try to mix it with moisturizer and make it more of just a tinted foundation. I honestly don’t know who this foundation would work for and I’m not sure why it has so many great reviews. I’m not going to recommend something just because it’s cheap and I feel like a lot of these “beauty gurus” do that. Anyways, I hope this review was helpful. Have you tried either of these products or do you want to? If they work for you please let me know how! Thanks for reading and have a great day!