Baking? For Mature Skin? - Fail Or Fly?

Hi Guys? OMG its already the second month of the new year can you believe it? Is it just me or do you guys also think that with the amazing blessing of wisdom and maturity also comes with a non-negotiable time bullet train? Lol. Which brings me to my topic for my blog today - #matureskin using the #baking technique - what's my tolerance threshold? In terms of my time to effort to desired outcome of ultimately genuinely possessing a makeup that is crease-free, pores-free and wrinkles-free NOT crease-pool, pores-pool nor wrinkles-pool? And how will that stack up against my usual routine of lightly dusting certain areas of my face with LSP?

Typically for me, to avoid cake and textured face - after 1 quick pressing into my LSP using a small (not large fluffy type as I found a smaller but dense type of brush targets focused spots better ensuring powder do not spread on unintended facial areas as much) dense powder brush or powder puff, I will use a pressing motion of the brush or puff onto the areas of my face I want to set. However, 1 "Con" of this is parts of my makeup will need touch-ups plus around the 5-7 hour mark - my mature lines and wrinkles will start to show up and settle in. The degree of this severity will also depend on the foundation used as well.

Thus having seen how flawless makeup can look on celebrities, models and makeup influencers or gurus via baking, I decided to give it a go, why not? What do I have to loose? Anyway for those of you still wondering - baking in a nutshell is an age-old makeup trick that many used to set concealer and/or foundation with a ton of Loose Setting Powder (LSP); like adding a V8 engine to our makeup so that not only it causes our makeup look to look pore-less, creaseless and flawless but also helps this desired outcome to go the distance.

That said, I could not for the life of me wrap my head around the fact that my makeup can look flawless with a heck-of-a-ton of LSP on my face. Moreover, for more mature skin and hectic lifestyle, this technique may not be worth all the time and effort. For a more detailed guide, head to Huda Beauty who has a pretty cool bunch of tips for you to try out. Basically in summary - to bake means to place a thick layer of translucent LSP over your concealer and/or foundation for 10 to 20 minutes to allow heat to "cook" the products on your face; and brushing off the excess powder after the set timing. Further, in my test, I also used both a wet beauty blender called "Sandbagging" on 1 side of my face and a dry beauty blender on the other side; just to see if there would be any major difference to the outcome as well.

So here is the final result - I tested it out for almost 8 hours and my makeup genuinely stayed like a dream! Creases, pores, lines and wrinkles were also blurred out super nicely the whole time; and I feel like 80% of them lines became invisible during those hours. Everything truly just looked so much more set and flawless. I also did not touch up at all for 8 hours (not even blotting but then again I was indoors the whole time and will update going forward after trying it out outdoors going forward). My oilier t-zone was also very matt the whole time - wow! But guys, at the beginning onto my 1st 60 minutes after my makeup, I felt a little "makeup-ey" and not very comfortable. But after the 1st hour, omg, I just cant stop checking into the mirror, not only to marvel at the surprising result (for me personally as I was a huge skeptic of this technique for mature skin) but also just to be sure that I am not mentally trying to psyche myself into loving it. To see how I applied it just head to my vlog on my youtube channel. FYI - for this test review, I continue to use my usual Nars LSP so that I can be sure it is the baking that works and not the powder.

Typically my usual routine as mentioned above - after 5 to 7 hour mark - my makeup would look duller, oilier and pores/creases/crows feet will all start to make its delightful appearances. However with this baking technique, everything was nicely "hidden in the baking oven" (and not in the most awful way too if you know what I mean) to the 8th hour mark without a single touch up. As for the wet or dry beauty blender though to me, there wasn't a huge obvious difference visually though I am leaning towards the wet blender for now; reason being I felt the desired smooth porcelain coverage vs non-cake face was more played out with the wet blender over the dry one (though using the dry BB is still great as well if time is of the essence to complete my makeup in a jiffy). That said, I'd still need to do more wear tests of this baking technique going forward to have a more roundup review.

Here is another pix of me test baking from a previous day, where I challenged my usual routine (light-dusting of Nars LSP) - so only 1 side was baked with the other side doing my usual "MO". This pix was also taken under natural daylight and definitely no filters (as per all my review visuals on my channels except those images meant to be more illusory). I think the baked side definitely has a more set, more polished and refined canvas. Lines and creases seemed to also magically lessen.

So overall to conclude, I am pleasantly surprised that this worked out so well for me. As mentioned above, I was expecting this to crash and burn; having more mature skin and all. Did I have to invest more time and effort? To be honest - yes a little but also not really. As I could finish up other parts of my makeup routine while waiting for the baking to set for 15 minutes. That said, I feel the only "Con" to this is if you are short on time, some parts of the areas with excess baking powdered areas that you forgot to brush off may linger around and can end up looking like you obviously missed a spot and its not a good look - #truestory Lol. So I need to remind myself to double check the areas I have baked so that the whole look is seamless. In any case, baking is supposed to be used for when you want to be in front of a camera a lot hence that explains why celebrities and models used this technique a lot. But other than that "Con", I feel the "Pros" of this far outweighs the "Con" and will definitely be working this into my makeup habit more regularly going forward.

Separately guys for this test in case you are wondering, I also played with the Kylie Cosmetics "Your So Money" palette for the first time, which I will be doing a more in-depth review together with a second eye look in my next entry with swatches and comparisons so that would be another super-fun one for me to share and vlog/blog about. Suffice to say, so far from my first impression of this palette - I am quite happy with the textures, the inspiring color story (more on this in my review of this next) and quality of these shades vs the price. Cheers and wishing all good health which is much needed with the recent #wuhanoutbreak. Till my next entry, God bless and please all be well! V