Hello everyone! This is the last Pink Bird product sent for review this month – the Precious Mineral Essence BB Balm! As a huge fan of the LUNA Essence Cushion (reviewed here), I was excited to check this one out. Did I like it or not? Read on to find out!
For those that saw my previous review on the BB Cream here, you’ll notice that the outer packaging is basically the same.
As for the cushion itself, it’s in a flat, simple, baby pink compact with gold text and accents. I think it looks quite sharp, and while I do miss Etude House’s old “over the top”, cutesy design, I’m also a fan of the simple direction they’ve been going in lately.
The cushion comes in 5 (laughable) colours. Like the BB cream, 19 & 20 are pink-based, 21 is yellow-based, and 22 and 23 are neutral.
It claims that it contains 52% essence, acting as both foundation and skincare at the same time. It’s supposed to offer super moist skin without creasing…we’ll see.
It comes with a puff that I wasn’t a huge fan of the texture of. It felt a little too rough and textured to apply the product evenly.
You can see what I mean about the rough texture after having used the product several times. It felt like it didn’t pick up enough product, but also didn’t spread it out well either.
The white essence seems to be spread out throughout the whole compact, so even if you’re rubbing off the layers you will always be getting some essence with each application which is good!
I expected this cushion to not be full coverage due to its high-moisture properties, but it covered quite well!
My skin tone became more even, without looking like I had makeup caked on.
However one thing I noticed is that it tends to bunch up and flake around my nose. I have very dry skin this winter (no matter how much I moisturize😭) and this product accentuated that on my nose.
I then did the rest of my makeup, finishing everything off with a setting powder and setting spray………bad idea.
While my cheeks looked great, my chin and nose got even worse. My dry patches were accentuated even further, and it felt like a lot of the foundation rubbed off with my light dusting of powder, exposing my redness and discoloration underneath.
When I got home at the end of the day, this problem was naturally a lot worse. My nose area looked horrible!
While my cheeks still managed to look great (they’re the least problematic part of my face), my nose was extremely dry and flaky like a desert. I thought this might be a problem with my skin, but upon using my Luna cushion and not experiencing the same thing, I believe it’s the product. So, I decided to give it a second shot, but this time with more moisturizer and without setting it…
So you can see that without setting the cushion, my nose looks much better! I loved how glowy and fresh my skin looked, but I experienced another slight problem…like the Precious Mineral BB Cream I reviewed in my previous post, this also never seemed to dry. However it wasn’t nearly as bad as the BB Cream and I managed to spend the day without setting! I also wore the Fix and Fix primers underneath to see if they would help with lasting power and moisture.
This picture makes my skin look a lot worse than it was in the first trial, but it was actually better. Using the primers actually helped, and I think not setting it was the key to this extra-drying cushion. I wasn’t the only one with this problem, as many people online and a few friends who tested this also complained about the bunching/cracking around the nose.
•○ Final Thoughts ○•
I think this cushion isn’t for me, or at least isn’t for the winter! I think this will look better on my skin in the humid summer weather when my nose isn’t so noticeably dry. I also believe this will work better if you don’t have a dry skin type. Besides people complaining about the nose thing, the majority of the reviews on Etude House’s Korean website are good, so I’m thinking the cushion just doesn’t match my skin type! But I find it interesting how their #1 claim is that it’s super moisturizing, and it had the complete opposite effect for me, while my Luna cushion worked just fine…
The cushion is 18,000 KRW for 16g. Refills are 10,000 KRW.
I have one more foundation product to review next from a different brand, with much better results! So until then~ (✿´꒳`)ﾉ°
Jasmineitor & Korea 
Oh, tiene buena cobertura y se ve bonita, pero creí que sería algo similar a la de LUNA. Aquella parece ser fantástica, ha enamorado a muchas personas.
También me ha pasado bastante lo de las pielecillas por resequedad…has probado usando algún exfoliante tipo peeling gel? Eso parece mejorar un poco más la textura de la piel y absorción de pasos posteriores. No sé si uses humidificador, pero he leído de que en Corea eso es esencial en invierno, por la sequedad del aire acondicionado y el frío de afuera.
Cuidate mucho!
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Sii tengo un humidificador, y en verdad ayuda muchisimo! Pero aun asi, es demasiado seco el invierno coreano 😦
Probe tu tip de usar un peeling (tengo uno pero soy muy floja para usarlo jaja) y ayudó DEMASIADO haha me siento boba por no usarlo antes 😂. So using a peeling product regularly with this cushion is a MUST. Gracias ❤ Besos!!
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This reminds me of my Age 20s Essence pact. But I actually love that one (not as drying as how the Etude House sounds). The coverage is sheer but still manages to even out skin without looking like makeup. I saw the Luna pact at a store the other day and wish I’d gotten it try. -Angela
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That’s how I feel about my Luna one! Looking at the Age 20s one (it’s my first time seeing it) I feel like it’s similar to the Luna cushion 🙂 and I think that’s what Etude House was trying to go for too but it’s so drying in comparison…
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