Random Product Review: Pumpkin and Poppy Aphrodite Inner Glow Powder!

By Unknown

Purchased

Pumpkin and Poppy Aphrodite Inner Glow powder

I've been hearing a lot of great things about Pumpkin and Poppy's Aphrodite Inner Glow powder ($11 for a 20 g jar), said to be a dupe for Hourglass Diffused Light Ambient Lighting Powder. Everyone wants some kind of magical fairy dust to sweep over their face and give them the glowing, soft-focus look of an elf princess, right? I certainly do, and so I bought a jar of this during a recent sale. 

Here's some background about my obsession with glowy finishing powders. I went through a brief and powerful obsession with the Hourglass Ambient Lighting Powders because I loved the idea of them, but I ended up returning the Dim Light powder I purchased because it made me look orange and zealously bronzed when applied with too heavy a hand, and I feel like a $50 powder should be effortless and foolproof to use.

I do own Ethereal Light (a white powder meant to produce a moonlit glow), but it can look a bit stark when my skin is more tan, and is the most matte of the Ambient Lighting Powders, so it doesn't "glow" quite as much as I'd like. Diffused Light (a pale yellow powder with tiny sparkles) always looked too sparkly to me when I swatched it in-store.

I also own Guerlain Meteorites, but I don't think they produce the airbrushed, candlelit glow promised by their marketing, either. Too sparkly, not glowy enough.

But Pumpkin and Poppy's Aphrodite Inner Glow powder produces exactly the lit-from-within effect I was hoping for with those powders, at a fraction of the price. It's a bit early for me to say this confidently, but it may be the holy grail finishing powder I've been looking for. It's subtle, finely milled, it doesn't have visible sparkle, and the color isn't so different from my skin tone that it stands out as too golden or too frosty. A light dusting makes my skin tone look more even and adds a subtle luminosity without looking outright shiny.

Top: light swatch applied with brush, bottom: heavy swatch applied with fingers

Here it is, swatched very heavily at the bottom of the photo, swatched more lightly at the top of the photo, towards the wrist. It's sort of an eggshell/champagne color, less yellow than Diffused Light looks to me. I know the light swatch (dusted on with a blush brush, the way I would apply it to my face) is somewhat hard to see, so I used tape to produce clean lines on my arm and angled it to catch the light--hopefully you get an idea of the slight, creamy glow it produces. For reference, my arm is roughly NC30.

I've been wearing Aphrodite every day for the last week or so since I got it, and I just love it. Now, I will say that it isn't entirely foolproof for me. I noticed that if I apply it too heavily on an unprimed face, it can cake up in my pores a bit and make them more visible, highlighting any textural unevenness. It works better if I apply a translucent setting powder first to smooth the surface of my skin, and then dust the Inner Glow powder over it (I use a blush brush from a Sonia Kashuk set I got from Target). My skin's been very dry and dull since the weather got cold, so I feel like this powder does a great job adding in the missing radiance.

My skin leans dry, even more so with the winter weather, so unfortunately, I can't comment on its oil control properties or how well it functions as a pure setting powder. I think it is subtle enough that it could be applied all over the face as a setting powder, though--it's much more subtle than a classic highlighter or luminizer.

Although I'm not usually a fan of loose powder products, much preferring pressed pans, the Inner Glow powder is easy to use because it came packaged in a large sifter jar with a rotating sifter. It has a simple, beautifully designed, professional-looking label. (The label is a bit off-center but I'm not sure if that is an intentional design element. Just to quibble, I noticed that the top label is identical for their contour powder, so if you have multiple products from Pumpkin and Poppy, you'll need to turn them upside down to see which is which.) I didn't have issues with the powder being overpacked, which sometimes causes me problems when trying to dispense powder from a sifter.

With hand, for scale.

I did have some issues figuring out the rotating sifter mechanism, as it took some effort to open and I thought it was going to snap! I finally managed to open it all the way, but be forewarned that you have to apply quite a lot of pressure to rotate the sifter, and there's a worrisome "click" when it goes between closed, half-open, and fully open.

Sifter jar fully open, and some powder shaken out in the lid.

In case you're interested but worried that this color is wrong for your skin tone, there are two other colors of Inner Glow powder available as well: Isis, a dupe for Radiant Light, and Celestial, a dupe for Dim Light. They both look more shimmery than Aphrodite from the comparison swatches provided by Pumpkin and Poppy.

Bottom line: I highly recommend this product. It deserves all the hype it's gotten. So far, I like it better than the Hourglass Ambient Lighting Powder, at a quarter of the price! Full disclosure, though: nobody has actually commented on my skin since I've been wearing this powder, and I think its subtle effect may be one of those things that only I would notice, but wearing it makes me feel great, and that's the most important thing, isn't it?