Review: Illamasqua Liquid Metal in Enrapture

A good friend of mine gave me this beautiful metallic bronze cream for Christmas - what a lovely gift! This marks my first foray into Illamasqua - I've been wanting to try something out from their range but didn't want to spend (quite a bit of) money on something that wasn't unique - my stash is already full of pigments, eyeshadows and blushers. So I was glad to receive something which really stands out from other products on the market.

Liquid Metal is described as a "gloriously rich and highly pigmented metallic cream". I have it in Enrapture, which is a "molten bronze". Metallic here doesn't mean ultra-sparkly as it can with other brands - but a very rich, absolutely metallic finish which is definitely high impact. It comes in a small box with a lid that just clicks on - which feels a little flimsy to me. Seems a little too easy for the lid to come off, which would cause the product to prematurely dry out.

The formula isn't as liquid as you would expect - it's actually a fairly solid block of emollient cream. Once warmed up, it can be used with fingers or a brush, and so I swatched it with both. The right hand swatch is dabbed on with a clean finger, and the left hand swatch is dabbed on with a loaded clean brush. You can see that you get a good deal more opacity with a brush. I was expecting the cream to dry down after a few minutes to a set finish. Unfortunately, it didn't - it remained creamy, even slightly greasy, and was still creamy a good 15 minutes later.

And therein lies the problem with this product. In order to get opaque coverage, you need to use a brush that's been loaded up quite heavily. And if you put it on your eyes as I did, it creases very badly within 5 minutes. Given that this product doesn't dry down, I couldn't use it on my eyes. Similarly, I wouldn't want to use it on my cheeks, as I would worry about transfer onto clothes and people during the course of a day or night.

So, I'm not really sure what I could use it for. Maybe a base for glitter or pigment, but again, I'm not sure it would last without creasing. Maybe as a collar bone or leg highlight, but this is a pretty expensive product for sheering out on the body. All this makes it a beautiful product that's pretty impractical, and as such this isn't one I'd recommend.

If you'd like to try it yourself, you can find it at Illamasqua.com, at £16 for 1.5g. It also comes in gold and silver shades.