A tale of two bb creams..and a tinted moisturizer: review of Skin79 Super plus, Missha Perfect Cover, and Garnier Miracle Skin Perfector

Happy Friday once again!

Today will be reviews day. I have been planning this first post for a while already, and I hope that some of you may find it interesting. The topic is: bb creams.

BB creams, which have become so hot in Europe (and the Western world) in the past two years, actually exist for a good while now. The blemish or beauty balm (bb) was first created by a German dermatologist in the 1960s as a protective agent for her patients’ skin after surgery. Europe wasn’t interested…However, Korea was! In the East, where porcelain skin has been put on a pedestal for centuries, the creation of Dr. Christine Schrammek became the holy grail of skin perfection. Why? Because it’s an all-in-one deal: moisturizer, foundation, sun-protection, anti-aging, anti-blemish, soothing, and of course: whitening. Who wouldn’t love a product like this?!?!?! I would!

Whether it really is as good as it sounds, I don’t know..I tend to be a bit skeptical about cosmetic products that make promises which sound borderline occult, almost magical.

Anyhow, Korea became the leader in bb cream production with plenty of brands which have gained worldwide fame, such as Etude House, Missha, Lioele, The Face House, Skin79 to name a few.

Then, two years ago, Europe decided to catch up. At last! Western bb creams appeared on the market, and to this day I am not sure whether to call them bb creams or tinted moisturizers, as they do not promise the same in terms of skin care, as do Korean bb creams. And I intend to leave the discussion opened…

My first attempt at bb creams was the Garnier Miracle Skin Perfector, aimed at people with combination to oily skin…such as myself. I liked it!

Then, however, I became curious about the original Korean bb creams. I ordered a few from the bbcreamshop: one from Skin79, and two from Missha.

So today my collection of bb creams looks like this:

Let’s start with the Garnier Miracle Skin perfector. I bought it in the summer since at the time, the shade medium (it only comes in 2 anyway, medium and light) matched my skin tone perfectly. The price is around €10 for 40ml. It has an SPF 20.

The product is quite liquid-y. I have applied it both with my fingers and with a brush (Real Techniques expert face brush), and the result was quite to my liking both ways (I prefer the brush though, simply because it’s less messy and gets worked into the skin a bit better ). A swatch on my hand looks like this:

I don’t have any more photos from the summer to show you, but for me that bb cream worked almost like a medium coverage foundation. It matified my skin nicely, evened my skin tone, covered my black dots and pores. I really really liked it! I did start to get oily again after some 5-6 hours but not as bad as without it.

Overall, my impression of this bb cream was very positive! The only thing is that if you smell the tube up-close, a very strong alcohol smell hits you. I did not feel it when applied on the face though. I had no breakouts, drying of the skin or any other issues.

Right now it has become too dark for me, in the medium shade anyway…

Off to Korea…I wanted to have some variety to test there, so I ordered:

•  a test tube with 5ml of the Skin79 Super plus triple functions bb cream (€3,25)
• a small package of 20 ml of the Missha M Perfect Cover bb cream in natural beige (€11,85)
• a small package (20ml) of Missha shiny bb cream (with the intention to use as a cheek highlighter because it sparkles) (€9,65)

I think the shipping was around €2,50 (Netherlands).

And here they are:

As with most Korean bb creams, you can see they have a grey-ish undertone…That, unfortunately doesn’t work with everyone’s skin tone. They work for me, but I have tried them on others and they don’t always fit. If you want to try a Korean bb cream, I’d recommend to get a sample size first (edit from 2014: at present I order my Korean bb creams from ebay, as that is much cheaper compared to the bbcreamshop).

I will not go into details about what promises these creams make, and just tell you how I feel about them. They do in general have higher SPF than the Western ones (~30-50) though. Oh, and the packagings are undoubtedly much cuter than the plain Western bb creams, right?

I would say the coverage is sheer to medium, it does cover my black spots and general redness…pimples need additional concealing. The skin does have this porcelain feel to it. You can also see me with the Skin79 bb cream in this post. They also matify well. I do powder on top, however. My T-zone starts shining slightly after 5-6 hours depending on how enthusiastic my oil glands are feeling. Not too bad!

One thing I have to add about these bb creams: more is less! If I apply less, I am always more satisfied with the result…so they are also quite economical 🙂 I use my RT expert face brush for the best results.

In my experience, the Skin79 and Missha bb creams perform quite equally, so the fact that I tend to like the Missha cream better because of the cute package, isn’t a valid reason to disqualify Skin79 🙂 I will, however add that, to me at least, the texture of the Skin79 bb cream feels slightly more like a cream to powder product….drier, if that makes sense…

The Missha shiny bb cream is not exactly the highlighter I was hoping for, but it’s fine. It has this tiny shimmer to it that looks very subtle, so on certain occasions it is preferable to some more sparkly highlighters. I probably wouldn’t repurchase it (also because I think I will have this one for life hahaha).

Wow, this post became much longer than expected! I will therefore stop here 🙂

What is your experience with these bb creams? I would love to know!

If you have any other question regarding these bb creams, feel free to ask me in the comments section. I would be happy to answer!