bareMinerals Ready SPF20 Foundation

This review has been a long time coming.

I received my bareMinerals Ready SPF20 Foundation more than a month ago, and while I like to experiment with products for a while before I share my feelings, I usually don't take a full month.

Unless it's a skin care product, you can pretty much tell in a week or so whether a foundation, eye shadow, lipstick etc. works for you.

But I think with the Ready Foundation, I kind of didn't want to admit how I really felt about it.

That's because I'm a big fan of Bare Escentuals and I absolutely adore all of the other Ready products that I've tried so I was expecting to love this too.

Sadly, I don't.

And I tried it a bunch of times, in a bunch of different ways.

It just doesn't work for me.  

More often than not, it winds up looking like a cakey, powdery mess.

(I apologize right off the bat about the photo quality. I usually take my photos in natural light because the lighting in my house is pretty awful, but it was gray and rainy here all day. I kept hoping that the sun might make a brief appearance, so I waited to take the photos. But the sun never came out and I wound up having to take them with my terrible lighting anyway.  Blech.)

I purchased the foundation as an advance order from QVC, which is why it's in a silver compact instead of the usual black. It also came with the Precision Face Brush - you can purchase this separately for $28 - so I assume it was designed specifically for use with the Ready Foundation.

I used it the first few times I applied the foundation - it's a pretty dense, synthetic brush with a flat, angled top.

The brush is so incredibly soft, but unfortunately, I find that it just applies way too much foundation.

I thought the brush was the problem actually, so I switched to a brush that wasn't quite as dense.

Still totally cakey.

I switched to a really fluffy powder brush, and that was slightly better but I still got a little cakey in certain spots.

Now, I do have normal to dry skin, so powder foundations are always a bit tricky.  That's why I usually use them over a tinted moisturizer or light coverage foundation.

I tried the Ready Foundation on bare skin and I tried it over over face product - I got the same results both ways.

It would seem like the foundation is super concentrated or something, right? I mean, how else to explain how easy it is to apply too much of it? 

But despite its cakeiness, I'm not particularly impressed with its coverage.

It's pretty light, in my opinion.

I think the loose bareMinerals Foundation actually has better coverage, and I don't get cakey when I apply it right. Certainly, it's not as convenient as a pressed powder, but I care more about how the foundation looks than convenience.

In terms of color, I of course went with the lightest shade Fair (I didn't bother with swatches because of the lighting issue, but beware that the foundation isn't as dark as it appears in the photo above) and it's a pretty good match.  Compared to the Fair shade in the loose foundation, I'd say it's definitely has more yellow undertones but that doesn't really seem to be a problem on the skin.

Maybe this foundation would work better on oily skin.

Or may be there's a better way to apply that I just haven't discovered.

I don't know.

I just know that I can't get seem to get it to work for me.

I'm not saying I hate it.  I'll keep it and try to find ways to use it, but probably not that often.

I'm pretty bummed.

I really wanted to be ga-ga over this foundation.

It's kind of like when I get a new Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers CD and I don't love every single song.

It makes me feel guilty or something.

I'll still look forward to future BE Ready products - this just isn't the foundation for me.

Have you tried the new BE Ready Foundation?  What do you think?  Do you ever feel guilty when you don't like a new product from a certain brand?