When I first started to see the L’Oreal Mineral products come out on the market, I was thinking that they would be bad rip-offs of the original mineral makeup, Bare Escentuals. I resisted purchasing the L’Oreal Mineral products for quite a long time because I was sure I would be disappointed. However, I started to hear good “buzz” about them on the internet and decided to try the L’Oreal Bare Natural General Eyeshadow. I was so impressed that I purchased another one right away. This second one is the one I'm reviewing today – the Bare Olive shade.

Product Details:

L’Oreal Bare Naturale Gentle Mineral Eyeshadow in the Bare Olive shade is a tiny, clear plastic jar of loose powder eyeshadow. The packaging is pretty elaborate. It includes the bottom portion that holds the .06 oz. of eyeshadow. That section has a sifter top that contains eight tiny holes to allow some of the eyeshadow to be shaken out. Screwing onto the top of that is a matte silver section that has a eyeshadow brush with a wide, round bottom. The brush is held by this bottom piece that screws on. There is an almost 2” long clear plastic cap that snaps on, to fit over the brush.

The color of Bare Olive is a muted, dusty olive with plenty of gold shimmer mixed in. It’s a burnished olive gold color and it’s absolutely gorgeous.In addition to the Bare Olive shade, this shadow comes in seven other colors. All of the shadows contain .06 oz. of shadow.

From LOrealParisUSA.com: Bare Natural Gentle Mineral Eyeshadow is a breakthrough preservative-free mineral formula that is gentle enough for sensitive eyes – even contact lens wearers. The professional brush gently applies shadow for a smooth application every time.

Ingredients:

I don’t have the ingredient listing for this product. It isn’t listed on the product and isn’t listed on L’Oreal’s website.

My Experience:

Prior to purchasing the Bare Olive shade, I’d already used the L’Oreal Bare Naturale Gentle Mineral Eyeshadow in the Bare Spice shade. I really like that shade a lot and love the performance of this eyeshadow. It’s a lot less expensive than similar Bare Escentuals Glimpse and Glimmer and performs just as well - and in some aspects, I think it’s actually better.

I was leery of this eyeshadow’s eyeshadow brush. It looked too big to me – and too fluffy. I thought for sure that L’Oreal had cheaped out and went with a bad brush. However, I love this brush. It performs well and offers great coverage. The loose powder eyeshadow seems to cling to it very well – and it applies the shadow to my eyelids very well. I like the wider brush because it applies the shadow a bit more quickly than my usual thinner eyeshadow brush.

L’Oreal Bare Natural Gentle Mineral Eyeshadow is very smooth and soft despite the amount of shimmer it contains. It smooths onto the eyelids and feels very smooth and comfortable. There are no huge pieces of glitter particles to get into the eyes. It applies very easily and quickly. It blends very well with other powder eyeshadows – I most often use this shadow all over my eyelids with an Estee Lauder eyeshadow as a highlighter. This shadow blends very well with the Estee Lauder shadow.

As I said earlier, the Bare Olive color of this shadow is absolutely gorgeous. It’s not a dark olive green that is going to look like an Army uniform on the eyelids. It’s a muted, light to medium shade of dusty olive that isn’t really green at all and is more of a mixture of the dusty olive shade and gold shimmer. I was worried that this shadow would be too gold, but it isn’t too gold at all. It’s also very wearable for daytime and for the office despite the gold. The olive and the gold are both pretty subtle and look gorgeous but subdued at the same time. They are also not too sparkly for daytime, which was another concern I had. It’s not an issue though. This shadow is shimmery but not too shimmery and doesn’t cross the line into sparkly or glittery. This is somewhat of a neutral shade in my opinion and I have worn this shadow with plenty of different colors of clothing, including denim, white, black, navy and emerald green.

It is not really necessary to apply an eyeshadow base to your eyelids before you apply L’Oreal Bare Naturale Gentle Mineral Eyeshadow. I thought that it was a must because I thought for sure that this shadow would dust off my eyelids and get all over my lashes, into my eyes and onto my cheeks if I didn’t have a good quality eyeshadow base applied to my eyelids beforehand. However, that isn’t the case at all. It stays put even without an eyeshadow base. This is a very pleasant surprise – I didn’t give this shadow enough credit!

The wear of this shadow is pretty good. I get about six hours of wear before I see it fading just a bit. And I do mean it really is just a bit. It doesn’t really start fading until about eight or ten hours. I like my makeup to always look fresh, so I touch it up a couple of times during the workday. So if you are OK with a bit of fading (that probably no one but you will notice), you will probably not have to touch-up this shadow at all during the workday.

Overall, I love this shadow. I think I’ll give it five stars, because I can’t find anything wrong at all with it, love how easy it is to use and how gorgeous it looks on my eyes and find myself reaching for it time and time again. I would purchase more shades in the L’Oreal Bare Natural Gentle Mineral Eyeshadow line but a lot of the colors are too subtle and/or pale for me. If and when L’Oreal brings out darker shades, I’ll definitely check them out. I recommend this shadow to anyone who likes shimmery eyeshadow that is easy to use and has a unique look.

Price and Purchasing Information: