Review & Swatches: Hard Candy So Baked Sculpting Trio in 3 x A Lady


I've briefly talked about this product in a haul and favorites and now it's finally about time I sit down and write out a full review! The Hard Candy So Baked Sculpting Trio in 3x A Lady contains three shades to help shape your face and add some color. There's a slightly golden champagne highlight, a rosey pink satin blush, and a light brown matte contour/bronzer shade. This trio contains 2.3 ounces of product and retails for $9.00.




I don't know if it's all baked products, but the powders were all slightly dry and powdery. It would've been more okay if the product is larger, but the surface area is kind of small for each shade. Some of the shimmer from the highlighter would mix into the more matte shades and I would have to be careful on what kind of brush to use and how much I could actually move it across the surface.


Above is my face with foundation and eye makeup. I don't have powder on either to see how the product would blend on just a regular "set" foundation base.


The bronzer shade looked really promising in the pan - a matte brown that didn't lean too warm or too cool toned so I could use it as both a bronzer and sculpting powder. Even though it's matte, it didn't give a flat finish and blended in well. That's probably the only praise I will give this shade. It just barely showed up on me. I'm about a MAC NC35 and fit a lot of shades that have "Natural Beige" in their range (somewhere in the middle with yellow undertones). 


I applied the product in the hollows of my cheekbones above.

You can see that there's a slight shadow and it does help, but it's barely anything. 


The blush is probably my favorite out of these three shades, but only if I use it as a pinky subtle highlight shade - which looks super gorgeous! The satin finish adds the perfect amount of glow to my cheeks for the majority of my days I'm wearing makeup. It also adds a teensy amount of color to brighten up my face.


I applied the blush just above my contour on my cheekbones.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work as well for a blush and that's coming from a person that's kind of scared of using blushes. It's way too subtle for me and I can't see any blush lover choosing this product.


The highlight is probably the most disappointing product for me. It also looks pretty promising in the pan but fell flat on my face. There was also some glitter particles instead of a smooth shimmer which emphasized my pores. 


I placed the highlight slightly above my blush and up into my temple. In pictures, it does look nice and glowy but it becomes super obvious in person. The glitter also migrated around my face and so that wasn't that fun.... The other two shades in the palette did stay where I placed them though!


And here's some final arm swatches so that you can see the color better. I had to swatch each color multiple times and this is the most pigmented I could get the colors to be. I was mostly using brushes for this product, but then I touched the highlight shade with my finger and it is so rough compared to the other two shades. The bronzer/contour shade and blush is definitely softer and slightly powdery, but is smoother than the highlight.

Final thoughts: On my medium skin tone, this product was so meh. I feel like this is probably best for those with very pale skin or those who are just starting with colored face products. I tried to judge it based on whether or not the cons were mostly due to my skin tone, but the powders are just so sheer that I can't see this working super well on anyone that isn't pale. For the price, I'm not too angry about this purchase since the blush works pretty well for me as a pinky highlight, but I'm just annoyed that the other two shades just very barely work on me. 

Have you tried Hard Candy products? Do you like baked products more or just regular pressed products?
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