REVIEW: BRTC Perfect Recover Balm (BB cream)

Thanks to trinketti who repackages ample samples of bb creams, i purchased a 10 gram sample of the ever popular (on the internet) BRTC bb cream in perfect recover. The perfect recover variant claims to be formulated for oily combination skinned people like myself. and i quote the website:
http://www.brtcstore.com/BB_Cream.html: ”

Applicable to: Best for Oily and troubled skin, skin that requires soothing and calming or anyone with slightly Oily skin.

•Skin that requires the effect of natural skin cover up and protection
•Skin that requires quick and easy makeup
•Skin that has acne, psoriasis, eczema or other dermatological problems.
•Skin after going through the process of peel or laser treatment

Main ingredients: Tea Tree Oil, Lavendar, Chamomile, Grapefruit Seed, Aloe vera extract, and many more Botanical Ingredients.”

pramis, i just copied and pasted that from the brtc website! Gee, ano kaya mga yun??? is it so hard to google the spelling of lavender? What are bb creams again? BB creams : “All-in-One Cosmetic Product BB CREAM = Base + Foundation + Concealer + (Natural Makeup) + Sunblock + Moisturiser + Oil Control + Healing Properties (Skin Regeneration, Pore Tightening, Skin Toning) + Optional Feature (Anti-Wrinkle/Brightening/Whitening)”. …from trinketi’s site.

So let’s see if my brtc perfect recover fit the claims.

Base + Foundation. = wow, this thing is thick! slightly thicker than my TFS skin bb cream, thicker than my missha perfect cover, way way thicker than either of my skin food bb creams. i had better luck using a foundation brush. because it’s thick it’s difficult to blend or spread out. BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE! its thickness does not mean coverage with this product. i still had to layer it on twice to camouflage my purply zit scar and it’s only so so in filling in my pores. I guess my under eye circles weren’t too dark the whole week i tested out this product because i didn’t have a hard time covering them up. it doesn’t look like ly-na pearl cream or chin chun su oh ha how do i know? hahaha check out youtube and search ly na pearl cream baka magulat kayo.

Sunblock = it boasts an SPF of 28, i guess that’s better than the usual 20 from skin food and the face shop.

Moisturizer = I must say that this variant of BRTC did keep my dry areas, mostly everywhere except my t-zone, moisturized and the product didn’t give me any dry patches. It also didn’t break me out, in fact, it helped a couple of pimples dry or mature quickly for pimple’s cycle to go through its thing and heal.

Oil Control = for something that boasts to be THE oil control bb cream, it only did as well as my missha perfect cover (a product that doesn’t even claim to be formulated for oily combination skin but only for “normal” skin”. i was feeling the feeling some weight of “moisture” on my nose and the area around my cupid’s bow in 3 or 4 hours, at the office where there is airconditioning!

Healing properties = I mentioned that it dried up my zits quicker than if had i not used the product.

More Thoughts: There is no noticeable scent. It doesn’t rub off the way my bobbi brown foundation (oil free variant, shade in warm sand) does. There is only one shade. My foundation shade is NC25 for mac’s liquid foundations and 117 for MUFE’s HD liquid foundation so my shade borders on the pale and really fair shade, or my shade is always no. 2 for nearly all Korean face products (since the no. 1 shade is scarily-edward-cullen shade on me.). The shade of BRTC’s perfect recover can be described as a shade between the usual no.1 and no.2 whether the face product is from skinfood, tfs, laneige. So unless your foundation shade is less than nc25, mufe 117, sand for bobbi brown, buff for revlon’s color stay: be very careful in piling this cream on your face or it would not only look cake-y, you’re liable to end up looking like a prettified sister of the joker.

like other bb creams, the shade does adjust to my skin tone or is “self-correcting”. but it remains quite fair on me and it kinda looks like i’m going out rather than the “natural looking” the website proclaims.

Lasting Power: this bb cream oxidizes on me after about 6 hours. That’s typical of nearly all foundations (except for those that are long wearing like Revlon’s colorstay and other long wearing foundations.

In conclusion: I will not buy the full size of this bb cream. I also don’t get why it’s so popular. I don’t get the price tag either. It’s just a thick, very tinted moisturizer with sunblock, it doesn’t even hide my pores well. DOCTOR JART on the other hand, is another story…that’s coming up, asap.