REVIEW: Etude House Play 101 Stick Contour Duo #1 Highlighter & Shading

Etude House Play 101 Stick Contour Duo #1 Highlighter & Shading

I finally broke down and bought the contour duo stick from Etude House. I have been meaning to buy a highlighter/contour duo package for awhile now but I was thinking of getting one in a pressed powder format instead. However, after seeing quite a few good youtube reviews of this product, I decided to try the cream product instead. 

 

The stick is quite compact, holding 1.7g x 2 of product. I was a little unsure of the colour once I actually opened it as the shading colour looks quite dark and the highlighter looked white. The lids snap on and the product twists up, quite user friendly.

Below is a picture of the highlighter fully twisted up. The amount of product there is just a little bit longer than my thumb nail. The size of the contour shade is exactly the same. It's not a product that would last very long if used often. The product is super soft and creamy! It literally just melted onto my skin with one gentle swipe, like butter.

Swatches of the colours in natural lighting. I have to admit, I found the highlighter colour to be... completely NOT what I expected it to be. With the word "highlighter" I was thinking of something more glowy, shimmery or... high lighty? Instead, it looks and blends very much like a concealer. After being blended out, there's a little bit of sparkle, if you squint real hard.

The highlighter blends out very nicely. The shading colour on the other hand was a little hard to blend. I rubbed pretty hard and you can still see the original shape of the unblended swatch in the picture below. The shading colour has no shimmer, by the way.

Overall, I'm not sure how I feel about this contour duo. It is definitely not a face contour stick since the crayon parts are small and I imagine it would be quite frustrating to not be able to blend out the darker colour. I think this is a good choice for nose contouring, but I don't think I will use it on my cheeks or jawline. I also don't think I'll get much use on the highlighter end either.