When I say “Baby Skin”, you may never understand my excitement when I found out this “much raved’ about primer was hitting South African shores. In fact, I stalked my local Foschini until they had received stock, and then bought the first two primers I could get my hands on. Like any other blogger, I rushed home, admired the packaging for a few good minutes, and then went straight to testing out the primer.

I’m going to start off my review by talking about the packaging, because who doesn’t love a product with a pretty cool packaging? I loved the teal and turquoise packaging with the hot pink writing, it catches my attention as soon as I glance at the product. The packaging is quite sturdy, and I especially love the screw on cap, so there is no spillage if you’re travelling around. I do believe that overseas, the Baby Skin tube is packaged in a cardboard and plastic packaging, I would have really appreciated that in South Africa, so I know the product I’ve purchased hasn’t been tampered with in stores.

The Baby Skin tube labels this primer as an “instant pore eraser”, the tube also states that baby skin is a lightweight primer, for smooth, poreless looking skin and that the primer is only for adults. I was a little surprised, because this primer didn’t really state whether it was for any specific skin type, plus there isn’t much information available on the packaging about the product, but since everybody raved about this product, I really wanted to try it out.

After testing out the product on my hand, I was amazed, this primer felt velvety soft and smooth on the back of my hand, which made me even more excited to try it out. The first day I tried out the primer, I wore it with a full face of make up, I applied a pea sized about of primer to my moisturised face, and gave it a few minutes to settle in and then applied my make up, my make up applied like a dream, it looked flawless in the pictures, which got me really excited because I thought I found my Holy Grail primer, until a few hours after applying my skin looked really oily, like past trying to save with translucent powder oily. YIKES!

I tired to remain as calm as possible and be positive, maybe it was just too much make up for my primer to handle (said no woman ever), I tried it a few days later with just regular BB cream and some powder, but nope, still looking like I left the house with oil on my face. I was beginning to get disappointed because maybe this primer just wasn’t cut out for me. I have oily skin, well combination skin to be exact, and this primer made my skin look plain down too oily to deal with.

Don’t get me wrong, this primer is a really powerful primer, it leaves skin feeling soft and smooth, with a well moisturised feeling, it also blurrs imperfections on skin, making skin appear flawless and “smooth - looking”, plus it is a perfect canvas for make up, as make up glides on, but it is really NOT cut out for oily skin, I really tried to work around the primer, but I couldn’t. It just isn’t meant for combination/oily skin.

So would I recommend Maybelline Baby Skin? Yes I would, ONLY if you have dry skin, if you have combination or oily skin, I really wouldn’t recommend this primer because you’ll just be left with more of an oily look than you can really handle. The Maybelline Baby Skin retails for R89 and is available at Foschini, Dis-Chem and Clicks.