Review: bareMinerals Ready Illuminating Touch Up Veil in 'Translucent'

Ehhhhhhhhhh....I'm conflicted. Today's review is of a bareMinerals product and I honestly am feeling wishy washy about it right now. Lemme tell you why! The product is the Ready Illuminating Touch Up Veil in the color Translucent:

This little compact comes in a mirrored case. Its pretty, but not my favorite since the packaging gets streaked and dirty so quickly.

Well hello to you too! The compact comes with a little powder puff (at the right side of this picture). Since this is a touch up powder, it is assumed this is meant to bring with you and touch up on the go, so the powder puff would be important for application purposes. I'm all for no fuss, so I don't want to bring a little brush with me on the go! Unfortunately the little puff is not soft and kind of a throwaway for me...

Here's the powder. This is supposed to be a translucent veil, meaning it should be basically see through on the skin. I thought I could use this to touch up my t-zone (where I tend to sweat the most and get oily through the day/evening).

The powder is soft and finely milled, however I find it to be rather blotchy when swatched and applied  to the skin. In fact, when I applied this to the skin, it is also not translucent but rather shows up white. After vigorous blending, I realized that this powder blended nicely and kind of matted out my skin in a lovely way, but it left behind sparkles! Looking at the powder more carefully I noticed that when you break through the top layer of powder there are big sparkles throughout this product.

Alright...I get it. It's an illuminator so this isn't an all over touch up powder. Trying to be flexible, I used this to touch up my cheekbones, chin, and my nose. It did nicely to mattify those areas, BUT it completely took the color out of my face as the powder is kind of difficult to apply with a light hand. This product also has quite a strong scent to it, kind of like a perfume and I could smell it for a while after application.

All in all, I'm frustrated and a little confused. I feel like this could be a nice product but maybe I haven't figured out the best way to use it for me.  For now, it didn't really serve a purpose for me so I don't think I'll be getting much, if any, use out of it.