I usually dread when an Avon book comes through my door as it means that one of my neighbours has decided to start trying to earn some extra money by doing Avon. Other than moving out of my house in the middle of the night it means that for the sake of neighbourly harmony I am obliged to buy something from them. This wouldn't be a problem if not for the fact that loads of my friends already do Avon and I already have to buy from them too.

My most recent purchase was from a neighbour and it was a few of the products from the Dazzling Diva range as I had heard a few good things about them so was curious to try them out and see what I thought of them.

The pearls are white and I was a little bit worried that they would make me look pale and pasty as I normally use bronzing pearls or ones to illuminate. They are supposed to give your face a little bit of a shimmer and 'winter sparkle'.

They come with a sponge for applying which I really didn't like and so I used one of my own make-up brushes instead and this was much better at applying the pearls to my skin.

When you sweep the brush over the pearls you can see it becoming loaded with powder and you don't have to be really harsh and aggressive with the brush as it will get quite a bit on it with just a few sweeps. You then just brush it over your face paying attention to areas that you would like to highlight such as your cheekbones etc.

I find that this gives a nice shimmer to my skin but it isn't as dramatic or as pretty as I would ideally like. The white is a little different and it doesn't make my skin look ghostly but it also doesn't highlight as much as I would like. I have used them a couple of times now and I found that they were much better and more intense when my face had been fake tanned as they showed up against the tan much better than when I only had foundation on. Without the tan the highlighting and shimmering effect was barely noticeable at all to my eyes.

I thought that these pearls were ok but I certainly won't be rushing back to my neighbour to order some more. They do look better on darker skin so if you are pale I wouldn't bother with these and instead would go for the illuminating pearls or even the lighter bronzing pearls as I think you might be disappointed with how little these show up on your skin.