Addiction Cheek Polish Fresh

More fresh blood! ...blood ORANGE, that is. Oh yes, this is me bein scintillatin on a Sunday morning....

Fresh is one of seven shades of Cheek Polish -- liquid blushes -- which Addiction launched this season. Retailing at ¥2940, they'll join the permanent range.
The liquid formula and brush applicator are also very nail polishy. There's even a little ball bearing inside to aid you in shaking it up. Yes, it's a CHEEK POLISH, we get it already!

Tonally, Fresh is a juicy neutral orange with a slight pastel coral base that combines brightness and wearability without muted brown or grey tones. Texturally, once shaken up, it emerges from the bottle as a slightly-more-viscous-than-water liquid, with a tendency to run only if you do plop a giant blob like this onto skin -- with a more moderate drop, or brushed on in broad strokes, it doesn't drip or bleed. It sets to a skin-perfecting, shimmer-free satin finish (see how nicely it sits even on my textured, dry skin?) which feels silicone-silky rather than powdery if you run a finger across it afterwards. After setting, it does wears like a stain.
Pigmentation is good, but this shade has a great deal of translucency, which this means that individual skintones will strongly affect how it registers (vs. a more opaque shade of equal pigmentation) i.e. if your skintone happens to be quite close to Fresh (~MAC 15-20 depth), you may find it 'disappears' on you; if your cheeks are strongly red, this will look more coral. In general, I think this colour will be best/clearest on pale or medium-and-darker skintones; on fair/medium skintones it will be subtler, or even just plain invisible. See BirkinBeautyBag's review of another cheek polish shade, Tadzio, which looks to have a more solidly opaque base and should stay truer on a wider variety of skintones.

To further illustrate all this blather about opacity, finish, and tone, a comparison with Sleek Pan Tao powder blush, which Fresh replaces in my wardrobe:

While not earth-shatteringly different in colour once blended out, isn't there a huge difference in how un/pretty these two formulas make my skin look? Pan Tao was one of the sheerest Sleek blushes, so its powdery failings were more evident than with other Sleek shades (for which I would use much less product); I'd still kept it around as my only wearable orange blush option. In contrast to its opaque but unevenly-pigmented matte, I hope you can see what I mean by Fresh's glow-from-within pigmented translucency.


More comparisons, just to contextualise the orange:
CANMAKE Clear CL03 (see how pink it looks here, vs. how orange-red here?)
ILLAMASQUA Rude cream blush (likewise with the pinkification!)
SUQQU 07 Komorebi quad's orange-peach (most recently worn here)
YABY Kumquat
CATRICE Dalai Drama
SLEEK Pan Tao blush
ADDICTION Fresh cheek polish
ADDICTION Le Mépris lip crayon (worn in the last look here)

source

Subtle burnished eyes with mixed metals Fyrinnae Nijiro, Shu Uemura ME 126, and Suqqu 06 Ginbudou gold. Maybelline Rocket WP mascara.
Cheeks: Addiction Fresh
Lips: also Addiction Fresh, which was a patchy, dry and tingly mistake (first pic) so I added RBR Kiss Elixir lipbalm before the second picture.
Base: Shu Uemura pink/purple underbase mousse, copious amounts of RBR Sea of Clouds, Burberry sheer concealer 01 under eyes, Shu Nobara 584 on blemishes, Suqqu brow pen 02.

Having now played with this for a week (seriously, major facespam to come, because whee finally I can haz orange blush with nice formula!), I've found the application method to be:
1. Shake shake shake the bottle.
2. Scrape one side of the brush on the edge of the bottle opening, to remove about half the amount of product.
3. Paint a few short swipes onto each cheek (do not also apply to lips as I did here...)

4. Go do something else for a few minutes (I applied eye makeup and knitted a row or two of interminable grey tunic in progress) -- a little 'resting time' makes the polish less runny and much easier to work with; its staining powers only kick in after around 5-10 minutes, by my estimate, so you have time to work with it.
5. PAT, don't swipe the colour evenly over the area you want to be cheek-polished. I use a fine, dense sponge (i.e. Beautyblender) or a small synthetic paddle brush (e.g. Shu Uemura synthetic 14), but I suspect most people will prefer fingers.
6. If you used fingers, wash them, because once this does stain, it stains like nobody's business!

PS ingredients list to come when I've finished translating. But it is alcohol-free, full of 'cones, and has a faint greeny botanical scent.