I wore fake freckles for a week and was surprised at how much it changed my look

Yes, as a child I compulsively wished for freckles. But didn’t everyone? I mean, there’s a reason why everyone in the English-speaking world had Freckle Juice in their elementary school reading curriculum — they were cute and coupled with the fact that only a blessed few in class had them, it was a rare and enviable trait. It still is, actually.

Amid stories and Instagram-aggregating posts of people actually getting them tattooed on, a start-up created a cosmetic version of freckles. The aptly-named Freck officially launched their product last week, so I spent a week giving it a test drive.

Here’s the deal with the actual product

It’s about $22 before shipping and comes in a teeny tiny vial with a brush the size of my pinky. I probably did about seven applications total and only used about a third of the liquid. Yes, it only comes in one color, but using more or less ink (the same way you’d dip a brush into paint) can darken or lighten the freckle color. The instructions say to hold the brush vertically and dab little constellations of 3-5 freckles where the sun would naturally hit, tapping your finger over the wet dot to diffuse some of the pigment.

Application was more difficult than anticipated

I’m great at applying everything from winged liner to nail art so I didn’t think my steady hands and I would have too much of a problem. Aaaand I was wrong. I did such a shitty job of applying it over my makeup that I had to totally start over and have my co-worker do it for me. The directions included instruct holding the brush vertically and dotting in clusters. Trust me, I tried:

The brush was just not shaped right for self-application, honestly. It’s basically a felt-tip liner brush, and the dots kept coming out more like little lines than rounded freckles. Having someone else apply for you makes all the difference. Or maybe I’m just not as skilled as I pretend to be.

The trick is to go slow for a natural look

So this was the first layer applied and, for what it’s worth, the girl who did it has a natural face-full of freckles so I trusted her make it look real:

It’s definitely cute, but the problem is it’s hard to make it look like a natural lil spattering because tbh that’s just not how freckles naturally grow. Is grow the right word? Form? Sprout? ANYWAY, we had to start layering up to make it look like something that could have formed on my face without ink.

It changed my look a lot

From far away, it looked great and real. Up close? I think so, but you be the judge. I’m kind of sold:

The best part was it made me feel surprisingly different! I felt like a freshly-scrubbed gal straight from the farm. It made me feel cute and weirdly wholesome and if I wasn’t worried about being #exposed for my fraudulent ways, I might make it part of my daily routine — especially because it’s the kind of product you really get good at applying over time.

How much is the tattooing again…?