The 4 steps to learning how to wear makeup

STEP 1: ESSENTIAL

Clear lip gloss/balm

This is a simple start to getting used to wearing makeup. It’s clear so if you forget to touch up or re-apply, no biggie. Just remember when you can and get used to it. It can make a difference in your face, giving it some life with a well moisturized lip. It’ll make you lick your lips less and seem less nervous in general (a bad habit of mine).

Eyebrows – groomed

Pluck stray hairs. Don’t try and get fancy or go too thin and overpluck your eyebrows. Just groom them – they’ll make a WORLD of a difference, I promise. Even with my sparse eyebrows, I groomed them a bit and it totally lightened my face and made me look more polished.

Here is a picture of Gwen Stefani’s eyebrow and what a good eyebrow can do for you and how bad the bad one can be:

See how thin and ugly it looks? A fuller brow is more natural and easier to maintain. Just get a nice curve on it.. and if you’re nervous, book ONE appointment at a spa to get them plucked/waxed and ask for a natural looking brow – nothing too thin and ugly, go home, take a digital picture, and keep up on plucking out those stray hairs as they grow on.

Like most things, people will notice much more if your eyebrows are ugly, too thin or just plain unruly… but a good eyebrow will blend into your face and just make you look polished – it won’t be noticed. 🙂

If you’ve mastered the two components of STEP 1 above.. move on to what I call the layering stage.

STEP 2: LAYERING

Concealer

Head to a Sephora, or a MAC makeup counter, and try different types of colours of liquids on your face until you find the RIGHT match. I normally use this for my dark undereye circles.

The right match, is usually when it blends into your skin and in NATURAL light (not harsh cosmetic lights), it looks flawless.

The concealer step is NOT to cover your face in makeup. Far from it, that’s called “foundation”. The concealer step is just to dab a little bit, here and there, on the darker spots and reddish spots of your face, just to even out your skin tone. That’s it. DO NOT go overboard and spread it all over your face into a matte, one-colour mask.

If all that is too difficult for you, and/or you’ve tried, and NO liquid/powder/cream does the trick because it feels too cakey and makeupey, then I REALLY highly recommend Bare Escentuals mineral powder (this can also be used as a foundation).

It’s what I wear, and with a kabuki brush, you can buff it on and look flawless in seconds. It also lasts all day, and gives you this nice polished glow..

You can buy a starter kit at Sephora, or email me and I’ll try my best to help out 🙂

Here are a bunch of Bare Escentuals YouTube videos (it’s the search), and the one I recommend are the (TM) ones, but for some reason it’s been disabled, and I can’t embed it on my post (grr!)… Those are the official videos and they’ll show you how to apply it. SUPER easy. Just make sure you put on LESS than more. Seriously. LESS. I cannot emphasize that enough. You’ll end up like a shiny alien if you don’t listen to me 😛

You won’t need concealer if you use Bare Minerals, but if you truly want a 100% clear looking complexion, then use a bit of concealer, then buff bare minerals over your face.

Eyeliner

So now that your skin is glowy and wonderful, with even skin tones and complexions, try an eyeliner.

Pick a neutral colour like brown, or if you’re lucky to have gorgeous green or blue eyes, pick a dark plum/violet eyeliner to bring out your green eyes, or a dark pewter grey to bring out your blue eyes.

Brown eyeliner is just something that’s quite neutral for most eye colours, and isn’t as harsh as brown. It’s what I wear.

Pick a pencil that seems to glide easily on your hand in the store when you’re testing it (“kohl” eyeliners seem to have a lot of glide in them). I say this because you’re going to be ONLY applying it to your top eyelid, a thin line of it, and you do NOT want to be tugging that hard pencil across your delicate eyelid. You want the colour to GLIDE on.

What eyeliner does, is makes your eyelashes look fuller and longer because it gives hte illusion that you have more eyelashes than normal, and that they start further back on your eye than they do. This is because of the brown eyeliner that fills in those little spots of skin in between your eyelashes, and connects them, to really give your eye a lovely almond shape and make them pop.

If I only had to pick 2 things to bring on me to an island, it’d be bareminerals powder + kabuki brush (okay 3 things), and brown eyeliner.

After mastering STEP 2, move on…

STEP 3: ENHANCING

Eyebrows

Remember those eyebrows you plucked in STEP 1? Now try filling them in with an eyebrow powder or pencil. I find that the Tiger’s Eye colour pencil works best for me, but it all depends on your eyebrow hairs, the colour, sparseness, etc… I find powders are more natural than pencil for most people, and what it does is fill in those sections of your eyebrow that aren’t exactly thick and full.

I was born with sparse, but spread out/bushy eyebrows (what a curse eh?), and I groom them once every 3 weeks (barely noticeable when they grow in), and I shade in a darker shade of eyebrow to make them frame my eyes and stand out.

Eyeshadow

This one is the simplest. Pick a neutral shade like taupe or beige. Use a brush. Gently brush it on your entire lid and lightly up to your eyebrows. Do your eyeliner over the eyeshadow. That’s it.

Mascara

All you have to do, is just use mascara to brush on the colour on your eyelashes. Put the mascara wand close to the edge of your eyelid and the beginning of your eyelashes, and wiggle the wand back and forth, all the way until you’ve mascara’d the tips of them. ONE or TWO coats is enough, or else you’ll have too Tammy Faye-like eyelashes, it won’t look natural and it’ll flake off onto your cheek, leaving awful black specks that no one will tell you about until you get to the bathroom and scream.

This is the last step, for if you’re comfortable but want to take it to the MAX of the natural makeup.

STEP 4: PERFECT

Eyelash curler

Best one is Shu Uemura. SO WORTH IT. It takes a bit of practice to get it right, but it’s very hard to pinch your eyelashes with this curler. Any other of the cheap drugstore brands and you’re asking for it 😛 … Trust me.

It might look like a torture device, but it really is very simple and it makes a world of a difference to have your eyelashes curled up and open up your entire eye (this is my other essential tool to have, along with mascara)….

Blush

I use Cargo’s Molokai. Very natural, soft, tons of it in the tin, and the key to wearing blush is to make sure it doesn’t LOOK like you wear blush. If you have tan or darker skin tones, you have to wear brighter colours that might look scary in the tin, but will look gorgeous on your skintone. Brush it on in the store, and just experiment until you find a colour you like. All it is, is brushing the product at the apples of your cheeks (smile, and you can see where the apple appears), and brush it up to your hairline (not wayyy up into your forehead though!), and blend downwards. One or two swipes should be enough for each cheek. Don’t overdo it.

Light foundation

As I said before.. Bare minerals has my highest recommendation. I’m a total convert. See my notes above under Concealer.

ONWARDS AND BEYOND: EXPERIMENT

Like I said. Try different eyeshadows, eyeliners, colours, textures.. the possibilities are endless. You can also try liquid eyeliners, makeup primers.. whatever!

There are TONS of tutuorials on the web and YouTube videos, and of course – you can always ask me for a special tutorial on something specific, but this is a nice general overview for the makeup novice. 🙂

Here is one of my FAVOURITE YouTube videos on applying natural makeup.