Christmas Party Makeup!

Tis the season to go all out with your makeup!

I LOVE Christmas, for so many reasons, and from a makeup point of view it's one of the best times to try new looks, to go for full-on glamour and, best of all, wear glitter!!!
I'm not a fan of the red and green look though, green eyes and red lips - that's ok for the Christmas tree but I personally think that it's a bit old-fashioned and not very complimentary, I most definitely cannot pull it off (and I'm not afraid to try!). However, I do love rich green smokey eyes, and my advice would be to compliment them with soft, peachy cheeks and lips.

J.Lo Does it beautifully!

         Bourjois Little Round Pot Intense

                                                                                          Makeup Forever Aqua Eyes

The key thing with this look is a good eyeshadow base. Preferably this base would be a very similar colour to the eyeshadow used, as this will add intensity and dimension, but this is not essential. If you don't have a base the same colour, you can just use your usual eye primer or base, as long as it has little or no colour, then gradually build up the colour by patting the eyeshadow on with a flat, synthetic brush if you have it - it also may be a good idea to apply your foundation afterwards in case of fall-down, but by patting the colour on this shouldn't be a huge problem.

I also recommend applying a lighter colour to the inner corners of the eyes to brighten them as this is quite a dark and intense colour. This can be a shimmery white with silver or gold undertones, or even a shimmery gold would be stunning! This look needs lots of eyeliner and mascara to balance it, and if you're comfortable applying and wearing false lashes, go for it! Another point is, you can use these tips to apply any intense colour such as purple, navy or even bronze/gold.

A hugely popular look this season is the cat-eye flicked eyeliner, and I think this look can be built up and worn very intensely on the eyes with the rest of the face being kept subtle, or keep the eyeliner quite minimal and neat and wear it with red lips!

Bobbi Brown, Mac and Clinique are just some of the brands who do brilliant gel or cream eyeliner pots - you can use an angled or a small pointed eyeliner brush to apply it. If you're not too confident applying eyeliner this way, I'd recommend using an angled brush to start out and maybe use a black eyeshadow first to plot out where you're going to apply the gel eyeliner. To get the angle right, look down into a mirror or tilt your head back so your eyelids are lowered (because your eyes are looking down) and starting at the outer corner of the eye, follow the angle of your lower lashline and direct it towards the end of your eyebrow. Practice makes perfect and remember, it's only makeup and it can be fixed!

For the red lips, I advise applying a lip primer or balm first, even a few minutes before you start your makeup to give it a chance to sink into the lips. Lipliner is a must for red lips, use it to line the lips and define their shape - it can be applied slightly outside the natural lipline to make them look fuller as darker colours can make the lips look smaller - and then fill in the lips with the lipline; this acts like a stain so when your lipstick wears off, it won't be nearly as noticeable. Apply your lipstick and follow with a gloss if you like, or for an alternative twist on the look, after applying your red lipliner, apply a darker red/burgundy lipliner in the corners of the lips and all the way around to give a 3D effect, and fill in the centre of the lips with a matte/cream lipstick to give a velvety effect. Keep the cheeks sculpted with a matte bronzer or shader and add very little colour, maybe just a tiny hint of pink on the very apples of the cheeks. Highlight the cheek and brow bones and even down the nose and above the upper lip if you like, but don't go too mad if lots of photos will be taken! If you're feeling really brave, you could even add some glitter to your eyelids for extra sparkle and glamour - Barry M do an amazing white Dazzle Dust with gold undertones and it's such good value!

So, with all that in mind, remember to try new things but be comfortable, if it's way out of your comfort zone then don't wear it, it could ruin your night! Keep it balanced, make sure your skin is flawless and add a little contouring to make sure you look your best (if you're not sure about contouring, check out Pixiwoo's tutorials on youtube, they're so informative and easy to follow). Be happy with how you look and make sure your best features stand out and you can't go wrong!

Enjoy everyone, and thanks for reading!

Suzie

How to pick the right Drugstore Foundation

I suffer from very oily skin and mild acne, so I'm always on a mission to find foundation that suits my skin and delivers what it claims to deliver. Lately I've been focusing a bit more on drugstore foundations, because I find it's not always easy to pick a foundation that suits your skin type and tone in a chemist. The lighting is often bad and can cause you to pick up a foundation that you thought suited you, only to get home and find it's too dark/light, too yellow/pink, and they often have ridiculous claims such as eliminating pores or lasting for 25 hours or something like that.
I think the trick is to not take these claims seriously and I highly recommend trying the testers, wearing them out and about for a good while, an hour if possible, and then decide if it's the right one for you. Definitely try 2-3 at a time so you can see which matches the best, because if you have just one tester on, you may think it's a close enough match to your skin but you have nothing to compare it to!
Another tip is, it's not always the best idea to test the foundation on your face and try to match the colour to your face. Your face may be darker or lighter than your neck and chest (the neck on many women is usually lighter as it doesn't get as much sun as the face and chest, your chin and jawline can cast a shadow on it), so I think the best thing to do is to match your foundation to your chest. It can easily be applied to the neck too so everything will match.
I do think that we shouldn't kid ourselves about our colouring either. Obviously a tan is nice to look at and it can make us feel better, but in winter especially, we wear tan less and less, so we need to ensure we're not still wearing the same foundation. If you're a pink tone, accept it; if you are quite pale, accept it; if you have very oily or very dry skin, accept it and use these points to help you pick the right foundation. The opposite is also true - if you like to wear false tan occasionally, your normal foundation may not match and you will need to pick a darker, yellow based foundation. There's nothing worse than looking back on your photos of a great night out and your face is pink and pale in comparison to the rest of your body, and the artificial light we often end up applying our makeup in can be deceiving!
So the point is, read the bottle, check it's got ingredients that either won't affect your skin or may even benefit it (foundation for oily skin should be oil-free and non-pore blocking and foundation for dry skin should contain some sort of moisturiser like glycerin), try the testers and be honest to yourself about what shade/tone suits you, wear a good primer underneath that also suits your skin type and will help it last and you can't go too far wrong.
On that note, here are a few drugstore foundations that I've tried recently and what I thought of them:

Bourjois Healthy Mix Foundation - this is a brilliant foundation for oily skin once you have a good primer underneath, it has good coverage but still maintains a little dewiness, which is nice as most foundations for oily skin have a matte finish, it lasts all dry and doesn't really seem to affect my skin one way or another in terms of oiliness or drying my skin out. I'm wearing this foundation on a daily basis at the moment and so far I've no complaints. One downside of the foundation is it only comes in 8 shades and they seem to be mostly yellow based, so some people may miss out.

Rimmel Lasting Finish 25 Hour Foundation - This foundation claims to be extremely long lasting and sweat-proof; I don't know if that's true but it's still a good, long-lasting foundation all the same. It has a slightly more matte finish so I recommend using a silicone-based primer underneath as it will help the foundation to glide on and blend easily. It has high coverage which is good for my blemish-prone skin, but again, it doesn't have a wide range of shades - only 6 in total.

Max Factor Smooth Effect Foundation - This foundation is oil-free and claims to have a smoothing effect, as the name suggests! I'm not sure if this foundation is great for blemish-prone skin, I bought it because it's oil-free so I knew it wouldn't do anything to make my skin worse. It's a fairly light foundation that doesn't have a lot of coverage, but even so, I like it because it has more of a semi-matte finish so wasn't too drying and it was fairly long-lasting. I think it would be good for normal-oily skin types and for people who don't need a lot of coverage, maybe just some evening-out. Of the 3 foundations I mentioned, it's the worst in terms of colour range - it only has 4 and they seem to all be yellow-based/neutral (nothing pink-based at all!)

So apologies for this blog post being long again but foundation really is something I could talk about all day and I've only scratched the surface of all the different types here! I will say that I have bought all the foundations mentioned with my own money, so my reviews are fair and honest. I don't necessarily like to bash products but when a product is generally good I will mention any small downsides, just so anyone reading this can be fully informed if they go to buy anything I mention!

Thanks for reading!

Suzanne