Throw It Out Thursday: The Myth-steries of Makeup
I talk a lot about skincare, but there was another aspect to Beauty School that inspired and frightened me, MAKEUP. I always loved makeup, but my sister has all the talent there, and I preferred to watch her work on her own face or her friends, and if I was lucky, mine.
So yeah, makeup wasn’t something that I was good at. Actually, when I told my family about makeup being in the curriculum for Estheticians they chuckled a little, ok, a lot, but really at that time, the thought of me one day getting paid to put makeup on another person was laughable.
Luckily, my school (Paul Mitchell) and my instructor (an amazingly patient woman) had a system to teach even the most novice makeup users how to do at least the basics. So today’s blog is about tossing out the notion that you’re not good at makeup, that it’s only for YouTubers or Influencers, that those looks never come out the same on your face, and myth-busting brushes versus your fingers when it comes to applying it. Not in that order, but we will get to all of those things and more!
“Life isn’t perfect, but your makeup can be.”
Hopefully, by the time you finish reading this, you’ll feel more confident about your makeup skills and, if you want, how to level them up without looking wild. The most important thing to remember is to take note of what resonates with you throughout this blog, and of what aspects you want to look more into. Ready?
The first thing we need to throw out today is the notion that other people are “better than you” or “you could never do that”, it’s not about being a makeup artist, it’s about knowing what features you want to enhance or minimize and how to use makeup to help with that.
And comparing yourself to other people who have been practicing it for way longer than you and at a different level is like comparing yourself to an Olympic athlete. You’re not training for a marathon, you’re just trying to be able to run that crosswalk without huffing after, big diff.
Will you be a makeup artist after reading this blog? No. Will you know a little more about some tricks makeup artists use and which ones to apply to you? Hopefully.
With that said, my next piece of advice is about who you take your advice from. If you don’t plan on wearing a face full of makeup every day, then why would you try a makeup video from someone wearing a pound of makeup? Look for people who have the look you want, maybe it’s just your friend who always has well-groomed eyebrows. They don’t do much else but they’ve got that on lock, ask them about what they do! Don’t listen to your club makeup-wearing friend whose makeup ranges from too much to way too much.
As we dive into the tips and tricks I learned in school and out in the field, I also want to encourage you to find more makeup gurus that speak to you, to what kind of looks you want to create for yourself. One of my absolute favorite makeup artists who creates looks seen on the runway, makes her own products, and teaches the skillzz is Bobbi Brown. She is an amazing MUA and her belief that all women are beautiful, but a little lipstick won’t hurt is a mantra I live by. Definitely check her out if you are not familiar with her or her work.
“Beauty isn’t about looking perfect. It’s about celebrating your individuality.”
So remember, as we dive deeper into makeup in this blog, its purpose is to enhance your beauty, not cover it up or make it something it’s not. Embrace the wonders that mascara and a well-groomed brow can do for your day, speaking from one who knows, I don’t care if anyone notices, I feel more confidently me when I see strong brows above my glasses!
As we are throwing things out the window, you can also toss this notion that you don’t know enough about makeup tools and the basics of makeup. Truth is, you don’t need to know a whole lot about makeup, just what your face could benefit from. For example, knowing your face shape lets you know where to contour (bronzer) or highlight. Knowing your eye shape can help you figure out where to create a crease on a lid that lacks one. Remember, it’s about enhancing what you want, not recreating your face.
So even though this blog isn’t going to make you a makeup artist, you can know some of the basic terms and tricks that they use. First, let’s begin with understanding what the face shapes are and hopefully what yours is!
Face Shape
Your face shape really just helps you understand how to balance it. I’m not going to go into depth on this here, but maybe in a future blog. Below I did link a few pins from my Pinterest that explain it more. Important note - remember that contour is using a shade 2-3x darker than your foundation color to create shadow and depth as well as diminish, and a highlight is using 2-3x shades lighter than your foundation to enhance or draw attention to an area of your face. They can be powder or liquid, doesn’t matter, just make sure you stick to the rule powder-on-powder and powder-over-liquid but never liquid-on-powder.
Oval Shape - The picture-perfect face shape, this is the goal all other shapes are trying to achieve. Balanced segments from the hairline to eyebrow, below eyebrow to below nose, and below the nose to the chin.
Heart Shape - Think Reese Witherspoon. With a broader forehead tapering down to the temple area, a highlight will usually happen there where contour will be used on the forehead to diminish width. Highlight on the chin and above jawline below cheekbone help to add balance.
Triangle Shape - Flip the heart upside-down and you’ve got a triangle shape. With a heavier jaw, contouring is needed there to soften width. Strong brows can also add more balance. Focus is usually drawn to the upper part of the face (eyes instead of lips) to enhance and draw the eye.
Rectangle Shape - A longer more narrow face, think Sarah Jessica Parker. Soften and shorten long, harsh lines with contour, highlight to draw attention to widening the face. Remember the idea is balance, so minimize what’s too long with bronzer and accentuate where needed with highlight.
Square Shape - A square face shape has the boxiness of the triangle face jawline, but there is a straight line from the chin to the temple and all the way up to the forehead. Contour will be used to soften the harsh edges on the perimeter and create the oval face shape. This can also be called a “round face”.
Diamond Shape - Rhianna’s face shape, as well as my own, this shape has a wider temple and a narrower forehead and chin. Contour the forehead and cheeks, highlight the center of the chin, and across the forehead to give width. Remember the plan is to always get closer to the oval face shape, or a more balanced face.
If you read that and are still really confused, check out THIS PIN from my Makeup Board on Pinterest that shows face shapes and where to contour, or THIS PIN here that talks more about them but uses different names like “long” instead of “rectangle”, and “round” which can be “square”, while their “square” is this blogs “triangle”. Hope that makes sense!
When it comes to eye shape, there is a lot and I don’t think reading it all is the best way to learn it. I always found when teaching eye shape at Paul Mitchell that visuals were the best. For the perfect smokey eye on any eye shape check out THIS PIN. I could go on about lip shape, corrective makeup, and more, but instead of diving down that rabbit hole right now, let’s learn about the tools of the trade.
Remember earlier when I mentioned using brushes instead of your fingertips? There is a time and a place when your finger is the best makeup tool, but for the most part, there are actual tools that are better. For starters, your hands have oils on them, as well as dirt and debris, which then gets transferred to your face. So rubbing foundation in is actually rubbing junk and makeup into your precious face.
Brushes allow you to have more control, reduce debris especially if you clean your brushes regularly, and give a better application of your makeup. A quick note on cleaning brushes before explaining which is what- just use shampoo and water. In a damp hand, squeeze a dime-sized amount of shampoo in your hand, and in circular motions, swirl your damp makeup brush into the palm of your hand. Rinse the brush under water gently pressing the excess soap and debris out of the brush. Do this until the water runs clear.
The Tools
Foundation Brush: Usually looks like a large paintbrush with firm, smooth bristles. Similar to a paintbrush, you load up the brush with the foundation “warming it” or working the brush back and forth in the product on a makeup pallet or your hand helping to make the application smoother. After warming your foundation, apply it to the skin with the brush almost flat against the face. Make sure not to pull or drag the skin.
Concealer Brush: A smaller version of the Foundation Brush, this brush is specifically for targeted concealing blemishes or smaller areas of irregularity on the skin. Similar to the foundation brush, use this flat against the skin with light dabbing and swiping motions. Again, just make sure you don’t drag or pull the skin.
Mascara Spoolie/Wand: These typically come with your mascara, but you can save it after the mascara is done, clean it and use it to brush your eyebrows or separate eyelashes. This also works great for cleaning false lashes, more on that later.
Angle Brush (Brows/Eye Liner): This brush has firm bristles with an angled slant to it. Load it up with either powder or liquid and press firmly into your lash line. Trying to wipe with this brush won’t work, pressing is best for liner whereas short, brisk motions mimicking hair is best for filling in your eyebrow.
Eye Shadow Brush: A fluffier brush than the previous ones, this brush is meant for applying powder eye shadow. Don’t use it to blend colors, just apply them, there’s a different brush for that! Load up eyeshadow color on your brush, and press or pat into the lid of the eye.
Smudge Brush: Usually looks like a dome-shaped sponge, this is specifically meant for smudging eyeliner. Just use light to medium pressure trying to not drag the skin.
Blending Brush: Much fluffier than a smudge brush, made of bristles but still having a more rounded shape, this is your go-to for blending eye shadow colors smoothly together, or buffing one out to create a smokey eye. When blending you want to use upward, outward circular motions.
Blush Brush: With bristles that are longer and fuller than the blending brush but have a similar shape and design, you don’t need to put much product on this brush to see results.
Powder Brush: This brush can either be big and fluffy, or firm and round like a kabuki brush. You would load up this brush and lightly dust your face after applying the foundation. Remember, apply powder on top of the liquid to set it, but never apply the liquid on top of powder. Tap your powder brush on your wrist to remove excess product before application.
Lip Brush (Liner): A short bristled angled brush this is typically used for either lip liner pencils (blending/fading into lip) or with lipstick (dab brush into lipstick and apply to lip line).
Lip Brush (Color): A small, flat rounded brush, is used to paint lip color onto lips. Can be used with lipstick, or to spread lip color out.
Now that you know which tools are for what, time to decide which ones are important for you to have in your kit. Again for my visual learners, check out THIS PIN that shows what all these brushes look like.
Ok, so that was a lot, but that doesn’t even begin to scratch the tip of the YouTube makeup video iceberg. Whether it's knowing which tricks you should be using every day versus which ones to pull out for that surprise cocktail hour with a hot date, there’s a reason and a season for all those wild makeup tips.
Ever scroll through bridal makeup photos just to get inspiration? I do! The goal of bridal makeup is to make the skin absolutely flawless and draw attention to the bride’s best features, does that last part sound familiar? Surprisingly, bridal makeup is a great place to look for tutorials and tricks on how to contour where needed and enhance all the beauty that is you.
“Bridal makeup should appear natural-looking, with well-groomed eyebrows and natural lashes too.”
Like the quote above says, even on the most important day when makeup artists are paid for handsomely, the idea is to still make it look natural, groomed, and polished. It’s not supposed to be war paint, but a beauty enhancer. Real beauty comes from within, that inner glow that makeup can’t create.
It can be daunting taking on doing your makeup, so I find that breaking it up can be really helpful. For example, if you’re going out and want to put on a face of makeup, pick one thing to do, like a smokey eye or a popping red lip, and keep everything else groomed but natural. You can also stick to this method for learning makeup.
Let’s start with one thing that doesn’t require too much work to look amazing, eyebrows. Here’s are a few quick tips for caring for your eyebrows:
Eyebrows 101:
Clean off an old mascara wand and tada! The perfect eyebrow brush! Use it to groom your brows into place, or if you are a savvy eyebrow shaper, to help you when trimming long hairs.
Unruly hairs? Use clear mascara to keep them in place all day long.
You can use eye shadow and an angled brush, eyebrow pencils, eyebrow wax, or gel to fill in your brows, just remember to always brush your eyebrow after filling it in with color.
If you look at the picture to the right, you’ll see a simple trick used by MUA’s when filling in a brow. If your eyebrow doesn't start where it should (mine doesn’t) then you would start filling in your brow there. A trick to this is hold a brush against the face to find the start of your brow and mark it with your brow pencil, then find the end of the brow and make a mark. Now you know where your brow should start and end and can fill in accordingly.
Strong brows are one of my favorite makeup weapons to wield, I believe that they truly do set the tone for the face. Just look up “bad eyebrows” online and you’ll see what I mean!
Just to recap, we’ve discussed face shapes and I gave you links to learn more about eye shape and contouring your face to achieve the oval shape. We went through the brushes used and you know why you want to use brushes and how to use them, as well as understanding that a full face of makeup doesn’t always mean a full lip, smokey eye, blush, highlight + contour, and Joan Crawford brows. It’s about enhancing your natural beauty.
In this section, I want to share some makeup tips that have served me well over the years, both as an MUA and as a makeup wearer. I picked most of these up teaching at Beauty School and learning for my classes and from them. Many talented MUA’s were my students and I learned so much from them! Here are a few:
Eri’s Quick Makeup Tips:
To keep lip color on all day long, try this trick: you’ll need a couple of tissue, some setting powder or cornstarch, a big fluffy brush, a lip brush, and your desired lip color. Apply lip liner first and then fill in with your lip color. Then hold the tissue over your lips, dip the fluff brush into the powder and pat it over the top of the tissue onto your lips, you might see powder on your lips when you take the tissue away, that is normal. Apply lip color again, and follow with the same powder and tissue process, repeat this whole process 3-5 more times: lip color + tissue and powder + blot lips + lip color + tissue and powder… you get the idea. Finish with a final coat of lip color and blot with a clean tissue. Your lipstick WILL NOT COME OFF FOR HOURS! Actually, you’ll probably need to use a cream cleanser or coconut oil on a cotton ball to get this color off.
Want to make a quick smokey eye? You’ll need two blending brushes and two colors, one light and one dark preferably in the same color family, like a charcoal grey and frosty white, or sandy beige and a chocolaty brown. Apply your darker color first in a C shape on the outer part of your eyelid making sure to not get color below the eye, place the lighter color on the inner part of your eye, and then with inward circular motions, blend the lighter color into the darker color.
The Staples: good brushes, powder foundation (I use Arbonne and have for years!), bronzer (again, Arbonne) a good mascara (I like Fenty right now), and an eye shadow palette of nude colors as these can be used for everything from filling in your eyebrows to eye shadow or even lip color!
When it comes to makeup, it really is about enhancing your beauty, and to even out your skin tone a little. You don’t need globs of makeup to be beautiful, just an awareness of what you like about YOU and enhancing that. So before you go buying all these makeup brushes and products, sit down and look yourself in the mirror, and choose what you’d like to draw attention to, and what needs some simple adjustments. Then, get what’s needed.
For example, I have a crooked nose, it veers slightly off to the right, so I put a little bronzer on the right side of my noes to contour, or diminish the crooked side. You’d never notice, but I do! Another thing I correct is my eye shape. I generally wear a cat eyeliner or a wedge liner (that doesn’t have the catlike tail but an abrupt edge) almost daily. This is because my eyes slightly droop, giving me a downturn expression, or sleepy face. This isn’t shaming my face or me saying these parts are ugly, they are beautiful and even better when slight tweaks bring out their best parts. So what does a day-to-day makeup routine look like?
A Simple Makeup Routine:
Always start with clean, fresh skin.
Apply a dime-size amount of makeup primer from your t-zone out in outward sweeping motions. Fingertips can be used for this.
Using either clean hands/fingertips for liquid or a foundation brush appropriate to your foundation (if it’s powder or liquid, that will affect which brush you use) lightly apply your foundation. If you have any blemishes, use your foundation and gently press more product onto that area.
If you have blush, dust some on your cheeks not going any further in than your pupil, and not below your cheekbone. Bronzer will go in areas of “hollows” or where there is a definition in one’s bone structure. It’s a lot easier than I am making it sound! Go back up to where I wrote about Face Shapes and there is a pin I linked that explains it for each face.
Groom eyebrows, fill in any gaps with either powder or pencil
Mascara
A little color to your lips, if you want.
Simple makeup is nice, but there are times when we want to pump up the volume! A girl’s night out, holiday party, date night, Halloween, the list is pretty long for times when some extra makeup skills could come in handy.
Playing around with makeup is honestly how a lot of makeup artists started. You’ve got to see what works, what doesn’t work, which makeup brands you like, and practice for things like applying lashes which can take some time to master.
Remember, I was below a novice when I started beauty school, so skill wasn’t something I had. We learned how to apply makeup to paper, and would print out tons of paper blank faces and doll them up. This helped a lot! I made a lot of mistakes before I finally got it right!
If you wanted to try this trick, do it! It’s surprisingly helpful, minus foundation color matching as the paper is, well paper. I like to practice eye shadow and liner styles on paper, and then try them on my own face.
Here are some handy skills you can practice when they aren’t needed so when you do need to pull them out of your bag, you already have plenty of trial and error.
Lashes: This is the most requested thing at a beauty school next to a brow wax. We would put so many lashes on girls for like $15 and none of us started off good at it! Here are my tips for applying lashes:
Use slanted tweezers to hold the lash and help apply them to your lash line
Let the glue get sticky, so squeeze a glob out onto like a piece of scratch paper or the back of your hand, holding your lash strip with your tweezers, glide it across the glob getting glue on the strip, count to 30, and then go to apply it to your lash line.
Use the back end of your tweezers to hold the inner corner of the lash down, this pops up so easily! Wait for a few seconds, and it should stay in place!
You can reuse lashes! Just clean them. Gently pull the old glue off the back, brush them with a clean spoolie (mascara wand), and store in a hard case container so they don’t get damaged.
Halloween Makeup: Could you use your regular makeup when doing something like a deer face? Sure. Would it be easier with face paint? Yes.
When it comes to special effects or “face painting” style makeup, like Halloween costumes, it’s best to use high impact color or a type of makeup called cake makeup. It’s thick, heavy face paint but a tiny bit can really perform. Like for this deer makeup I did quickly for a friend, I used “clown white” from Ben Nye, a makeup used for the stage/theater.
MAC is another great makeup brand for high-impact color. If you’re not sure where to find theatrical makeup, get some MAC!
The colors you’ll always want on hand: White, Black, Red, Yellow, and Blue. You can make any color from that combination.
Have different brushes you use for this makeup, otherwise you’ll really want to clean your brushes after creating some Halloween looks!
I have had a lot of fun over the years creating Halloween Makeup looks. Check out my favorite one HERE from a marionette makeup look I did. It was a little too realistic and creeped out a friend of mine!
On another note, I am going to take this time to go back to a previous tip that is visible in the photo above. Remember when I said I have a diamond face shape? If you look at the picture you’ll see the contour (bronzer) I use on my forehead to diminish the pointy part.
I fixed that with bangs and no longer have to powder my forehead, whew! But like I’ve mentioned this whole blog, it’s all about the little details and small makeup tips that make the biggest impact. You can almost see my eyeliner in this picture, a staple in my makeup routine!
There is so much when it comes to makeup, and even after writing this very long blog, I realize now that I didn’t even scratch the surface! I am definitely going to have to throw out some more blogs on it, and maybe a few IG posts… Check out my Pinterest for loads of makeup ideas and inspiration, I am always adding new posts to it.
Whatever your makeup level is, I hope you got something new and useful out of this blog. As always, be good to your skin and even better to your whole self!
xx eri