what i learned from the european makeup artists

For both the Dublin and the London premieres, a hair and makeup stylist came to my room to make me look my prettiest before the red carpet.  Even though I rarely do the carpet with The Gorilla, I still want to look nice.

Whenever I get myself groomed, I always ask a ton of questions.  Since we’re all tasked with getting ready by ourselves every day, I love hearing what the pros do.  If you pick up just one tip every time you get your hair or makeup or nails done, think how much you’ll know!

Here’s the most interesting tidbits I took away from the lovely Irish and British women:

• Mix your primer with your foundation.  Instead of putting on one layer of primer, then applying foundation over it, she mixed the primer in with the liquid Clarins foundation right there on her hand before she applied it to my face using a foundation brush and sponge.  At the end of the night (and it was a long night), my makeup still looked great.

• One makeup artist loved Clarins, the other used Clinique.  I was surprised by those two choices!

• When using a light-reflecting concealer (such as YSL Touche Eclat, which I’ve owned but never loved) only dab it on the dark parts, not all over the eye.  Otherwise, because of it’s reflecting pigment, you’re just changing the color of the overall eye area, but there are still dark and light parts.  If you only apply on the dark areas, you’ll be happier with the results. 

• One of them used lipstick for blush.  I’d heard of this in the magazines, but couldn’t really imagine doing it.  She thought that a) this leaves less you have to carry with you when traveling and b) if you use the same color on your lips it can be really flattering.  I will say that she had a very light hand and blend, blend, blended it.  I can see how this will work in a pinch, but for my money it’s faster and easier just to use traditional blush.

• The other artist didn’t even use blush.  She shaded the apples of my sheeks with darker, sort or bronze-y foundation.  She said that as long as you use a shade or two darker foundation on your cheeks and above, while keeping a light foundation for everything under, you get the same effect as blush but it looks more natural that a pink flush.  She was right, and I feel like the shading made my round face look more angular than blush does.

• Both of them made me less afraid of eyeliner!  I admit it, I’m a total scared-y cat when it comes to eyeliner.  I’m scared to do it, then when I do I think it looks weird.  I never, ever wear eyeliner underneath my eyes because I always see it smudging terribly on other people and I also think it can look a little…harsh.  But for both nights, when I looked in the mirror or at the pictures I thought the eyeliner looked pretty.  It was not my normal look.  Even The Gorilla was digging the cat eyes in Dublin and made numerous remarks about how different it made me look.  (We’re going with the assumption that it was a good thing, because I don’t entertain anything else.)

Now, the eyeliner did smudge a bit in London, but not much.  And it didn’t smudge hardly at all in Dublin.  I didn’t get the exact trick why, but I noticed that their line - made with a dull lip pencil or with eye shadow and a small brush - were both significantly thicker than I would have made them.  On the occasions that I’ve tried, I always did a skinny type line (going for emphasis and because I didn’t want my eyes to look small) but the opposite is actually true.  When the line is just a little thicker, the errors aren’t so noticeable.  This is all, of course, talking about a night eye.  I still don’t see myself using loads of eyeliner for the daytime.  To me, that just says, “Who’s hitting happy hour?”

So, after these two nights, I'm definitely going to try the primer/foundation trick and force myself to be less afraid of eyeliner.  What have you been doing with your makeup lately?  Share your latest makeup thoughts in the comments.

Photo by epicharmus