Make Up Tip: Make Your Face Look Slimmer

The secret to making your face look thinner with makeup is contouring, enhancing the angles in your face. Here are a couple easy tips for those who have a round face and want to make it look slimmer.

*While applying blush smile and apply it to the front of your cheeks. This will make your face look thinner.

* Contour cheeks by applying pale brown face powder or bronzer (no shimmer!) in the hollows of your cheeks. Try making a fish face to better see where to apply. This trick will create a light shadow effect that will bring out your cheek bones and make your face look slimmer.

* Another trick I came accross online is to use 2 (or even 3) shades of blush to contour your cheeks. One light shade is applied in circular motions on the apples of your cheeks and the deeper shade is applied just below the cheekbones. Blend well! I have not tried this trick yet, so if you have, please let me know your impressions and opinions in comments to this post.


In this photo I used bronzer to accentuate the cheekbones. I also applied shimmery highlighter at the top of cheek apples. Actually now that I look at this photo I am thinking that it was a bit too much shimmer :-)

Check out tip on how to use makeup to look younger

Make Up Tip: Get Full Sensuous Lips

Here are a couple easy tips on how to get your lips to look fuller
* apply highlighter or balm into a bow of your upper lip and into the corners of the mouth. This will make your lips stand out and look fuller
* a little secret, if you have thin lips you may prefer to use a pencil with a bit dull tip to line them. Hard thin edges make lips look smaller. Or just make sure to blend your lip liner.
* apply lipliner a bit outside of the natural lip line. Be very careful here, a bit too far and it will look unnatural. You don’t want to look like a drag queen, right?
* want a full pout - avoid matte lipstick that will only make your lips look smaller. Stick with shimmer and gloss.
* to create an illusion of a full mouth after applying lipstick add a touch of lighter shade lipstick or gloss in the middle of the lower lip. You may leave it at this but I add just a tiny touch of the same color in the middle of the upper one as well.

Make Up Tip: Fix Mistakes Fast

Photo from www.flickr.com by jan1993
Your hand slipped while working on a smoky eye? Fix your mistake fast: dip a cotton swab in an oil-free moisturizer, dab the soft tip on the back of your hand until it feels almost dry. Now you can wipe away your mistakes and not ruin the rest of your makeup.

Looking For Holiday Makeup Inspiration

This year I didn’t have time to blog about all the holiday make up collections out there. And they are as always lovely!
Today I was looking through this year’s collections searching for some inspiration for my holiday makeup. Here are some looks that attracted my attention…






I really like Dior’s look in light purple! I have to confess, I just love all the shades of purple. I have quite a collection of them from various brands. However in terms of Christmas and New Years I still gravitate to red and gold as the colors of choice for the holiday evening look. Funny but even my Christmas tree is decorated in red and gold! So I guess that’s why my favorites would be Estee Lauder’s Ultimate Red and Clarins’ Palazzo D’Oro.

Makeup Tip: Give Your Eyes an Immediate Lift – 3 Quick and Easy Tricks

How to get more open bright younger looking eyes with the help of makeup? If you don’t know yet these tricks, you will be surprised how easy it is!

Arch! Create an arch by shaping and combing up your brows. Brow’s importance in defining the eye area is often underestimated. I tend to ignore my brows so often – big mistake! By shaping and creating a nice arch, you will visually lift up the whole eye area and get a younger look. Determine a brow shape that works for you using the three point technique (see a very short video below). Pluck your eye brows, brush them up and fix with eye brow gel. You can also use some hair spray on an eye brow brush to brush brows up.

Highlight! Create a highlight. Apply some light shadow or highlighter right under the brow starting from the arch and toward the outer edge. Blend well. This will give immediate lifting effect.

Curl! Curl your lashes – twice! First try to get as close to the lash line as possible then curl again in the middle. As a result your eyes will look more open and bigger.

Makeup Tip: Brighter, Bigger Eyes

Here are a couple easy tips on how to brighten up your eyes and make them look bigger.

Apply concealer on the side of your nose by the inner corner of the eye to cover up darkness. Use concealer or highlighter
like YSL Touche Eclat
on your dark circles as well but keep to the inner corner-mid eye area to avoid exaggerating of fine lines. This will illuminate the eye area.

Apply highlighter or light (silver, white, light gold, light beige) shadow in the inner corner of the eye on upper eyelid and just a touch on the lower eyelids.

Offset redness and open up your eyes by lining inner eye rims with a light nude eye pencil. I use Shiseido The Makeup Corrector Pencil It makes such a huge difference, trust me!

Curl your lashes and finish with a black mascara. When applying focus on the middle of your upper and lower eye lashes. This way your eyes will look much bigger.

More makeup tricks:
Anti-Aging Makeup Tips

Makeup Tip: Foundation Exaggerates your Fine Lines?

Instead of creating and even the tone of your skin, some foundation can actually emphasize fine lines by sinking the line creases, especially when you smile, speak or frown.

To solve this problem, choose moisturizing and illuminating liquid foundations. There are also special anti-aging foundations available that help to smooth and firm skin. Such products contain silicones or special waxes that “fill in” lines and wrinkles and just smooth them out. Check out Helen Rubinstein Face Sculptor Make-up, Chanel Lift Lumiere Firming and Smoothing Liquid Makeup and Instant Smooth Foundation by Clarins

You may also want to use silicone based makeup primers under your foundation such as, Top Secrets by YSL, Smashbox Photo Finish Primer, Sephora make up primer, Bare Escentuals bareVitamins Prime Time

Another way to minimize appearance of fine is to apply a wrinkle filler before you apply your foundation. Check out Good Skin Labs Tri-Aktiline Instant Deep Wrinkle Filler, Olay Wrinkle Fill and Seal and Dior Capture R 60/80 Filler

Makeup Tip: No More Cakey Powder!

Foundation and powder are meant to conspicuously hide imperfections and not bring them out. That’s why cakey uneven looking powder or foundation is such an annoyance!

If powder or liquid foundation looks cakey on your skin, it may not be just the fault of a product you are using. One of the most common reasons for cakey looking powder is dry skin. When skin is dry, dehydrated or you have not exfoliated recently and there is a layer of dead skin cells on top, skin has rough uneven surface. This causes foundation to catch on dry dead cells and look cakey. First of, exfoliate your skin and then apply a moisturizer selected according to your skin type. Let moisturizer absorb. Now try applying foundation or powder again! You may also want to set your powder with a spritz of water. It will look more natural.
Try it and you’ll see the difference!

Related Posts:
Beauty Review: Double Wear Makeup by Estee Lauder
Makeup Tip: Defining Eye Brows

Other Makeup Articles:
Anti-Aging Makeup
Bare Escentuals Makeup

Makeup Tip: Defining Eyebrows

Just came across an easy tip from Bobbi Brown for natural looking defined eyebrows.

Photo by Julianne.Hide at flickr.com
Choose a shade matching your natural brow color. Brush your brows down, this way you will see the line to fill in. Fill in white spaces using selected color with a brow brush/pencil. Blend. Now just brush your brows upwards again and the correction line won’t be noticeable.

Check out these products for shaping and defining eyebrows.

I'm using Lancome Sourcils Design Superfine Automatic Brow Pencil. Like it alot! What's your favorite?

Related Posts:
Makeup Trends Spring 2009 - Complexion
Makeup Trends Spring 2009 - Lips
Makeup Trends Spring 2009 - Eyes


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