Have you ever taken a picture with the flash on at a party where you wanted to try your new setting powder, and looked back at the picture only to see your face with splotches of white? Well, I've been there, and ALL of the professional pictures were taken with flash and uploaded to a family Dropbox. Over my few years of experience with makeup, here's a few tips and tricks to help you avoid makeup disasters:
1. Finding The Right Foundation Shade
This has always been a struggle for me, and to be completely honest, it still is. My hack is to let a professional at a beauty store, such as Sephora, and let them do a foundation match. The procedure is simple: they take a device and put it on three locations- the forehead, chin, and neck- and it take digital pictures to help the employee match your color. I found out that I was applying a foundation that was three shades darker than my actual skin tone before, and this definitely helped me find my accurate shade.
2. Winged Eyeliner
Winging my eyeliner has forever been a struggle for me, and I still haven't mastered it. Out of the many techniques, the most helpful one is to take a card and place it at whatever angle you want your wing. I usually prefer to follow my lower lashline and make a wing that is not angled too high. After I attempt to successfully wing my first eyeliner, my next problem appears: matching the wing on my other eye. For my other eye, which is normally my left eye, I like to start from the outside and work my way in. I like to use a pencil liner to help me match my wings and since the pencil marks are light, it is easy to wipe off. Once I reach my desired shape, I fill it in with my liquid eyeliner.
3. Mascara on Anything But Your Eyelashes
Have you ever put on a fresh coat of mascara and sneezed right after? This pet peeve of mine affects me on a day-to-day basis. There isn't really a way you can avoid this, but my only advice is to let your eyelashes dry for 5-10 seconds after applying mascara before opening them.
4. Setting Powder
My way of finding out if a setting powder really works is if it passes the flash test. The flash test is when you take a picture with flash on after applying the powder on, and the way a powder passes is if it helps cover your dark circles, not make your skin look white and patchy.
5. Finally, Finding Lipstick On Your Teeth
For my elementary school dance recitals, lipstick was one of the requirements of stage makeup. My mother taught me this beauty trick when i was younger. She would ask me to take my index finger and put it in my mouth, and then pull it out, which usually resulted in a lipstick ring around the base of the finger. This trick may seem strange but it actually works. It prevents your teeth from getting lipstick on it.