With Instagrammers, beauty bloggers and YouTube gurus slaying the makeup game and being more than generous with product recommendations, application tricks and tips on new trends, there is no wonder the average person is easily susceptible to make a few mistakes. While there is a lot to learn from these talented makeup artists and enthusiasts, a person can only teach so much through a screen. Here are a few things you may have learned on your beauty journey that you may have gotten wrong along the way!
1. Using bronzer as contour
A trend that hit the beauty scene within the last couple of years is contouring. While makeup artists and beauty enthusiasts have been using this trick for decades, Instagram and YouTube has made this special little step accessible to the average person. While contouring can do wonders, emphasizing and shaping a person’s face in incredible ways, a huge mistake people make is using their already owned bronzer, a warm-toned powder that sometimes includes shimmer, as their contouring product. While it can depend on your skin tone and how warm your bronzer is, as a general rule, bronzers do not replicate the same result as contouring powders. Contouring products should be cool toned and matte to replicate the natural shadows of your face.
2. Using concealer that is too light for your skin
Other than a couple adorable children and a few questionable Instagram photos, Kim Kardashian has also brought us a few beauty fads. Along with extremely nude lips and eating her placenta in the name of beauty, Kim also made having noticeably light under eyes a trend that has stuck around for a few years now. While this trick not only lifts the eye but brightens the face, many people make the mistake of using the same light concealer meant for under their eyes all over their face. Covering active acne or scaring with light concealer doesn’t cover it; it highlights it. If you enjoy using a lighter concealer for under your eyes be sure to invest in another concealer that matches your skin tone perfectly for the rest of you face!
3. Filling in your brows
Bold brows are in and I couldn’t be more thrilled about it (a shout out to Cara Delavigne and Brooke Shields for giving us brow-spiration). For the average person, this is sometimes achieved by using dark brow products and a heavy hand. In theory, this makes sense -- bold brows require intense products, right? However, in order to achieve these luscious brows in a natural appearing fashion, you don’t have to use dark products or much of it! When filling in your brows, unless they are naturally transparently blonde, using a light to medium matte powder and a light hand does the trick. Using a thin angled brush and adding light strokes of product to the bottom of the brow replicates real hairs and mimics your natural shape. To create naturally bold brows, it is crucial to create an ombre effect by leaving the front of your brows with very little product, going darker as you get the arch. May this trend forever be in fashion.
4. Not moisturizing your skin if you have oily skin
Being a fellow oily-skinned gal, for a long time I believed that adding moisture, let alone oil, sounded like an oil slick waiting to happen. However, through more research I discovered that neglecting this aspect of my beauty regiment only added to the problem! In reality, oily skin requires extra moisture in order to trick the skin into thinking it does not need to produce more oil! In fact, when oily people’s skin gets too dry, their pores release even more oil to make up for it. Bottom line: oily, dry or combo moisturize, moisturize, moisturize.
5. Applying lip liner only to the edges of your lips
While it makes sense that people would take the name seriously and line only the outskirts of their lips, a not only more natural application technique but long-lasting one requires applying lip liner to the entirety of the lip. Let’s be better than the 90s.
6. Pumping your mascara wand into an empty mascara tube
While it is tempting to shove your mascara wand into its empty tube a few times to try to dig out product, all you are really doing is shoving whatever mascara that is left farther down into the tube. Instead, use circular motions to scrape product from the side of the tube. Also, try putting in a few drops of contact solution, eye drops or olive oil to re-wet the formula, making your old, dry mascara like new again!
7. Following beauty instructions step by step
The world of social media in incredible in helping the average person with their beauty needs. Be it Pinterest, Instagram or YouTube, there is a step by step guide for almost any makeup look you want to accomplish. This saving grace is also a recipe for disaster. While it is nice to gain ideas and techniques to achieve a certain look, not every detail of a makeup tutorial will work for every person. Why? Because we all have different skin textures, face shapes and skin tones. Mimicking a makeup look exactly, no matter how beautiful it is on the person you are watching, will not look exactly like that on you. Don’t be afraid to other people’s expertise and creativity as inspiration rather than an exact replication!
