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How to Play Up Your Natural Beauty - Tips & Tricks
Makeup & Beauty Tips on How to Play Up Your Natural Beauty
Share your best tips and tricks for play up your natural beauty! Feel free to share your experiences, how you mastered techniques, or what you struggle with.
My Tips
- Natural beauty to me always makes me think of skin, so I think base products can often do the most for enhancing the canvas by evening out the color, hiding any slight imperfections from acne (or post-acne) and the like, but one that is light to medium coverage still lets the natural skin come through. Â I like a buildable foundation, as I can use it lightly all-over and then use more moderate coverage just in the areas I need it.
- Finishing powders do a lot to add life to skin that can be tired or dull without making it look really shimmery or highlighted, and they’re very much my secret weapon to faking beautiful skin.
- I like to pick one or two features and then bring them out, like if you have really lovely eyes, then bringing out their shape by defining or contouring can be a great thing to do. Â If you have great cheek bones, lightly highlighting and contouring can really make them pop.
Hi Christine, which are your favorite finish powders? I need a new one but I’m really struggling to find it. Thanks!
I like Guerlain and Hourglass 🙂
I also agree that the base is the most important one. I think a nice trick is to not go overboard with the coverage and to use a sheer foundation and conceal where needed.
Usually a slightly glossy lipstick in a neutral pink shade is flattering on most women.
Tight lining is also a helpful trick to play the no make up make up look. And please ladies be easy on the blush and the eyebrow fillers!
Completely agree Christine. I’m obsessed with base products so believe everyone needs to find a really good foundation for their skin type and colour. I think foundation looks best if not applied in a mask like application. I find colour correctors, and highlighting and contouring to my best secret weapons. These tools allow me to keep my foundation minimal. I use peach corrector to disguise heavy under eye discolouration and green to take the edge off redness in my cheeks, chin and nose as I have a bit of rosacea happening with aging skin. Then I skim my foundation application in areas only as needed and the correctors do a great job of laying down just enough colour fix that I do not require a ton of foundation product to disguise these flaws.. MUD corrector palette is so great IMO. Redness is one of those aggravating things that never seems to cover properly with foundation. My rudolph nose always eventually shines through unless I use a bit of corrector.
Just thought of a little trick I use to create a really nice subtle cheek: I frequently use a beauty blender sponge for corrector and foundation application. It allows for a really light touch with both if you do not apply a load of pressure to the sponge or overload the sponge. I put the sponge aside after I am done my base and then I apply my blush product in a circular fashion starting at the very point where I want the most colour deposited (I like to start at the highest point of my cheekbone, you can feel that point with your fingertips if your face isn’t angular and your cheekbones are not obvious) and then diffusing outwards with my brush in circular fashion. After blending out with brush, I super lightly pounce the very edges of the blush application zone with whatever is left on my beauty blender and it does a fantastic job of diffusing the cheek even further. Make sure your sponge isn’t overloaded with base product, just whatever is left after blending out your foundation. Add a touch of finishing powder (I like hourglass Mood Light) or highlighting powder to the tops of the cheekbones to create more dimension et voila. I like muted cheek colours best on my skin and my latest blush love affair is Estee Lauder Pure Colour blush in Alluring Rose. This blush is very pigmented with a satin almost matte looking finish so a little goes a looong way.
Great question. Look forward to reading the tips.
Well-defined eyebrows can really enhance and change the look of the face. Being an Indian, I go for threading and make sure, I always have shapely eyebrows. I also agree with Christine on highlighting one feature and for me its always the eyes. I can go bare face but I never go out without eyeliner/kohl. Without it, I look dead!
I think all Indian women can relate to the kohl… I do thread when I’m in India because all the women at the salons know how to do it properly but I’m a bit afraid to have it done abroad so I just let it grow wild. :/
Choosing make-up hues to which the face your individual face naturally expresses colour. Blue eyeshadow and violet glittered lipgloss, even applied modestly, isn’t “natural”, but taking cues from the natural tone and shading of your eyelid and then simply enhancing it is. I love how NARS portobello duo looks on light and med skin women.
Everyone has a different natural lip hue so playing of that is key, if going for the nude look 99% of the times you match the colour of your gums for the perfect shade.
Definitely the base as Christine said! Also the eyes, not with eyeshadow though maybe a light wash of an eyeopening shadow but as someone said tightlining is good just like nude liner on the waterline. Things that make you look awake and glowing are excellent to look natural IMO!
I agree that having the best skin is so important. Also agree with using colors that enhance one’s own coloring, especially as one gets older, and natural looking brows. If you have over plucked, get some of that hair regrowth stuff at the drugstore (used to be prescription for balding men, but it isn’t anymore) and dip a Q-tip in it and swab your brows. I find that if my eyes are red from allergies or whatever, using a flesh colored pencil on the inner lower rims is a real pick me up. I don’t do this every day, just when my eyes look bleary. I just bought the Vanilla Kohl pencil from Burberry. It goes on easily and is a perfect consistency and color. Use a flesh tone, not white, it’s too unnatural. I hate mascara, it doesn’t look natural on anyone. Sticky, clumpy glued together lashes look awful and make a woman look “hard” so I go without. Lots of women who wear black mascara should switch to brown for a softer look, unless of course if your hair and lashes are naturally black, then it is natural for you.
I agree totally about mascara. It really bothers me when people generalise and say “no woman would go out of the house without mascara on”. I already have black lashes anyway, so why do I need mascara? It doesn’t natural, in my opinion. I do apply some clear mascara to separate my lashes sometimes, or to clean up if I’ve got powder or eyeshadow on them.
Getting your canvas done is definitely the most important. I often only have ten minutes to do my makeup before I run to work and I always take the time to get my skin looking its best. I’ve had coworkers comment so often that I “don’t need any makeup” 😉 As long as you aren’t wearing obvious color on your face, very few people notice that you did anything.
Tightlining the upper lashline works wonders! I would also choose a foundation with satin finish, nothing too matte or too shimmery. Cream blush tends to look more natural compared to powder because of how it sits on the skin, but whether you prefer cream or powder blush, applying it before your powder generally makes it look more natural as well.
I play up my eyes mostly. I use bright eyeshadows and line my upper and lower lash lines with brown or black liner, and apply mascara . People always compliment my skin that’s one area I don’t have to fuss with too much. But I always use concealer under my eyes.
“Enhance” my natural features?? Please, I don’t put on makeup. Makeup puts on ME. *dramatic hair swish* 😉
I’m a big fan of spot-concealing. If you have good skin, why waste the time with foundation, which requires you to contour around the face? Let your natural coloring come through and touch up with concealer as needed. Most days, I walk out of my face with only a touch of concealer around my eyes and mouth.
Do you think that a finishing powder can take the place of foundation? I have never been able to find the right foundation but do feel I need something. And I don’t feel that tinted moisturizer does anything.
For some, totally – it’s not going to give you coverage or really even out the skin tone, but they can brighten or add luminosity.
To other women of colour, I would say, don’t be afraid of blush! And I would also tell them all the tips and tricks that I learned with blush, especially when you’re choosing colours – I was so ignorant about blush about a year ago when I would choose the colour based on what I thought was pretty, without testing it on my skin, and then be really disappointed when it didn’t look good on me. Blush is the number 1 recommendation I have to get the most subtle and natural look – and it does look natural on WoC!
For lips I recommend lipstains, because they don’t mask the natural texture of your lips; they just change the colour. Lipsticks can often be too thick and they change the texture of your lips and look unnatural. If the stain is drying, just put a balm on top.
For the rest of the face I would suggest try going without foundation. I don’t use foundation (and recently gave up concealer) for a variety of reasons and I really don’t think it’s necessary for everyone. If you can go without it, don’t wear it! It’s so hard to find the right shade anyway. Sometimes less is more. Highlighters are amazing products that look very natural, as well.
And for eyes, I recommend brown eyeliner smoked out rather than black. It looks amazing!
I don’t really go for a no-makeup look when I’m wearing makeup. I either don’t wear makeup, or I try to wear tasteful makeup. But I believe makeup can be tasteful without being natural. I love fuchsia lipstick and purple eyeliner, which certainly aren’t natural looks, but in moderation.
Anyway, I think lips that are moisturized go a long way for natural beauty.