Thanks to Alecto for today's question!
What beauty skill did you feel like you’d never master?
The art of mixing foundations! I’m pretty used to it, and I’ve gotten quite good at remembering proportions needed!
— Christine
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Blending! It was a little rough and patchy for a while, and learning what textures typlically go where made a huge difference, not to mention getting better brushes. I now have a fluid gradient going on (most days). ?
I’m still not in love with any concealer yet. I have a makeup bag full of correctors and concealers. I want to cover up my dark circles in a natural looking way. Not there yet .
WOW!!!!! Me too Denise. I must own 1000 concealers and I stillen haven’t mastered the natural dark circle cover up. Any advice is greatly appreciated.
I think I’m going to have use more than one concealer to match my complexion. With a 1000 you can mix up your own color match. I’ve been using a peach corrector, the Kat Von D Lock-It and Tarte Shape Tape concealers for a decent match. Good luck Denise!
I started using a lighter shade of my foundation to cover dark circles, concealer always looked so fake on me and by the time I blended it in it was gone. It foundation works good for me>
Complex eye looks with a half-dozen different eyeshadows!
Smokey eye. I used to just end up with raccoon eyes. After watching tutorials and getting better brushes for blending, now I am much more confident that I can work with black eyeshadow without looking like someone punched me.
Still working on winged eyeliner, perfect brows, and false eyelashes. 🙂
Getting a more steady hand while applying nail polish. I used to have quite the issue with not getting it all over the surrounding skin and having to use several qtips to clean the resulting mess up with.
So my best tip here if you can’t do a perfect manicure is this. Do your mani/pedi on a relaxed evening taking your time. Focus on getting good even coverage even if you get some on surrounding skin. Let dry thoroughly and put lotion on. When you shower the next morning, the excess will peel off skin easily leaving you with a perfect mani/pedi!
I am the same Nancy – I end up with the nail polish over my finger and on the edge of my nail.
Lea, this is *why* I usually reserve doing my mani-pedi’s on a Saturday afternoon! I’m definitely good at getting the nails covered evenly and properly, too. What also bumped up how they looked by Sunday morning is applying my mango cuticle oil along the edges, where some excess may have wandered and voila! But up until 15-16 yrs. back, I honestly felt like I just had to suffer that whole right-hand-always-messy thing. Until I began getting acrylics. The tech ALWAYS applied oil to the nails and cuticles, so after I quit acrylics, I began using oil after and any excess on skin comes off by itself.
Liquid laytex (if you’re not allergic) works wonders, Amazon sells one (Ammonia Free Liquid Latex Body Paint) that works great & you get a ton of product unlike the little expensive tubes like liquid palisade.
Falsies. And though strips are still a challenge I can now at least apply the individual lashes quite well.
Again! concealing dark age/sun spots, because of the difficulty of their nature. I try to buy some products from Alpha Skincare, but no one / sent sell to Greece 🙁 The search continues…
I’d have to agree with the mixing foundations. It’s quite daunting. I know exactly what shade I should be, but sometimes it just seems I’ll never get it. I’m not sure if it’s the lighting but I’ve learned to really voice where I want my foundation to match, (my neck). Sales girls match my forehead and jaw and sometimes it’s a bit too warm since I have sought redness in areas of my face.
I also wish I can plop on falsies as second nature as some people can. I always tell myself next time I go out I should try, but it never ends up happening.
“Some”.. I have some redness…
Crease work. Hooded eyes have so many different varieties. Hells, I didn’t even know I had hooded eyes. I think this was my greatest hurdle with eye makeup and prevented me from understanding why my makeup never ever looked the way I thought it should; duplicating eye styles from others never remotely met my expectations. Thanks to Youtube, the lightbulb went on (finally) and I found out how necessary it was for me to tweak my crease work so it didn’t wind up MIA. Of course after figuring out how to make my work visible, I went through a stage where I was running crease too high creating an overall muddying effect. Now I lay down a decent crease (creasework schmeesework) piece of cake in a fraction of the time I used to and hardly give placement a thought.
Im the same as you Wendy, very hooded eyes and It took me a long time to get it right thanks to you tube and Wayne Goss!
Eyeshadow! I watched a couple of youtube to figure it, out of course I waited until I was 35 to learn! Now I want to learn how to do a winged eyeliner but thats been a real challenge.
Blush, actually. It took me so long to figure out the right size & shape of application for my face, and how to get it even on both cheeks 🙂
Painting my nails without getting polish all over my fingers. I’ve gotten much better over the years.
I’m not sure I’ve mastered anything!
Filling in my brows. I’ve got to say, though, I’m think I’m pretty decent at it now.
Blending!
Smoking out the lower lashline and making it look good!
For me I think it’s getting a perfect liner look that emphasizes my hooded eyes and not causing smudging. Tightlining has made a world of difference. I also prefer to do my own manicure too. I can’t stand the way others file my nails, so I learned to do it all myself.
Liquid eyeliner and plucking and shaping my own brows. Trying to figure out shape of my face. I’m in never known land when it comes to shape if my face.
Putting nail polish on properly – I am getting better, but not great
Blending my eye shadows -much better now thanks to some good brushes.
Blending eyeshadow, putting on lip liner, putting on eyeliner, and doing my eyebrows. I’m still working on blending and doing my eyebrows but the other two I’m doing wayyyy better than when I started wearing makeup.
Smoky eyeshadow application. Any great YouTube link recommended would be greatly appreciated. Even following the how to website which is pretty good detailed I still have not conquer it. ?
False lashes and I still cant apply them!.
The proverbial “eyeliner on flick”. It’s NEVER perfect, no matter how I try.
Close second – using more than two (three if you count a highlight shade) eye shadows for my eye look. I just cannot grasp the art of the strategic placing and careful blending.
Nail polish is the bane of my existence. I can’t apply it myself but I’m always wary of salons because of all the horror stories I’ve heard about uncertified salons.
Hi Christine And Temptalia,
I never thought that I would be good at lip liners or eyeliners. I just couldn’t get my lip liner on even or draw a straight line. That’s when I was brand new at applying it. Now I can do it in my sleep. Lol.
Eyeliner. Forget a straight line or a cat-eye. I ended up with eyeliner on my teeth. On.My.Teeth. No idea. I gave up right then and there.
I love cosmetics and beauty products, but I don’t want to do a slow-poison of myself because I don’t have the skills! LOL
Cut crease and contouring. Still can’t do either!
WINGED LINER. Still working on this one, but I’ve come to realize that my eye shape has a lot to do with why it’s so difficult!
I don’t know that I’ve mastered any, but the only beauty skills I thought for sure I wouldn’t are the ones I’m (still not) interested in — like false eyelashes, winged liner, or ombre lips. I’ll never try them, so I’ll never master them.
Natural looking horizontal strokes on inner brows. At least I grew out (as much as I could) my over-tweezed 80s brows but some areas never returned.