Guest Post: Makeup Tips to Make The Most of Your Features

I’m sure that I’m not the only girl out there that has things that I like about my face and things that I like to improve with the makeup I use. This got me thinking about what other women do and if they have any tips or tricks that I don’t know about. I decided to combine all of the best tips the ladies gave me for great looking makeup and put them into this post so that hopefully anyone starting out with makeup will find it useful.

Conceal

While most of us use concealer, a lot of people aren’t aware of the different types of concealer that are out there. If you find that regular concealers aren’t giving you enough coverage look into coloured ones. Green concealer for example works on covering redness because the green cancels out the red. You can experiment with different coloured concealers on different areas of your face to give you a nice even complexion.

Contouring

One of the best tricks around - highlighting can literally change the way your face shape appears. If you have a round face you can give yourself cheek bones and angles, and if you do have an angular face you can make it appear much softer. Contouring uses highlights and shading in order to make your face look a certain way or just enhance the features that you like. If you want to make an area more prominent such as the top of your cheek bone or brown bone use a light colour to highlight it. Dark colours will make it look less, so if you apply shading to the area just below your cheek bones this will make it look as though you have a slimmer face with great bone structure. 

Eyelashes

With your eyelashes you can of course fake it if you want to, but for day to day I prefer mascara. Black mascara will accentuate the whites of your eyes and make them appear bigger and more open so it is great for anyone with almond shaped eyes. Use an eyelash curler beforehand so that the eyelashes are already curled before the application. Do one coat of mascara and the most important thing is to let it dry before you apply a second coat, this way you will avoid clumps.

Eyebrows

Your eyebrows are a really important part of your face and not one that you should neglect. If they need shaping or tidying up you can do this either by tweezing yourself or getting a professional to do it, but remember to stick to the natural shape of your brow. If you go and try to give yourself a different brow shape you are going to come up against some hurdles. The best thing that you can do it keep them as close to natural as possible and if you have any gaps fill it in with a light motion using a powder or eyebrow pencil. A tip I found useful was to not get a brow pencil that is too dark for you. It can be very tempting to get a dark colour but it can look very unnatural, so try and choose a good match and have a light hand. A good structured eyebrow frames your face and instantly makes you look “done” even if you’re not wearing any makeup.

Lips

The way that you choose to apply lipstick or lip-gloss can completely change the way that your lips look. Depending on whether you want to accentuate your lips or play them down depends on how you should approach this. You can first apply foundation to your lips in order to remove any natural pigment and this will also mean that any lipstick colour you apply will be more true. You can also line your lips to define them more and experiment with matte and gloss colours to find the ones that suit you best. Light colours will reflect the light so if you are looking to make your lips look fuller try a nude colour. The opposite can be said for dark colours so if you’d like them to seem smaller this is something you can try. Also if you don’t have that perfect pout you can put a little bit of lip-gloss on your cupids bow and the middle of your bottom lip; this will make it appear like you have full pouty lips. 

This post was written by Ashleigh Sheard on behalf of House of Fraser. I hope you all enjoyed reading Ashleigh's post and I'd love to know your favourite makeup tips for making the most of your features?

Beauty Bird xx