FREE Make-up Tips for Teens

Some top tips on how to do make-up

Concealing Spots and Blemishes - Choosing a Concealer

When choosing a concealer, don't choose one that is lighter than your skin tone, thinking it might cover redness better; IT WON'T, it will just highlight the spot. Choose a concealer close to your skin tone, which has good coverage and blendability. It helps if it is a touch more yellow than your colouring as it is yellow that counteracts red best, not green. I have never been a fan of green to counteract red. In my experience it kills the 'living colour' in skin stone dead, and attracts attention by the deadness of the colour, not a good look. A colour called 'Mellow Yellow', is good, yellow is a kinder counter-response to redness in skin than green. You can always mix a little yellow into your concealer or foundation to deal with redness effectively. On dark skin where spots and healing spots mark the skin darker, you might choose a concealer or foundation that has some orange in it to brighten the skin without highlighting. It’s surprising how effective this little trick can be and it’s also quite useful around the eyes to hide dark circles.

Concealing Spots and Blemishes – Application

To conceal a spot or blemish apply only just enough product to reduce the colour to match your natural skin tone or the overall tone you are creating. This is why the appropriate make-up brushes come in handy, such as our Concealer or Splayed concealer, which feathers the edge. Buy a concealer, which gives good coverage without having to be applied thickly as this can draw as much attention as the spot. Make sure your concealer retains good coverage while remaining silky so that works blends well.

When covering a spot, work from the centre outwards, ensuring you feather the colour to match your skin. This makes sense as a spot is usually most red in the middle and the colour fades further away. This keeps the make-up blending consistent with the colour of the spot, its just logic. See our Covering Spots demonstration in the Make-Up Room to see the Splayed Blemish Brush in use for easier application.

Also in The Make-Up Room you will see The Make-Up Brush Company’s application tips for covering spots and blemishes, and blending with rest of your complexion. This will keep the end result looking like your natural skin tone. Depending on the degree of breakout, you may need more patience on some days than others, there are no short cuts to good camouflage, and it’s just careful work. Remember to keep your brushes and make-up clean, if necessary have more than one Concealer brush on hand and decant a little of your make-up onto a clean surface, a tile or something so you don’t ‘infect’ your make-up by double-dipping your make-up brushes. There is a demonstration of concealing and setting spot camouflage in the Members Make-Up Room.

Setting Concealer or Powdering.

Unfashionable as powder may be, to 'set' concealer it is essential. In any case, the powdery-ness will disappear if you allow 20 minutes for the natural oils to 'come through'. If you need to hurry-up the process you can also spray a light mist of mineral water to reduce powdery-ness then blot lightly with a tissue. Your make-up will have benefited from the 'setting'. It is the action of powder being pressed through concealer or foundation that causes the ‘setting’ and enables the make-up to sit better for longer, this is used in the extreme in heavier make-ups when you are making significantly different designs or effects like Geisha or Clown make-ups but the principle is the same for a regular day make-up. The key is to use a very finely milled powder that does the job without caking or setting too thick. Try it out on the back of your hand to see how finely the powder blends to nothing. As a general rule of thumb it is going to be more expensive than cheaper brands which can be full of filler, but then, I have also used a much more expensive brand that seemed to positively encourage oiliness – so you are going to need to experiment. For a number of reasons my favourite for years has been Lancôme’s Poudre Majeur translucent pressed powder.

For fair and medium skin I suggest a no-colour powder or translucent. For Asian, Olive and darker skin tones a neutral yellow powder is good so the skin doesn't go grey. Whatever your colouring, I'm not a big fan of coloured powders, preferring no 'colour' to be added. This is because when the colour of a tinted powder that is too far away from the your natural colour and it mixes with the natural oils of skin it can make tide marks of even darker colour when disturbed by a nail or hair.

Apply your concealer, blend the edges, and dip your blusher/powder brush in your powder, tap off any excess and press directly into the concealer, not across it. Pressing INTO ensures you do not 'knock off' the colour you have just carefully applied and does the necessary task of pressing the powder THROUGH the make-up to create the set. A demonstration of this technique is available in The Members’ Make-Up Room.

Tired Eyes?

Contrary to popular myth, it is not just lighter concealers that hide tiredness, but a tinge of coral or for darker skins, orange mixed in helps to counter-act the blueness that tiredness can bring around the eyes. Included in this is the corner of the eye, just below AND above the eye and the outer corner. Whispers of warmth added to your lightening and brightening concealer will sometimes do much more to lift away tired blues more thinly than layers and layers of the bright stuff. Try it in very small quantities and discover ‘colour-subtraction’ as I call it as an alternative to the more conventional colour-cover. Skin is translucent, and in order to look as natural as possible, so should your make-up.

Cleaning your make-up brushes.

It doesn't take long to get into the habit of taking 10 minutes to clean your make-up brushes and it's kind of relaxing. It’s not necessary to clean them after every single use, as this will probably cause too much wear and tear especially on natural bristles. Just clean as common sense suggests, especially if you drop them somewhere you are not sure of the cleanliness of the surface. Cleaning them of an evening so they can dry in a clean warm place overnight is the most convenient time for most people. It is quite satisfying to pick up your clean dry make-up brushes the morning. Just remember to put them to dry in good shape so they don’t get all ‘hairy’ and frazzled, and NEVER use a hairdryer!

There's a lot more information and tips in The Make-Up Room. When you become a customer, purchasing the The Principal Set you receive an exclusive Make-Up Room pass where you can see our models in close up done showing you how to get the most out of your make-up brushes. You'll easily pick the tips up when you SEE how things are done, SEE, LEARN, DO and PRACTICE and PERFECT for yourself. The Make-Up Room, like an online 'book', will grow and become more and more sophisticated the more successful the company becomes. A percentage of the income from your purchase of our make-up brushes goes into supporting this free area so please share this information with your friends.