No Makeup Makeup Look

Hi everyone! For today’s post I’m going to show you how I do a “makeup no makeup look.” In case you’re wondering what that means it’s just a makeup look with minimal makeup that enhances your natural beauty. It’s a quick everyday look you can do if you don’t feel like doing too much. I like this look because it makes me look awake with being effortless. For some this may be ‘too much’ makeup, but you can modify this how you please and just use this as a template to create your own look. Okay let’s do this: 

First, you always want to prime your face, it helps create a smooth canvas in order for your foundation to apply on effortlessly. For that day I chose to prime my face with two primers, the first one is the new NYX First Base primer spray. 

I let that dry and then I applied the Maybelline Master Primer to blur and smooth. 

I use the Maybelline one to apply on my T-Zone ( forehead, nose, around cheeks) and if there was extra then I would just put it anywhere else on my face, like my little chinny chin chin. 

Now I can apply foundation. Depending on how you feel about your skin you can use a full coverage, medium or tinted moisturizer as your foundation. Since this is a more natural look I wanted to use my Bare Minerals Complexion Rescue Tinted Hydrating Gel Cream (whew, say that five times fast). 

To apply this I used my Real Techniques Beauty Blender and just patted the product into my skin. This was the first time I used that beauty blender with this product and I really liked how it applied it. It gave me a smooth and natural finish. As you can see it’s not full coverage but it does even out my skin tone so that I look even all over. 

Now for concealer! This is my favorite part because you could just skip the foundation and just use concealer if you. Concealer is my life saver and it always makes me look more awake than I actually am. I’m using the Maybelline Better Skin Concealer. And to apply it I just made a triangle shape under my eyes and brought up towards my temples. Bringing it up towards the temples is like giving yourself a mini face lift, it brightens your face and makes you look awake. This does work better if your concealer is a lighter shade, fyi. Mine isn’t so it just mainly helps conceal. 

To blend it out I used a Sonia Kashuk foundation brush and just dabbed it out. Make sure you don’t swipe it because it won’t set the product into the skin correctly, and it’ll look streaky. You can see the difference from the left and right eye, concealer helps hide my little bags. After that I used my NYX Banana powder to set my under eyes that way there isn’t any creasing. To apply the powder I also dab/press it in. 

I won’t go into detail on how I do my brows because I think everyone has a certain way they do them. And it’s one of the most boring/frustrating parts of doing my makeup. Once I really master this I’ll do a post dedicated to them! But for now I’ll just leave you with this. Make sure you brush them out and when I fill them in I just slightly press the pencil in. I don’t like dramatic brows, I just like to fill in the parts that have no hair and give them a natural shape. I’m using the Anastasia Brow Wiz, btw. 

As you’re filling them in make sure you brush them out so that the product can blend in well and not look so harsh. And remember, your eyebrows are sisters not twins. They’ll never look identical but just try and make them look similar, but don’t get frustrated. I still struggle with them. 

Bronzer, woo! Since this is a natural look I don’t usually contour. For this I just like to kind of sculpt out where the hollows of my cheek bones out to give a bit of dimension. I don’t bring the bronzer all the way down, just where the top of check bone starts. 

You’ll see in the photo below that’s where I start and I bring the product down a little less than half way. And then I just blend it out. For this I used the NYX Matte Bronzer and with an angled brush from ELF. 

I tried to get a picture where you could see how this looks but the picture isn’t doing it justice. In person you can see my cheekbones stick out a bit more. 

Now I’m going to go in with my Milani Baked Bronzer so give some warmth to my face. I add this around my cheekies and around my forehead. I used another Sonia Kushak brush, it was a fluffy face brush. 

You can start seeing my face brighten up instead of looking so white. Also, try not pay attention to my hair, it was living it's own life. 

Then I added some of my NYX Ombre Blush, it was the orangey shade, I just wanted some more color on my cheeks. I used my Real Techniques blush brush to apply it. 

Now, you can skip this part if you wish, but I can’t not highlight my face. It’s a must in my book. I feel like it really gives you that last pop. I used my NYX Narcissist highlighter and applied it with my Morphe 501 brush. 

I personally like to add a lot because I just love highlighting, but add what you feel is a comfortable amount for you. This highlighter is pretty subtle and goes with this look well.

Last step! Just add some mascara to open your eyes up and you’re done. This sounds like a lot of steps but once you’re actually doing it it’s a quick look. You just have to get used to it. I used my Maybelline Great Lash Mascara, the one in the bright pink bottle with the bright green cap. It’s my go to mascara. 

This next step is totally optional but I’ve been getting used to using false lashes all the time. So I do add these no matter what the look is. I’m using my Ardell Demi Wispies, my favorites. I just think these give my look an extra pop of life, I look a lot more put together than I really am. 

We’re finally done! This is my favorite look to do when I go to school, especially when I have an early class and I look like I only slept for three hours. Or during the week if you’re going to run errands. I love this look. Again, this can be modified how you wish but this is the simplest way to have a full face but not feel like you’re wearing any makeup. Fyi, I did add more highlight, but I added some Becca Moonstone, As I mentioned before, I love highlighter and I wanted more! I didn’t add a lip color for this, you can if you want. I just put on chap stick and a little bit of lip gloss, do whatever your little heart desires. 

Thank you all for reading! I hope this was helpful for those of you who are still trying to get the hang of makeup. This is a good way to start and practice. Let me know what else you would want to see, and if you recreate this tag me on Instagram or Twitter! Thank you, again!

Instagram: @annahhmeow

Twitter: @annahhmeow

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Brush Cleaning Routine

Hello everyone! Here’s a quick post that you’ll hopefully find helpful. It might not be the most fun but it’s something we have to do... Clean your brushes! I’m just going to show you the products I use to clean my brushes, this isn’t the only way to do it but it’s one way I like to do it. Okay, here we go:

A while ago I bought the Micellar Water cleanser by Simple, it was supposed to remove my makeup. I personally did not like this product at all, it didn’t seem to take off my makeup as I hoped. Then one day when I told myself I had to clean my brushes I got the idea to use that instead. It worked so well. I just put some in a little cup, or little bowl, whatever floats your boat, and I swirled the brush in it. Don’t be gentle either, you want to make sure you get all that makeup off it. The only down side was that the brush soaked the Micellar Water up so fast, so I had to do it kind of quick. But in the end I got the cleanest brushes ever. 

For just a quick clean up I use this ELF brush cleaner. It’s just a spray and gets the job done in a flash. It’s only like $3 too. I just spray my brush a few times with it and grab a towel to clean the product off. Again, do not be gentle, you have to get a little bit aggressive in order to fully clean your brushes. I use this when I just want to clean them up a bit. If you’re going to deep clean make sure you use something like the Micellar Water or a DIY cleanser for your bushes. 

At the end of cleaning your brushes make sure they are either laying down or have the brush facing down, that way they can dry properly. I really just want to encourage you to clean your brushes at least once a month, and the occasional spot cleaning in between. If you don’t want breakouts or dirty skin then cleaning your brushes will for sure help that. Especially because you’re dipping your brush in your products. If your brush is dirty and you keep dipping it into the product then eventually all that bacteria could transfer into your precious product. And cleaning your brushes expands the live span of your brushes. 

Don’t let that brush near your face until it’s clean!

These are just a few of my favorite brushes at the moment, you’ve seen them before. The two black brushes are from ELF and then the pink one is from Real Techniques. Then I also got two more brushes from Morphe, the M501 and the M432 flat definer brush. I use the M501 for highlighting and it’s been giving me life. The M432 is great for the lower lash line, it’s very precise. 

I hope this was helpful and makes you want to clean your brushes. It’s a task that no one really likes doing but it has to get done. There are so many ways to clean your brushes, this is just one of the ways I do it. You could just mix some warm water and gentle soap as well, the point is, CLEAN your brushes. Please share your techniques with me and tag me on Instagram or Twitter. As I’ve mentioned before, I love trying out new products or techniques. Thank you!

Instagram: @annahhmeow

Twitter: @annahhmeow

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Travel Makeup

Hello, again! I’m excited about this post, it’s simple but helpful. These are my go to products I travel with. Since I moved to Portland I have learned to pack only the necessities. I visit home most weekends and I’ve learned which products to bring that I would actually use. This is what I would take for a weekend, it might seem like a lot but I don't always bring all of this, so keep that in mind. It can vary. So here are some products I like to take:

I know you’ve seen this so many times already but it’s just so easy to travel with! This Morphe palette is just so small and for me the colors are perfect, especially since I like simple eye looks. I feel that this one has enough for me. I just wish there was a black color but I can deal, plus I just borrow my mom’s or sisters. 

Sometimes I only bring these products and that’s it. I can live with just mascara and eyebrows, honestly. Okay, I can’t but if I had too those are the two products I would pick. I’ve already talked about these products in previous posts so I’ll just say that these are easy to carry and they can give me a natural or bombshell look if I want. Love them! 

I don’t bring all of these three with me, but depending on what I’ll be doing I bring one of these. From tinted moisturizer to full coverage, I love all those foundations. I’ve been taking the Tarte BB Cream lately just to have some kind of coverage. But it just depends, these are my faves though.  

NYX, NYX, NYX, NYX! I’ve been so obsessed with this brand, they’re so affordable and have an amazing variety or products. I use all of these all the time and I never leave without them. The ombre blush is the newest addition and I love it. I’ve got a good  squad to contour or just get a really glowy look, with just these I can do any look. That highlight is called Narcissists and it gives an amazing glow, I love it so much! 

This Milani baked bronzer is also a part of the squad above, I use this to bronze up my face. Again, it helps give me a glow. I don’t care what time of year it is I will always want to glow. 

I’ve mentioned all these brushes before I believe, and they’re just enough to create a simple or more intense look. I’ve got a group of blending brushes and more precise brushes. For a weekend I can live with these.  

I love all these brushes and I use them every day.  And they’re all drugstore brand, so they’re very affordable. From $3 to $13 I say that’s a good deal. I can do so much with all these, they are have their purpose, from setting to contouring and blending, this is the ideal brush squad. 

My little Real Techniques beauty blender, it looks like it needs some help but this thing is amazing. I have two others on backup but this one is still going strong. I love using this for foundation or under my eyes. I like that is has two different sides, a flat side then the more pointed side, you’re able to get into smaller spots or just all over, it’s a good one to travel with. 

Lashes! These are both Ardell lashes, The Demi Wispies and I can’t remember what the other ones are, my bad. They had the Glamour thing on the packaging, so hopefully that helps. I love these two though, again, it just depends on my mood or what I’m doing to decide which to use. I’ll usually just bring both of these just in case. They look dirty but I swear I clean them!  

Well what do you know, more NYX. Again, I don’t bring all of these, I’ll usually just bring one, either Soft Spoken or Vintage, those are my favorite ones. These are just amazing and for their price I am not going to complain. I like that they don’t completely dry matte but they still look matte. These are bomb!  

Now you’re probably thinking, what do you bring all this in!? I obviously have makeup bags. These are the ones I take. I’ve had this little pink one with the hearts forever and I got it at Forever 21. I usually throw my brushes in here, it honestly just depends on how I’m packing that day. I switch it up but these are the bags I always bring.

Isn’t this one so cute!? Little macaroons in pastels, the best! This one is also from Forever 21. I'm obviously in awe of them.  

Then I just throw everything in this huge makeup bag. My mom gave it to me so I don’t know where it’s from, but I like that it has little pockets inside. I’ll just throw in my lip products in there. And then I fit the heart and macaroon bag in there and it all fits. 

I also use these little Ipsy bags to fit everything in and then they fit in the big bag as well. And then I’m ready to go! All my products in one bag, I feel like that’s good for the weekend. It might seem like a lot but I just like to be prepared. 

This is just how I pack and what I feel works for me. I’m just giving you a template, because these are products that get the job done and are versatile to do a lot of different looks. This could honestly work for a whole week too, it just depends how you like to do your makeup. Do you.   

I also wanted to show you my eye look; I just did a wing and added a pop of blue on top of the black. I used a product from my Ipsy bag that I got a while ago, it’s from Starlooks. Honestly, it wasn’t the best because it kind of transferred throughout the day, but at that moment I thought it looked cool. I’ve seen so many looks with pops of color like this and I really wanted to try it, I loved it. I can’t wait to try more looks like this for spring!    

Thanks so much for checking this out. I hope this could help you out a bit if you’re traveling and don’t know what to pack. Hopefully this can give you an idea on what to bring. Remember to follow me on social media and tag me in anything from previous posts and this one, I want to know if this is helpful! Thanks again, and I’ll talk to you all next week!

Instagram: @annahhmeow

Twitter: @annahhmeow

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Ulta and Morphe Haul

Hi, everyone! Super excited to show you a few things I picked up at Ulta a couple of weeks ago. This won’t completely be a review only because I haven’t fully tested some of the products out yet, but I thought it’d be fun to show you my first impressions. I did forget to picture two items which were the single eye shadows from NYX, but I did wear them in my photos shown and I love them. They’re under $5 each and Ulta always some sort of coupon going on so take advantage of those! Okay let’s get into this:

I ordered a few things from Morphe because it was just time to. I always see Youtubers and people on Instagram raving about this brand and I thought it was time for me to test them out! Morphe is a brand that sells makeup and brushes, I feel like they’re mainly known for their brushes but they’re starting to really focus on their eye shadow palettes and single shadows. The best part is they’re super inexpensive, and they lowered their shipping, which was one of the main reasons I never wanted to order because the brush for example would be $5 but the shipping would be $10, eh no thanks. Thankfully shipping for me this time was $5.94. So I bought two brushes and one of their smaller eye shadow palettes. 

The brushes I got were the M139 tapered crease blender ($2.99) and the M310 large soft fan brush ($4.99). I freaking love them! The blending brush really helps give a more intense look and it just blends really nicely. I use it literally right in the crease and I typically use it when I’m blended out a darker color, well that’s what I’ve been doing so far. It’s really soft too. So is the fan brush, I love this for highlighting. It’s harder and feels denser so it can really pack on the highlight. I didn’t think I would like this brush and was nervous about it, but I saw so many Youtubers say that this brush was perfect for highlighting and I was in need of a highlighting brush.

My over all first impressions of these are that I love them and will for sure purchase more brushes from them. I’m lucky enough to have a boyfriend who knows how much I love makeup and everything beauty and as a Valentine ’s Day gift he ordered me two more brushes, he’s the best! If you want to order from them I would suggest watching Jaclyn Hill’s favorite Morphe brushes video, she goes into detail on all her must have brushes and it’s a great video to watch if you’re newer to makeup and want to build your brush collection. So that’s how I feel about the brushes now onto the palette.

  

In my previous post I showed you this palette and I used one of the colors in it, which was the maroon-ish color. I really like the look of this palette, it’s very fall like. I did a swatch of all the colors expect the first one because it didn’t show up on my arm as well, but it works well as a highlight for your brow. 

   

The first photo of swatches are the first 7 colors, it goes in order from the first row and then the second row. The next swatches are the last four colors. Unfortunately they don’t have names. These are pretty good shadows, they’re not amazing but for the price I like them. The one above the maroon-ish color is so far my favorite; I also used it in my look for today. I love that this is super easy to travel with; I could use this palette alone and be fine. Some of the matte colors do have a lot of fall out but that only means they have more pigment, well that’s my experience with it. And I was prepared for that because that’s what I’ve seen some Youtubers say. This palette was $14.99 which isn’t too bad for 12 colors and it’s called the 12NB Natural Beauty Palette. 

This is pretty much a mini version of the 35O palette that I’ve been dying to get my hands on but whenever it comes back in stock I’m always broke! Why me!? Anyways, they have a lot of other palettes like this size and then the bigger ones like the 35O which are $22.99 I believe. So many Youtubers have discount codes too, so if you’re comfortable with that use them and save some more monaayye!

I’ve been wanting to try these Real Technique brushes forever! So I picked up two of them, the blush brush (pink one, $9) and the expert face brush (orange one, $9). I really love these brushes, the blush one is my favorite so far, it’s so soft and applies my blush really nicely. I like the dome/tapered shape of the brush, it helps blend out the product. And since the bristles are synthetic it distributes the product evenly without wasting it. The expert face brush is one I use for contouring, it says on the Real Techniques website that it’s meant for blending out foundation but I like it for contouring. It’s small enough for the hallows of my cheeks and gives a more natural contour. These brushes are amazing and I definitely am going to buy more, I highly recommend them. And the prices are super reasonable, especially for how amazing quality they are.  

I have been so obsessed with NYX lately, they have been coming out with some amazing products. As you can see I got another Liquid Suede in the shade Tea and Cookies, such a cute name! I am wearing that color in my pictures for today as well. It’s such a fun pink color for the spring and summer, very girly. Which I usually don’t go for but I saw it swatched on social media and I had to try it. I still want more too! I’m so obsessed with them, I have like four of them. I also got the new primer spray, I’m not super sure how I feel about it yet. I’ve only used it a few times and I don’t have anything negative, except for when I spray it it goes everywhere, like it gets down to my chest, I don’t know how because I only spray on my face. Who knows? It makes my skin feel a little tight and dry but once I put foundation on it’s fine. I have to keep testing it out. 

Okay, now this blush. When I saw these on snap chat I had to have them. The one I originally wanted was out of stock, of course, it was like a mauve plumy kind of color. But I was totally okay with my second choice. The one I got is called ‘Feel the Heat’ and it’s such a fun summer color. The lighter color has the shimmer and the orange is matte, you can mix them or use them individually, but I’ve been using both with my new blush brush. Again, I’m wearing that in my photos. I’m so obsessed with this, NYX is really stepping it up. I want like three more colors! And they’re only $10. I’m telling you, drugstore is stepping up their game, I just wish they wouldn’t step up the prices. But these are still super affordable, for sure recommend this product, it was my favorite product I purchased.  

When I went to Ulta I was in search of a new concealer. I knew I wanted to try these two for sure. I’ve heard a lot of amazing things about them. I really like the better skin one, it gives a dewy kind of look. Except you have to blend it out kind of fast because it seems to dry out, but maybe that’s just me because when I do blend it it blends amazing. It just looks like it’s drying out. Other than that I really like it, make sure you blend out right under your eyes really well with your finger so that when you set it there’s no creasing. The age defining one isn’t my favorite yet… This one really creased on me when I used it, I’ve only used it twice but that just made me not want to deal with it. I’ll give it another shot but that was my first impression of it. That’s all I’ll say for it now.

Thanks again for reading, sorry if this was a bit long but I couldn’t stop writing, can’t stop won’t stop. I hope you guys liked these products and test some of them out for yourself; again, I tried to keep things at low prices so that you would also be able to purchase them. That’s my main goal! Let me know what you think and tag me if you want with #stylealwaysfashionforever 

Thank you again!

Instagram: @annahhmeow

Twitter: @annahhmeow

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