makeup review – Page 5

BB Cream vs. Foundation: What’s the Difference?

Published on June 16, 2020May 1, 2024 by Lee1 Comment

If you take a walk down any makeup aisle, it’s clear there are so many complexion products to choose from. There’s something for every skin type (read: oily, dry, mature) and an endless amount of finishes (think: dewy, matte, velvet). The sheer number of BB creams, CC creams and foundations can be overwhelming. To help you find your perfect match, we gathered all the tips and tricks we have learned over the years. Below, we share the difference between BB cream, CC cream and foundation — and tips for applying each.

What Is BB Cream?

BB cream is an all-in-one makeup product. It traditionally has good-for-your-skin ingredients like SPF and sufficient coverage to still even out redness and smooth rough texture. BB creams range anywhere from a barely-there tint to medium coverage. What’s more, BB creams also have the added benefit of helping breakout-prone skin. “If you’re acne-prone, using a BB cream that’s oil-free is a good way to go. We recommend the Complexion Rescue BareMinerals, which is formulated with salicylic acid to address acne. This BB cream moisturizes, tints, and provides SPF protection. It’s a great choice for darker skin tones.

What Is Foundation?

Foundation is a classic go-to option for makeup artists and beauty lovers who want to create a flawless canvas and have superior skin coverage. If you want something that’s going to last all day and give you airbrushed-looking skin, foundation is the right choice. Foundations are also available in a wide range of coverage options. While the coverage is buildable, we love the Nars Natural Radiant Longwear Foundation and Estée Lauder Double Wear Stay-in-Place Makeup for a lightweight, sheer option. For medium to full coverage, we like the Giorgio Armani Luminous Silk Foundation, Too Faced Born This Way Foundation and Pro Filt’r Soft Matte Longwear Foundation FENTY BEAUTY by Rihanna and the Lancôme Rénergie Lift Makeup Foundation.

What Is CC Cream?

Cut from the same cloth as a BB cream, a CC cream, or color correcting cream, is an all-in-one product intended to address redness, darkness and sallowness. It blends skin care with light-diffusing properties to give you a smoother complexion, but it doesn’t give the same amount of coverage as a BB cream.

How to Apply BB Cream and CC Cream

BB creams and CC creams are a true time-saver in the morning and impossible to mess up. “Anything that combines sunscreen, skin-care ingredients, antioxidants and light coverage is ideal for the busy woman who doesn’t have time for a more in-depth regimen. Just rub a pea-sized or dime-size amount between your hands to warm it up and apply to bare, freshly cleansed skin. You can use a sponge or brush for application, too. Just note, if you have extra dry skin, you can benefit from applying a moisturizer underneath your BB or CC to give your skin an added boost of hydration.

How to Apply Foundation

Considering most women use foundation to cover up things like under-eye circles, pimples, uneven skin tone and other imperfections, the application needs to be a bit more precise. You can use your hands, however, you’ll get the most even coverage using a sponge or brush.

Sponges tend to be a bit more intuitive than brushes, and you’ll achieve a more airbrushed finish, while makeup artists swear by a brush for its ability to effortlessly blend and smooth product evenly. Depending on your preference, try IT Brushes For ULTA Airbrush Dual-Ended Flawless Complexion Concealer & Foundation Brush #132 or Tarte Double Duty Beauty Powder Foundation Brush & Removable Sponge.

Start by dabbing dots of foundation down the center of your face — forehead, nose, upper lip and chin — and blend your foundation outwards using your tool of choice. Be sure to pay extra attention to your hairline and chin as you want to blend those areas out the most for a seamless and invisible foundation line.

Beauty Q and A: Why Is My Foundation Patchy?

Published on June 3, 2020June 3, 2020 by Lee3 Comments

Patchy foundation is a makeup lover’s worst nightmare — especially if you’ve spent a significant amount of time perfecting your beat. As it turns out, there are ways to completely avoid patchy makeup and foundation, and all it takes is hydration and the right makeup base. Ahead, we broke down how to keep patchy foundation at bay, plus how to fix it if it happens to you.

What Causes Patchy Foundation?

There are many reasons why your foundation might be patchy. The wrong formula of foundation, mixing products with ingredients that don’t match or dehydrated skin are all culprits. For example, mixing a silicone-based primer with a water-based foundation is going to separate on the skin because the ingredients don’t mesh well. How to know if your foundation or primer is silicone based? It can be tricky, but the most commonly listed silicones (you’ll nearly always find them at the top of the ingredients list) include cyclopentasiloxane, siloxane and dimethicone. Also, most people are not as oily as they think they are, and using ultra matte foundation on already dry skin is another recipe for a patchy face.

How to Avoid Patchy Foundation

When it comes to avoiding the patchy foundation phenomena, we suggest that you want to pay extra attention to the products you use, and make sure your skin is well hydrated and prepped for makeup. A good moisturizer, a primer that mixes well with foundation and setting the foundation will all help to make sure your makeup stays where you want it.

For this, we recommend beginning your routine with a hydrating moisturizer like the NYX Professional Makeup Bare With Me Cannabis Sativa Seed Oil Moisturizing Primer SPF 30. Next, apply a hydrating, gripping primer like the Tula Brighten Up Smoothing Gel Primer that will not only moisturize your skin, but it will also lock in foundation. Apply a water-based foundation on top, like the Urban Decay Stay Naked Lightweight Liquid Foundation.

How to Fix Patchy Foundation

If the skin isn’t properly hydrated, it will draw the moisture from any product you apply on top of it; hence, your poor dehydrated skin will suck up all the water and emollients from your foundation, leaving you with small and unevenly dispersed splodges of color pigment. The moral of the story? Always make sure to apply an even layer of moisturizer over the skin before reaching for the foundation bottle.

Prepping the skin correctly before foundation is the true way to eradicate patchiness before it starts, but if your foundation is already patchy, here is another trick that can help, take a damp sponge and blend out the patchy spots.

More Primp Tips

If we neglect the exfoliation step within our skincare routines, it will likely result in our foundation applying unevenly, and gripping on to (and exaggerating) our dry patches and textural issues. Using a mild liquid exfoliator will help to keep dry patches at bay, and will keep the skin looking even and smooth.

Will you be taking any of these tips on board, or do you have any methods or tricks you’ve found helpful? Let us know!

6 Places You Never Thought to Apply Concealer

Published on March 29, 2020May 1, 2024 by Lee1 Comment

Here at Makeup.com, we have a very special bond with our concealer stash. It’s one of our most trusted makeup products that’s always there for us, even when it seems like our skin isn’t. Whether that means dark under-eye circles or a spontaneous blemish, concealer can help make our skin woes disappear with each swipe from its magical wand. That’s not all it does, though. In fact, your concealer can do so much more than simply camouflage imperfections, depending on where it’s placed. Find out six places to apply concealer, ahead.

Above and Below the Brow

Blend a thin line of concealer on top of and underneath the brows to make eyebrows pop and open up the eyes. This also helps with reshaping your brows or defining your arches. Be sure to use a full-coverage formula like the Maybelline New York Superstay Concealer to really clean up those edges and give you precise-looking brows.

The Inner Corners and Under the Eyes

To get rid of dark circles, conceal only the blue or purple tint beneath your eyes. To brighten up the eyes even more, tap a little concealer in the inner corners of your eye to really disguise any late nights with no sleep. We love using the Maybelline New York Age Rewind Dark Circle Eraser for this area. The sponge tip applicator makes it extremely easy to tap on just the right amount of product you need.

Across the Bridge and Down the Center of the Nose

Apply concealer on the bridge and down the center of your nose to bring light to the center of your face and help make the nose appear slender. This is also a great contouring trick, making your face catch more light on the high points.

Around Each Nostril

This area is commonly plagued by redness and broken capillaries. Brightening around the nose will help skin tone appear more even all over — and we love the Urban Decay Full Coverage All Nighter Concealer because it’s incredible at canceling out that excess discoloration.

Corners of the Mouth

Unfortunately, as we age, the more our skin begins to lose elasticity, which results in loose skin. Conceal the outer corners of the mouth to lift up downturned lips and show off your smile.

Center of the Chin

Combat redness or darkness by blending a small semicircle of concealer right at the crease in the chin. This is also a great spot to place concealer because not only will it catch light to bring more attention to the center of your face, but it’ll also help to further accentuate a great lip color — thank us later.

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Huda Beauty Resting Boss Face Setting Spray Review

Published on February 18, 2020March 1, 2020 by Lee1 Comment

When it comes to wearing makeup, we’re all weary of having it smear or disappearing and having to touch up. I almost never touch up because the thought of having to reapply makeup on dirty skin grosses me out. So, the idea that setting sprays can keep our makeup in place all day is extremely attractive. When Huda Beauty released her waterproof setting spray and I saw what it could do I ordered it immediately. I tested this out over the last week and here’s what happened.

𝓒𝓵𝓪𝓲𝓶𝓼

Huda Beauty’s Setting Spray offers “extra-hold” with a waterproof matte finish. This is a non-aerosol spray. You get 100ml of product for $33.

𝓘𝓷𝓰𝓻𝓮𝓭𝓲𝓮𝓷𝓽𝓼

Well, this is like looking at a not so good report card. There are quite a few hazardous ingredients-Benzyl Salicylate, Coumarin, Hydroxycitronellal, and Isoeugenol. Alcohol is the first ingredient listed and alcohol tends to dry out your skin which is a no-no. The last three are all fragrances and I think everyone has heard just how bad the fragrance is in this spray. Benzyl Salicylate is associated with allergies and contact dermatitis and also works as an ultraviolet light absorber. Actually, almost half of the ingredients in this list function as fragrances!

To be fair, this never claimed to have any sort of skin care benefit. I mean, what do you expect from something that claims to be waterproof and was inspired by extra hold hair spray? If you’re particular about the ingredients in your cosmetics, then run far, far away from this!

𝓡𝓮𝓼𝓾𝓵𝓽𝓼

First time using this, I sprayed directly to my face then on my makeup sponge and applied my foundation with it. In hindsight that isn’t what the directions said to do, but oh well! When applied directly on face, I did find the fragrance to be a bit much. My friend also tried it before we went out and she said the Resting Boss Spray irritated her skin. She felt this burning sensation and was kinda sticky to her. But, after a while that feeling went away.

This spray smells like perfume which normally wouldn’t bother me but it can be overwhelming. The spray does control oil pretty well. Normally, my T-Zone would start to get greasy after 3 or 4 hours, but the Huda spray kept it in check. Side note- It did cause me to have a migraine and I did feel sick. The setting spray was applied at 10pm and lasted throughout the night until 6am, when I finally came home to go to work. You know what was amazing though? I had gotten some of the spray on my eyelids and my eye makeup was creaseless. I didn’t use eye primer, so I was impressed! Overall, not bad for the first time.

I tried different ways of using the spray- spraying directly onto the face, doing it Huda’s way, and spraying targeted areas. If you spray directly onto the face, the fragrance is over-powering and cue in all the bad reviews on Sephora. Spraying directly onto the face will also lead to unevenness with more product on one part of the face than the rest. This formula really is like extra hold hair spray!

Primp Tip: Spray after your skin prep rituals and at the end, apply Huda Beauty Resting Boss Spray onto the beauty blender for less irritation and for more coverage. The fragrance is a little tolerable this way.

If you are wondering if Huda’s setting spray is waterproof, I can’t really say right now. February 15, 2020 was a rainy night but my friend and I makeup stayed in tact.

Compared to other setting sprays, Huda’s setting spray is significantly stronger and longer lasting.

If your skin is really oily then the spray will keep your face looking fresh throughput the day. For the normal to dry skin people, makeup will still look fresh and radiant. But since this has a matte finish, I would suggest don’t use it as much because like I previously stated, alcohol does dry out the skin. For the sensitive skin type, try applying with your beauty blender sponge instead of directly onto face.

𝓞𝓿𝓮𝓻𝓿𝓲𝓮𝔀

The Huda Beauty Setting Spray is some heavy-duty stuff! If it wasn’t for the bad ingredients, I would be singing more praises because it works better than its competitors. I love that I don’t have to do any touch-ups when using this product, but I value my skin more.