Beauty: Everyday Make-Up Look 1

I love make-up, and love to watch make-up tutorials on YouTube, but as a student I don't have the money to spend on loads of high-end products. I also try to keep all my make-up cruelty free, and almost everything you'll see in this post is from cruelty-free brand eyes. lips. face or elf. I'm not the most skilled at applying make-up, and I don't have very good brushes, but this is pretty much what I'll do on my face almost every day. The shades and colours I use vary, so I’ve labelled this as ‘Look 1’. It’s my most natural look. Sorry for the bad image quality. I’m using my webcam, and my room only has one Velux window in it, so I’ve not got the best light source either!

1) This is me, pretty much straight out of the shower. I’ve used a face wash and have moisturised my skin (see my skin care routine if you’d like to know what products I’ve used). Whilst letting the moisturiser settle into my skin, I’ve got dressed and styled my hair into a small bun on the top of my head. 

2) The first thing I do is apply concealer under my eyes and over my lids in large dots. I my eyes can look quite dark and tired, so this brightens them up. The concealer I use is B. Under-eye concealer in the shade 060 light/medium. It’s the first concealer I’ve ever bought, so I can’t really compare it to any others. It applies pretty well and appears to last, although its perhaps slightly too yellow for my skin tone. I smudge it in with my fingers then blend it out with a stippling brush.

 

3) I then start on my eye shadow, all of the shades come from the elf natural palette. This palette is pretty cheap, and I got it on offer, but I’m not super impressed with it – the light shades are very pale and the dark shades are quite dark. But I’ve got used to working with it, and I’ll be using it for most of my make-up looks on this blog. I begin with a light, pink shade and apply it to the inner corner of my eye.

4) I take a medium, brown-pink shade next, and apply it all over my lid.

5) I take a dark, rusty-brown shade and apply it to my crease and outer corner, and blend well.

 

6) Brow time! Using the elf brow filler in the shade medium I fill the inner corner and outer curve of my brow. I've got pretty think brows already, so I like to capitalise on them and make them stand out. Once again, this isn't the best brow filler - its too think and too pink - but its cheap, cruelty-free and will do the job on my brows. If you've got thinner brows, though, I'd avoid using it as it has a large wax-crayon tip.

 7) I blend the product through my brows using a spooly brush. This both distributes the product and shapes my brow.

8) Using the highlighter end of the brow pencil, I draw a line under each brow and blend it down with my finger.

 9) I don't always do this, but I really notice the difference when I do. My lash-curlers are super old and I really need to change the rubber on them as they're covered in old make-up.

10) Lashes curled, I apply m eye-liner. I always curl my lashes before doing liner as I'm impatient and always manage to smudge the liner if I do it the other way round.

This liner is another elf product, and I'm pretty happy with it. It's just a basic liquid liner with a brush tip.  I apply is from the corner to the centre of my lid, then from the farthest tip to the outer corner. This gives me the basic shape. I then move from centre back to tip, and fill in any white space. My eye today was a long flick, but on other make up days I'll change up what I'll do. This is about as minimal as my eyeliner gets.

Its a happy day when my eyeliner is perfectly matching, and today its a bit off on one side, but it'll do!

11) I always wear mascara. I'm pretty happy with this elf mascara, but the wand is slightly too bendy for my liking. I zigzag it through the roots of my lashes, then pull it up to coat the tips.

I always do both top and bottom lashes - but I won't place the wand back into the pot before covering my bottom lashes, I just use up whatever's left on my wand from the top.

12) I like to apply lipstick when I can. This is another elf product, and it's in the shade flirtatious. Elf lipsticks have some great colours, but they transfer really badly and are very creamy. This one got broke on a night out, so that's why it looks disgusting in this picture!






There you have it! This usually takes me about 10 minutes to do in the morning, depending on how accurate my liner is first try!

If you've got any recommendations for affordable cruelty-free products I'd love to hear about them! You can leave replies in the comments or tweet me @VickiMaitland