Natural Beauty Makeup Prep It all begins with a smart pre-makeup routine: one that leaves your skin fully prepped for any sort of foundation or powder application to follow. Your pores need to be adequately prepared to allow makeup to sit on the top epidermal layer, looking as natural and as breathable as possible.
Thoroughly cleanse
After fully cleansing your face of any prior makeup or residual impurities, choose an organic cold pressed facial oil: coconut for antimicrobial properties, jojoba for essential fatty acids, or argan for a wide range of antioxidant benefits. Use gentle pressing and light massaging motions, work around your lymphatic area, near your ears and down your jaw line. This will increase circulation, promoting blood flow and a healthy glow that will allow you to use slightly less makeup, because you’ll already have a natural flush of color.
Prime with a serum
Next, it’s all about priming your base. Often synthetic primers are filled with silicone, a synthetic polymer with a plastic-like texture that effectively fills your pores, creating a ‘smooth’ canvas but also trapping dirt and sebum in your pores, causing them to enlarge, inflame, and seal off. This leads to deep comedones and cysts, trapping you in a cycle of using more foundation that you need to be applying.
Instead, use a hydrating serum to lighty prime your skin before foundation. This will allow the active ingredients to form a protective barrier between your pores and your cosmetic formula, and will provide you with much needed moisture and lubrication to allow any products you apply to slide on smoothly and flawlessly. Plus, priming your skin with a serum can allow your foundation to last longer, meaning fewer re-applications later in the day.
Ultimately, it’s important to focus on areas where your makeup typically has issues like creasing, flaking, or appearing oily throughout the day.
Moisturize your eye area
The eye area is particularly tricky, and creasing lines of concealer in crows feet and smile lines can have the effect of making you look way older than you actually are. To get around this, try dabbing your eye cream onto your crows feet and under-eye area just prior to applying your concealer. This will allow it to apply smoother and last longer, and will keep it in place, avoiding the migration of product into any small wrinkles you might have. Opt for an eye cream with caffeine (from coffee beans or matcha) which will naturally tighten and brighten your peepers, allowing you to use less concealer for a lighter final look.
Regularly exfoliate and moisturize
Flaking is an issue for those of us suffering from dryness, and can completely ruin a foundation look, leaving you with patchiness and uneven color. The trick is to make sure you’ve lightly exfoliated before starting to apply makeup.
Strategic use of moisturizer can also help. If you experience flaking around your mouth and nose, apply a plant-based moisturizer prior to any makeup, effectively sealing a layer over your dermis and keeping things smooth and even-toned. Plant based glycerin can be a helpful pre-foundation hack, effectively injecting moisture into your epidermal layer and working deep into your skin cells for long-lasting moisture.
Mix foundation with facial oil
When you’re applying foundation, try mixing it on the back of your hand with a few drops of facial oil for a super dewy glow. Remember that the less foundation you use, the more your natural skin tone can show through, for a low-maintenance look that’s great for daytime events. Try experimenting with different ratios of foundation to facial oil. It could be that you find your best look using just a drop of foundation, mixed into your facial oil for a super sheer coverage with minimal pigment.
Try a DIY setting spray
If other parts of your face typically become oily later in the day (namely, your T-zone), try setting your makeup with a clarifying hydrosol spray, which will keep inflammation down and balance oil and sweat production. You can make a DIY version of this through mixing a few drops of tea tree and lavender oil in a water base, and keeping the mixture in a spray bottle. This DIY essential oil hack will effectively set your makeup and allow it to ‘sink into’ your pores, for a natural look and healthy glow (sans grease).
Last step: prime your lips with a plant-based lip moisturizer before going in with any lip color, for an ultra moisturized pout sans cracking or creasing.
These basic hacks might seem simple, but they’ll allow your natural makeup look to stay super natural and dewy, with the added bonus of making your products last longer.