Dry skin and make-up

There was once a girl with dry skin who thought she’d never find a foundation to ever make her skin look good. She searched for that wonder product for all her years, and never did her one true foundation come to being. Sad, the felt she’d never get good foundation coverage until she met her fairy make-up godmother who gave her some skincare advice...

1.      EXFOLIATE. You hear people banging on about it, but you don’t do it. WHY?! There are lots of exfoliators out there, get one that’s not got microbeads in (they are proper rubbish for the environment) and you’ll be grand. Exfoliate twice a week on your body, once a week on your face. You’ll be buffing (note: ‘buffing’ not ‘scrubbing’) away dead skin and allowing your lovely smooth fresh skin to shine through and look dewy and radiant. Exfoliating improves the texture of your skin but also brightens it and your make-up will apply so much smoother. Something fine and bitty with a salt-like texture. I’ve told people to use table salt in a pinch, and I still use it to exfoliate my legs on occasion (my jeans ALWAYS dye my legs blue) so there’s nothing wrong with maybe a shower cream or moisturiser with salt in my book… which leads to…

2.      MOISTURISE! Immediately after washing, so within the first 3 minutes of your bare butt getting out of the shower or bath. The desert has cracks in it because there’s no moisture, right? So stick some moisturise back in your face! Dry skin is practically begging for nourishment, so give it what it needs. There are oil-based moisturisers AND oil-free moisturisers. If your skin is super dry, get an oil-based one. If it’s not, try an oil-free one. If you find that your skin is too oily using the oil-based, ditch it for less oil. And if your skin is still dry using a water-based one, get an oil-based one. It’s that simple! If your applying make-up in a quick pinch, take a look at a serum that will sink into your skin quicker. Superdrug's own brand and no7 do fab ones.

3.      FOUNDATION! Waterproof and oil-control foundations can suck the precious moisture out of your skin. There’s no one wonder product so stop buying anything and everything available; it's usually all absolutely useless marketing. Your painting will only look as good as the canvas underneath it and so your skin needs to be hydrated for your make-up to look good; it can only look as hydrated as it is as you can't fake it, so taking the time with your skincare will always improve your final make-up look.

4.      CONCEALER. Use it after your foundation. There’s no make-up police that will come after you for using concealer first, but the idea of concealer is that you use it for areas of your face that aren’t even. So your foundation is for making your skin even, and thus it makes sense to apply concealer after, just to the areas that need it, no? Concealer can be really drying too so best to just use a smidge of it, or else that flaky cakey look that we all hate will rear its beastly head.

5.      POWDER. Do not, I repeat, DO NOT USE A POWDER PUFF. The powder can cling to your dry skin and make you look scaly which is not the look we’re going for. Instead, get yourself some little oil blotting papers for oily areas. You literally just press them to your face (DO NOT SMOOSH) to absorb and most have the thinnest little layer of translucent powder on them to help you out. The powder will cling to your dry skin and make is SUPER noticeable. Also, powder puffs from compacts; eww! Imagine the bacteria that has been transferred from your face to the puff, and then all that bacteria are using that puff as a sun lounger; then they transfer from your face to the puff, and then from the puff to the compact powder. ARGH! No no no no-no-no. Oil sheets. Much better.

Dry skin and foundation; the love story that you thought was set for doom, but all came good in the end….! To book a 1-2-1 makeup lesson with me, contact me here. You can also purchase a voucher as a gift on this link.