Beauty Basics: Primers and Foundation, part 2

Some points to remember when choosing your primer and foundation. There are a lot of products out there, and depending on where you shop (or how you shop) you're going to have to know what questions to ask and what things you need out of a foundation. Salespeople at places like Sephora and Ulta are hit-and-miss, in terms of their knowledge of the products; and the folks at department store makeup counters will try and sell you the brand at their particular counter. And if you shop online, your knowledgeable salesperson is essentially Google...which can send you into information overload.

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4/5, based on 1 review

Beauty Basics: Primers and Foundation, part 1

And now to the actual “makeup application” portion of the tutorial series :D Now that I’ve covered overall health and skin care, today I’ve got an overview of primer, corrector, concealer, and foundation. Don’t worry if you still feel lost after this one, if you’re utterly brand new to makeup. Next week I’ll go into a little more detail, so that you’ll be ready to head to the beauty counter (or online storefront) and start selecting your base-layer items.

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My Daily Routines

Rather than list off every single product I use every single day, I’m going to list off my “everyday-use” stuff here. I’m also going to review the products, and will include dates (so that if I suddenly switch foundation shades, or the cleanser I use, you’ll still know what looks used which products.) This will also prevent me from inadvertently stuffing up mentions of this or that product if I think a product’s, “okay”, but not fantastic enough to provide quite that much publicity. (Case in point: my current everyday-use mascara, which is good…but I get tubes of it in just about every kit I buy from the company. If I were paying for just the mascara, I’d use something else; but since I essentially get these tubes already at a fraction of their cost, I might as well use them. Right? Right.) These are my “used daily unless otherwise indicated” products.

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3/5, based on 1 review

Bare Escentuals’ 2002 Grand kit

BE's 2002 Grand kit
(official photography)

• Manufacturer: Bare Escentuals
• Where Available: QVC
• When Available: spring 2002
• Contains: two eyeshadows, one blush, one foundation, one face powder, one primer, and three brushes
• Cost/Amount: $99
• Would you purchase again: yes

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Using color correctors

If your face has age spots, overly large freckles, birthmarks, rosacea, scars, acne…and let’s face it, who among us doesn’t have something that stands out in ways we don’t quite love…you’ve got some choices: cope, conceal, or correct. While the beauty market is flooded with products for eyes and lips and cheeks, and of course foundation is readily available, the most readily-available option is cover-up…not correction. This is the age of Photoshop, of quick and easy red-eye correction in digital photos. So why is it not as easy to find corrector options? Many times you can get better results with a color corrector than with any cover-up option.

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