Miko’s Makeup Bag: General Tips

Greetings beautiful ladies! While you’re here get some tips from Makeup Artist, Miko Fields. She dishes some very useful ways to deal with puffy eyes & uneven skin tone as well as a number of other tips that will come in handy and product suggestions you may want to look into. These are tips to help you both on a daily basis and while getting ready for a night out on the town!

Puffy Eyes, Dark Circles, & Uneven Skin Tone

• If you wake up and find that your eyes look puffy, you might try grabbing something cold from your fridge and putting it on your eyes for 10 minutes. The cold helps to reduce the puffiness.  

• Reduce the yawning. Yawning brings tears to your eyes and excessive yawning can bring puffiness just as if you had cried a lot. A good product for reducing the puffiness around your eyes is MAC’s Fast Response Eye Cream. 

• Since most dark under eye circles are hereditary, the best thing to do for under eye circles is to use a good concealer. My favorite concealers for hiding dark circles include MAC’s Studio Finish, Eve Pearl Salmon Concealer and the Make Up For Ever Full Cover Concealer. Remember to always BLEND the product well. Dab the concealer under your eye and with a clean finger and blend the edges. Then set the product by buffing on a loose powder to avoid creasing and to make sure it lasts all day.

• Uneven skin tone can be a pain in the side but easily dealt with! I recommend using a stick or cream, full coverage concealer over dark acne spots, applying tinted moisturizer, such as Smashbox’s tinted moisturizer, with a MAC 190 brush and a powder foundation, such as MAC Studio Fix Powder plus Foundation, using the MAC 187 brush. 

• For chocolate women who suffer from dark acne spots: a liquid foundation may not provide the amount of coverage you need and probably won’t last as long as a stick or cream one. And for lighter to medium toned women, the thin skin under your eye may make it easier for green-ish or blue-ish veins to become visible. If you deal with this, try a light to darker matte orange blush or eyeshadow over the area before your concealer and continue with the steps I listed before. If you have oily skin, I recommend using a silicone based primer such as MAC’s Matte.

Bright Eyes, Lips, & Cheeks!
One of the best things about women of color is that we can wear a wide range of colors on the face. Here are some products you may like in every shade of the rainbow.

• Red and Orange are the easiest colors to wear from the rainbow. You can wear anything from a peachy orange to a brick red. Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics’ Lip Tars in Stalker or Strutter. Try them with a simple winged liner and mascara duo or a gold eyeshadow for a “night out on the town” look. Lighter and medium tones may love Revlon’s ColorBurst Lipstick in #080 Coral while chocolate women often find MAC’s Viva Glam I to be a beautiful red for everyday usage. For a red blush, try MAC powder blush in Frankly Scarlet or sweep on an orange like NARS’ blush in Taj Mahal or NYX’s powder blush in Cinnamon. Finally, for a bold smokey eye, try a red shadow like Make Up For Ever Eyeshadow in #158 or an orange like MAC’s eyeshadows in Rule or Coppering. 

• Yellow is a color best saved for the eyes. Yellow-gold and yellow-orange look great on all tones. For a really nice yellow gold, try Make Up For Ever eyeshadow in #10 Yellow Gold. 

• Green and Blue are also colors best left for the eyes. My favorite blue eyeshadows are MAC’s Atlantic Blue and Freshwater. These make for BEAUTIFUL smokey eyes when paired with a blackened purple or a simple black. A few gorgeous green shadows that seem to work for everyone are MAC’s Humid, NYX’s loose eyeshadow in Green or Ben Nye’s Lumiere Luxe Powder in Jade. Also, don’t be afraid to try out a green or blue eyeliner. Indigo, a blue-violet, and violet are the last two colors of the rainbow. They can be worn alone or you might try blending a violet, like NYX’s loose eyeshadow in Goddess, into an indigo, like MAC’s eyeshadow in Contrast. Then line your eyes with an indigo colored eyeliner, like Urban Decay’s 24/7 eyeliner in Rockstar or a dark, carbon black like MAC’s eyeliner in Smoulder. 

Neutral Makeup for Eyes, Lips, & Cheeks!

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Would it be too much to set my alarm for midnight to shop the Jason Wu for Target collection? Didn’t think so.