Get Ready With Me

My relationship with makeup is a love-hate thing. There are times when I love it, and there are times when I hate it. I love putting on makeup and being all girly about the entire process, but at the same time, I hate that it is too much work. I like to think of myself as low maintenance, so putting makeup on for me is usually more out of necessity than anything else. I will skip if I feel I can get away with not having any on. But I will wear makeup if I have to. 

Makeup is not easy for me. In all my years of wearing makeup, I still don’t know the right way to do things. I watch a lot of beauty vloggers to learn their tips and tricks but doing them myself is not as easy as it looks. I try, but it does not always work out the way I see it online. I think the process is something that you get good at with practice, but since I don’t wear makeup all the time, I don’t get the necessary practice I need to be good at it. Then the pandemic happened and with people wearing masks, there was less and less need for me to put makeup on. Now that there are places where people can take off masks, makeup is something that I need to do again. I’m not sure if I remember how to do it right anymore.

These days, those Get Ready with Me videos have become popular among celebrities and influencers. My friend Judith and I did something similar on the Fandesals Podcast (episode embedded below) where we put on makeup as we discussed our routines and the products we use. There was not much time to explain the types of products or the process I use so I decided to share how I put on makeup in this post. Here’s what I do to get ready (makeup-wise):

Skin Care + Lip Balm – Since this is a post about makeup, let me just briefly share what I do for skincare. I can’t put on makeup without first washing my face and putting on my skincare products. These vary from time to time depending on how much of a rush I’m in, but the important thing is to have clean skin and moisturize before anything else. I also put on tinted lip balm, which doubles as my lip color when I’m too lazy to put on makeup. On lazy days I use a moisturizer with hyaluronic acid, but when I have time, I use the Ponds Age Miracle set to prep my face and a Nivea lip balm.

Tinted Sunscreen – These days I can’t go anywhere without sunscreen. Since I am often too lazy to put on makeup, I opt for tinted sunscreen so that I don’t need to put on anything else on days when makeup is not needed. For this, I often use Belo Tinted Sunscreen.

Foundation – I don’t use foundation often, but when I do it’s usually a light layer only. I dab dots of it on my skin and spread it out evenly all over my face. Sometimes I use just my fingers but sometimes I also use a beauty blender. My go-to foundation these days is L’Oréal (the True Match foundation).

Concealer – I only use this to cover up the dark circles under my eyes so I place a little there blended with a bit of lip tint that I use as a color corrector. I let it set for a bit before blending either with my fingers or a beauty blender. I am currently using Maybelline for this one, but I’m not too happy with it, so I might change brands soon.

Highlighter – This is something I only learned to use recently. I use it to highlight my cheekbones and a little for my browbones and the bridge of my nose. It does give my face a bit of a lift and it’s also a way to wake up my eyes when I put a little in the inner corners. I usually use Maybelline for this, but lately, I use Ever Bilena. 

Blush – I used to apply powder blush often but lately I’ve been using a lip tint as a blush, mostly so that I don’t have to bring that much makeup with me when I’m out because I use the same products on my face (as lip color, blush, color corrector, and eyeshadow). I dab a bit of color on the apples of my cheeks and blend them with a beauty blender. If I want to lift my face, I dab it at an angle to emphasize my cheekbones. The lip tint brand I currently use for this is Colourette.

Eyebrows – As they say here in the Philippines, kilay is life. You can go out without makeup but always be sure that your brows are on point. I don’t have many brows since I had my thyroid issues, but what little I have I try to fill out with either a brow pencil or a brow mascara. For the pencil, I use one from Maybelline and I use Etude House for the brow mascara.

Lips – As I mentioned earlier, I use a lip tint that also doubles as my blush and eyeshadow color. Normally I don’t do eyeshadow but I usually use my lip tint when I feel like it. Sometimes if I’m not too lazy I also use a lip liner to fill in my lips before the lip tint. 

Setting Powder – When I was in college, I only used face powder as my makeup. This time, powder is the last step in my routine that helps me set the whole thing in place. I just tap the powder on my face lightly with a brush and I’m all set! The brand I use for this is Perfect Diary. I discovered it online and it’s the only setting powder that has given me this smoothness to my face after application. It doesn’t feel like you have anything on, and it sets the makeup perfectly! No need to retouch for the whole day!

That’s the whole “get-ready-with-me” process that I go through when I need to put on makeup during the day. Usually, I go for the bare minimum of lip balm, tinted sunscreen, and eyebrow pencil but if I need to, that’s the way I go. I prefer to not put on eyeliner and mascara since I wear glasses and tend to rub my eyes a lot. I’m also not very particular about the brands. I’m the type who is open to experimenting with new brands and if I find something that works, I will stick to it until I discover another. It’s more about how it works on my face than the name on the packaging. 

How do you get ready and put on makeup? Are there any tips and tricks you’d like to share? Leave a comment and help a girl out!

Here is the Fandesals episode I mentioned earlier. Happy viewing!