How To Perfect 24 Hour Makeup

Does your makeup slide off your face mid-morning? Do you always slink to the loos at work to re-apply at lunchtime? There are likely a million reasons why: perhaps your skin is too dry, and so your skin is thirsty, thirsty for any bit of moisture that you put onto it - so it quite literally drinks up your blush. Perhaps your skin is too oily, so your makeup doesn't get a good anchor on your skin - which means that it'll slide right off as soon as you get a little bit warm or a little bit sweaty. Maybe your skin is dry and flaky and is long overdue a good peel.

The Prepwork

Firstly, you gotta do a little bit of prep. Moisturize your skin, be it dry, oil, combination or a mixture of all of the above, with the right kind of moisturizer for your skin type. Dab it lightly onto your skin. Massage it into skin it tiny little circles, then let it sink into skin until bone dry. Don't bother trying to apply any makeup until the moisturizer has sunk in, otherwise, your makeup'll just slip all over the place. If you're stuck with the kind of skin that just does not make it past the 60 minute mark, let alone 8 or 24 hours, then you'll need to exfoliate thoroughly (using a product with small beads, otherwise you'll cause more damage to your skin) or use an at-home facial peel before moisturizing.

Once you've moisturized, lightly apply a primer (mattifying or highlighting or glowy depending on the end result you're after) and then you can get to work. If you also have to deal with red spots, skin that's uneven in tone or sun spots, pop on a thin layer of CC cream, BB cream or a correcting fluid before your foundation - basically, the key is to layer, layer, and then layer a little bit more rather than putting on more of the product that you want to stay on for longer in the hope of compensating for the rub-off. It works the same as layering thin layers of nail polish rather than slapping on one thick layer of nail polish.

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So, if you want to use a primer, a highlighter, a foundation, moisturizer, blush and so on, you should use light, thin layers of these rather than just a thick layer of foundation in the hopes that it'll cover everything/make everything look better. Once you've put your primer on, and any additional products you want to use, you can apply foundation - a liquid product, ideally, followed by a pressed powder (not loose, never loose) and a powder blush to add color to the apples of your cheeks. 

Eye Love You, Makeup!

It's easier to get makeup to stay in place than you'd think. Switch your kohl pencils for gel formulas and draw outside of the waterline on the skin, rather than on the waterline - keep in mind that anything on the waterline will just get washed away. If you're using eye shadow, use shadows rather than cream formulas and start with a primer rather than just the shadow. Don't have any eyeshadow primer? A regular primer will do, or, you could use a little bit of foundation. Basically, anything that puts a barrier between your skin and the shadow. To make the shadow itself last longer, dip your brush into water before using - you want it to be damp, not dripping, and it'll last far longer. For cream shadow that lasts? Layer it with a matching powder shadow. As for liquid liners and gel liners, set them in place with a tiny little bit of matching powder.

Blush

With regards to blush, the type of blush you use all depends on the type of look you're after. So if it's perfect, pore free skin, you'll want to end with a light dusting of powder blush - using a cream blush on top of all of that perfect prep work will simply drag all of that hard work off of your skin. If you want color that's more intense, but that lasts all day, you could use a liquid stain. They tend to go on quite sheer, so you'll have to layer them and layer them, but they will last for ages as they're really highly pigmented - the problem with this is that if you put primer/foundation/powder on top, you'll dull the color and you won't be able to appreciate the hue.

Lips

We all know that to make lipstick last longer, you just draw round your lips with lip liner, color 'em in, then use a lip brush to paint the lipstick onto the lips, right? Yep, but to make them last even longer, apply a super thin layer of foundation to the lips first. It's just an extra layer of adhesive, so to speak, to give your gorgeous color extra staying power for all those kisses. Once your lipstick is in place, apply a layer of clear gloss or a clear cover lip coat.

Novelties

Novelty makeup items, like glittery shadows and sparkly liners aren't going to last as long as you'd like, but, just use what you've learned here - layer them with matching cream shadows, and use damp brushes to apply. Layer, my friends, layer!

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Finally, to keep everything in place once your whole look is complete, you can either spritz your face very gently with hairspray (with your eyes and mouth firmly closed and a window open) or a makeup setting spray. You'd be amazed at the difference these can make - just make sure that you don't need to add a highlighter or anything afterwards as it's virtually impossible to apply makeup once you've added a setting spray. Happy partying, ladies!