Di­anne John

To most women I meet, ap­ply­ing make-up seems like a daunt­ing task. Some ply on too much prod­uct, oth­ers too lit­tle and many throw in the tow­el and go bare faced re­gard­less of what oth­ers may say or think.

Strik­ing a bal­ance with your make-up ap­pli­ca­tion rou­tine is key to look­ing great, it af­fords you time to do oth­er things you deem nec­es­sary and re­moves the drudgery from the whole dai­ly make-up ex­pe­ri­ence. Great make-up starts with great skin. Ex­fo­li­at­ing dead sur­face cells off the skin on a dai­ly ba­sis is a good place to be­gin as you pre­pare your skin to re­ceive make-up prod­ucts re­sult­ing in a more nat­ur­al, less over­done look. Make-up should glide ef­fort­less­ly on the skin.

Sim­pli­fy­ing your make-up rou­tine can be re­al­ly easy. Some women with blem­ish free skin can skip the foun­da­tion process en­tire­ly by smooth­ing on a tint­ed mois­turis­er with their fin­gers: oth­ers with dark un­der eye cir­cles or a few mi­nor blem­ish­es can eas­i­ly tap on con­ceal­er on­ly on the af­fect­ed ar­eas and swish on some loose translu­cent pow­der to set. There are al­so love­ly two-in-one pressed pow­der foun­da­tions on the mar­ket that can be ap­plied with a few brush strokes or pat­ted on­to the face with a puff mak­ing ap­pli­ca­tion a breeze, (my favourite choice for years).

Creamy eye shad­ows help speed up the process when you are on the run. Tap on one spe­cif­ic colour of cream based eye shad­ow on­ly on the eye­lid area tak­ing care not to go be­yond your eye­lid crease, blend well with your fin­ger­tips or skip the eye shad­ows en­tire­ly. Dot on a creamy blush on­to the ap­ples of your cheeks and blend away the edges with your fin­gers, this type of for­mu­la eas­i­ly be­comes one with the skin and gives the most nat­ur­al ef­fect. (Looks like you're blush­ing from with­in.)

Choose to line on­ly the top eye­lid or the bot­tom eye­lid with a brown colour stay eye pen­cil, or do not line at all; it all de­pends on your time fac­tor. Skip the lip lin­er and ap­ply a pig­ment­ed lip gloss, keep­ing with­in the pa­ra­me­ters of your lip line, or you can dot on some lip­stick on the mid­dle of your bot­tom lip, work it in­to your lips with your fin­ger­tips and add a gen­er­ous dol­lop of clear lip balm or gloss over that. Swish on a light coat of black mas­cara on your top lids on­ly and you are all set to face the day with the min­i­mum amount of time and ef­fort.

A few tips to bear in mind would be to steer clear of dark and rich­ly pig­ment­ed for­mu­las, be they lip­sticks, eye shad­ows, blush­es or eye­lin­ers. It is easy to make a no­tice­able mess with dark­er pig­ments and clean up would take a bit more time. Look­ing great for work or a day of shop­ping has nev­er been eas­i­er now that you've got your make up rou­tine on speed di­al.