Makeup and Beauty Blog | Makeup Reviews, Swatches and How-To Makeup

A beauty blog blooming with fresh makeup reviews, swatches and beauty tips from your friendly neighborhood beauty addict

What You Need to Have a Makeup Kit Like the Pros

by 8 Comments

Today Bethany North (aka San Antonio’s best makeup artist) of Face By Bethany shows us what the pros keep in their makeup kits.

Makeup kit like a pro

For all you beauty divas out there looking for flawless makeup application every time, it helps to stock your beauty kit like a pro.

This army of supplies will never leave you lacking. Pencils ready?

Skincare

Many pros carry their moisturizers in small plastic jars, or they look until they find smaller sample sizes of their favorite products.

“You’re going to want to have an eye makeup remover, eye cream, face moisturizer, shine control lotion, lip balm, and a body lotion.”

palette

Foundation palette

To be a pro makeup artist, you’ll need a wide range of foundations to choose from, so get several shades of correctors, concealers, foundations in different varieties and formulas, tinted moisturizers, and loose powders.

If you’re using solid foundation sticks, you can slice off pieces of them to place in your foundation palette.

Here’s a great foundation palette choice from Amazon.

Blush

You’ll definitely want a full range of cheek colors, too, along with different varieties like powders, creams, gels, or shimmers. You can also mix in a blush with a clear lip color for a dramatic hue.

Eyes

When it comes to doing eyes, you’ll want to have a huge number of eye colors and pigments at your disposal. Make sure that you arrange each palette by shade family so that you’re not getting lost when you’re doing a makeup application, and always include cotton swabs.

Look to get a variety of eye pencils, gel eyeliners, both black AND brown mascaras, false eyelashes, eyelash glue, brow gels, brow pencils, alternate eyeliner colors, and darker shadow shades that you can use as liners.

Lips

Make sure that you always have some alternate colors with you, like black lipstick, to spice up any occasion. Look to have at least 20 different shades of lip colors in your kit, which you can mix to create even more. Include in that lip shimmers, lip glosses, and lip pencils.

“To easily carry a huge collection of lipsticks with you, simply slice pieces off and place them into the palette.”

You can learn how to make your own clever lip palette from this YouTube video, even better! 🙂

lippalette

Tools

You’ll need a complete set of brushes, a spray-on brush cleaner, makeup sponges, cotton swabs, cotton pads, tweezers, an eyelash curler, disposable mascara wands, and brow trimming scissors.

For the Girl Scout in you

Here are some extras to help you always be prepared…

“Be sure to include a hand disinfectant, baby wipes, breath mints, nail polish, nail polish remover, a hand mirror, and eye drops — just to make your life that much easier!”

Did you get all that?

And make sure that you bring some Ziploc bags to store things and rubber bands to hold your lip glosses and pencils together. You can also get extra nerdy and use a label maker to make sure that all of your supplies are in clear order.

Take time to practice your applications over and over again to find what works best for you, and you’ll never be lost among your army of beauty goodies.

Good luck and Godspeed! 🙂

This post was written by Bethany North of Face by Bethany, a San Antonio makeup artist and licensed esthetician who specializes in bridal makeup. She’s loved makeup her whole life but became even more passionate about it when she started working in the skin care field. She lives with her boyfriend and five-year-old Chihuahua Frankie (who’s not very nice to strangers).

10 Days of Giveaways: Comment to Win Philosophy 3-in-1 Shower Gels

by 245 Comments

The giveaway is now closed, and I’m contacting the winner by e-mail. Good luck!

makeup-and-beauty-blog-10-days-of-giveaways-rock-and-beach

One philosophy on Hawaii

There’s a chain of restaurants here in Hawaii that specializes in chili and rice. It’s called Zippy’s, and there’s at least one in every neighborhood.

Hawaii is a place of contrasts, which is a reason why I love it, but those contrasts can be a turnoff for visitors expecting an easily definable Polynesian paradise.

On the one hand, Hawaii has the grass skirts, coconut trees, fresh fruit and Hawaiian music portrayed in TV and movies, but it’s also an incredibly isolated, integrated (not just diverse) land with dozens of cultural influences contributing to create a place unlike any other in the world, where the locals (a local is anyone from the islands but can be a person of any ethnicity) speak a dialect of Pidgin English that’s probably more Pidgin than English, and Zippy’s can sell millions of bowls of Texas-style chili over white rice.

And a lot of the time, not even the locals know when or from where a particular food or phrase appeared, as if one day they woke up and everyone around them was eating chili with chopsticks, dipping Portuguese sweet bread into it and having fresh cut mangoes for desert. 🙂

Today’s giveaway

Ten Days of Giveaways keeps on chuggin’, my lil’ chocolate haupia pies!

Today’s giveaway lets you indulge day or night without having to worry about how all that decadence will make your thighs look in your bikini.

8-philosophy

philosophy-a-diet-you-can-live-with

The Prize

Two lucky ladies will each win Philosophy’s A Diet You Can Live With shower gel set.

Each set comes with three Philosophy 3-in-1 Shower Gels in Creme Brulee, Pink Frosted Layer Cake and Fudge Cake (a $30 value), YUM!

How to enter

Entering is easy, and unlike that slice of chocolate cream pie, it’s totally fat free! To enter, just leave a quick comment below about anything at all. Tell me what you did last night, where you’d like to go this summer, your favorite video game or the name of your secret crush!

I’ll choose the two winners at random from among the people who enter by 11:59PM PST tonight (Thursday).

Powodzenia!

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

The giveaway is now closed, and I’m contacting the winner by e-mail. Good luck!

Poolside Champ: Banana Boat Ultra Defense Continuous Spray Sunblock

by 12 Comments

Banana Boat Ultra Defense SPF 30

OOH! I have to tell you about Banana Boat Ultra Defense Continuous Spray Sunblock ($9.99).

It’s probably the best waterproof aerosol sunblock I’ve ever used and has only a couple little downsides.

What I like

First, the good stuff — it’s a broad-spectrum sun protectant offering both UVA/UVB protection and comes in three potencies, SPF 30, 50 and the uber-powerful 85.

SPF is all well and good, but why I really love it is because it works like a lotion and not a flighty spray. Most of the spray sunscreens I’ve used before are too light and watery, requiring hella frequent reapplication, almost like they evaporate away even when I’m not playing around in the water, but Banana Boat didn’t just stamp “waterproof” on the bottle and call it good; this stuff is WATERPROOF INCARNATE and lasts for hours and hours.

I like spraying it on, too, because it feels cool on the skin, kinda like one of those water misters at the mall, and it’s enriched with Aloe Vera, which means a lot to me. I’m a firm believer in Aloe’s ability to help heal mild sunburns.

Even though it’s rub-free and all you have to do is quickly spray it everywhere you want it, I still like to spray some into a cupped hand, rub my palms together and apply the product to my face with my fingertips. It’s easier for me to get it up into my hairline that way and around the back of my ears without spritzing any onto my lips (it doesn’t taste great, but I like the light floral fragrance) or into the corners of my eyes.

Unlike every other aerosol sunblock I’ve used before, a little really DOES go a long way, which may explain its main downside…

What I don’t like

Did I mention that it’s waterproof? Nay, not just waterproof; it hates water like Tabs hates the vet, and perhaps consequently it feels slightly greasy.

But if you’re looking for a good all-purpose waterproof sunscreen you can apply in a hot second, Banana Boat Ultra Defense SPF 30-85 gets a BIG gold star.

Banana Boat Ultra Defense Continuous Spray Sunblock

Price: $9.99 (juuuust under $10), 6 fl. oz.
Use: A waterproof continuous spray sunblock with Aloe
Makeup and Beauty Blog Rating: A+

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

A MAC Wedding Makeover

by 15 Comments

In this post Audrey from Pop Culture & Make-Up Addict shares a bridesmaid-inspired makeup look featuring MAC Cosmetics.

mbb_face-final

My makeup addiction started about a year ago, so I’m still learning which colors go with what.

When I had the honor of being a bridesmaid for the wedding of one of my best friends, I thought it would be fun to visit my local MAC salon for a makeup consultation.

Our dresses were a bright fuschia, and I wasn’t sure what eyeshadow colors to wear. I had the makeup consultation done a week before the wedding to give myself enough time to play around with everything and decide on my look.

The MAC makeup artist recommended the following…

  • Eyes: Shale on the lid, Seedy Pearl as the highlight, Blackberry in the crease, Macroviolet fluidline on the lash lines
  • Cheeks: Stark Naked blush
  • Lips: Plum Dandy lipstick with Morning Glory lustreglass (can’t remember the lip pencil)

I definitely liked her cheek and lip recommendations, so I picked up those… I liked the eyes, too, but thought they were a little too purple and wanted something more neutral.

With the artist’s help, I finally decided on the following look for my eyes. It allowed me to use some colors I already had in my collection.

  • Seedy Pearl on the inner third of the lid
  • Shale on the outer two thirds of the lid
  • Satin Taupe in the crease, outer V, and lower lash line
  • Yogurt as the highlight
  • Phloof! in the inner tear duct and a touch in the arch under the brow

Here’s how I looked on the day of the wedding!

mbb_day-final

And here’s a closer look. 🙂

mbb_eyes-final

Products used

Face

  • Chanel Pro Lumiere Foundation in Beige
  • MAC Select Moisturecover Concealer in NW25
  • MAC Mineral Skinfinish Natural in Medium Plus
  • MAC Stark Naked blush

Eyes

  • MAC Phloof! eyeshadow
  • MAC Seedy Pearl eyeshadow
  • MAC Shale eyeshadow
  • MAC Satin Taupe eyeshadow
  • MAC Yogurt eyeshadow
  • Bobbi Brown Black Ink gel eyeliner
  • MAC Engraved powerpoint pencil (waterline and lower lash line)
  • MAC Cork eyeshadow (brows)
  • Maybelline Full & Soft mascara

Lips

  • MAC Plum Dandy lipstick
  • MAC Morning Glory lustreglass

How closely do you follow the recommendations you get from makeup artists at makeovers? Do you follow them exactly or make tweaks here and there?

This post was written by Audrey, a product marketing professional, makeup junkie, and avid TV watcher. Follow her musings on her blog, Pop Culture & Make-Up Addict. She’s also a marathon runner and blogs about her running adventures on Run Audrey Run.

Copyright © 2025 Makeup and Beauty Blog. Get in touch.