How to Get Natural Looking Skin With Makeup

from wikiHow - The How to Manual That You Can Edit

Everyone wants to have beautiful, healthy skin that looks and feels soft and completely natural. This goal, however, can often be hard to achieve if one suffers from skin problems such as acne. Despite this minor hindrance, this article will provide you with the tools to mask blemishes for healthy-looking skin. I use the following steps every day to hide a few post-acne marks and nobody ever realizes that I am wearing makeup! I'm always told that I have beautiful skin. If you follow my regimen, the same will happen to you!

Steps

1. Before you apply ANY makeup, make sure that your skin is clean! Wash your face with a foaming cleanser (soap tends to dry out skin) and follow with an alcohol-free toner. If you have a specific skin regimen or are on some sort of skin-care system, continue to do that.
   
2. Once you've cleaned your face, use an oil-free moisturizer all over your face and neck. Neutrogena makes great moisturizers that leave your skin feeling smooth all day. Apply a generous amount to your skin and rub in gently. The moisturizer beneath the makeup makes your skin look natural and clean and also soothes flaky, dry skin, which assists in avoiding the cake-face look.
   
3. Wash your hands with an antibacterial soap as you will be touching your face.
   
4. Use a liquid concealer that closely matches your skin tone (CoverGirl's Fresh Complexion concealer is wonderful, inexpensive, and oil-free). Using a sponge or the soft tip of a concealer pen or brush, gently dab a fair amount of concealer onto the blemish you wish to cover.
   
5. Next, use the tip of your finger to softly pat down the concealer onto the imperfection. This helps to blend the concealer into your skin for a more natural look. If you feel that the blemish was not completely covered after doing this once, repeat the steps until the imperfection appears to be gone (if you are covering a pimple, repeat this until the bump loses its red appearance -- adding too much concealer, however, will give your skin a cakey look).
   
6. Once your skin looks clear and beautiful, feel free to use a loose mineral powder on concealed spots and add a little blush to your face so that you don't look washed out. Good luck!
   

Tips

• Makeup isn't the solution to unhealthy skin. Although the previous steps will give you natural-looking skin, the best thing you can do for yourself is to drink plenty of water and follow a skin regimen daily to get rid of large pores, blemishes, dry skin, and acne.
  
• Avoid using too much concealer; it will make your skin look artificial.
  
• ALWAYS use a concealer that matches your skin tone. If you don't, the color of the concealer will stand out and more attention will be drawn to your skin.
  
• Try to use oil-free concealers as these prevent breakouts.
  
• Always wash your face before applying makeup; this will reduce the risk of breakouts.
  
• If you feel that you need to touch up your makeup, use a little moisturizer before you apply concealer.
  
• If you are going out into the sun, use a sunscreen that contains moisturizer (Neutrogena's Healthy Defense SPF 30 Daily Moisturizer is great).
  

Article provided by wikiHow, a collaborative writing project to build the world's largest, highest quality how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Get Natural Looking Skin With Makeup. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.