Amp Up Your Make Up and Go Beyond Lip Gloss

Not all of us have the ideal oval face shape. But no matter what your face shape you can give the illusion of having the correct proportions, and fix any out of whack features you feel you have! Lets start by buying the right products!

While you can go out and buy fancy highlighting and contouring creams and powders, its just as easy and effective to buy a foundation two shades lighter and two shades darker than the one you use regularly. I personally prefer to get a highlighter with a little shimmer, and a matte contour. Try Revlon Skinlights, and Rimmel Stay Matte Foundation. But really play around with whats best for your skin type. You can use liquid foundation, or powders.

A general tip is to apply the contour shade immediately under your jaw line, with the highlighter directly on your jawline. The same goes for cheeks. Contour the hollows of your cheeks. Make the fish face and apply highlighter to your cheek bone. The combination of the two can tone down any problem area. For a slightly large forehead apply contour to the middle of forehead and highlighter on sides.To make you nose appear longer and leaner contour the sides and put a strip of highlighter down the middle.You can use highlighter to brighten up under eyes, or use contour to make a proud chin stand down!This can even be used to make collar bones stand out and make cleavage appear deeper! Whatever you want to stand out, apply highlighter, and to the surrounding area, the contour shade.

Remember though you don't want to look like a patchwork quilt of light and dark. The key is blending. Use a soft touch, a light hand, and step back often to check how your work looks from afar. Apply a good powder over your work to tone down intensity and further blend. I can't stress this enough, blend!

Now to really amp up eyes I'm going to give you two ideas. The first being a new spin on the smoky eye. Instead of going for grays and blacks which can be overly harsh try the same idea but with either shades of plum of shades of brown. You'll need three shades of whatever color you use. A deep, medium, and light-almost t translucent one.

Simply line eyes with deep plum eyeliner. Use a Q-Tip to smudge the line into lash line further.You can extend in a small upward sweep beyond lash line to give a more dramatic effect. I love Revlon's Berry Bloom ColorStay eyeshadow set. It comes with the perfect mix of hues that will stay put up to twelve hours! Using one of the medium shades, sweep shadow all over lid up into crease, but not beyond it. Use the deepest shade very precisely right at lash line, do this in a very very thin line ladies! Now again using the darkest shade of your set sweep shadow into your crease, but not beyond it. Use the lightest shade right under your eyebrow (the brow bone) to highlight it, also put a tiny smidge of this lighter color at the very inside corner of your eye to brighten the look up. Now I love both of these next looks, so try them out yourself and see which you like better for yourself. Using the very lightest shade sweep a tiny bit of shadow under your eyes, like you would liner. Or alternatively use the darkest shadow to line lower eyes the way you did the top lid. Both give a stunning impression.

Another way too really glam up the eyes is with falsies! I like buying the little sets, instead of a whole line of lashes which can look trashy. They sell them at drug stores for under $5, find a set you love and stick with it! Apply a bit of mascara before you put them on, so they have something to grab onto instead of your bare lashes, and definitely put mascara on afterwords! I love Max Factor's Hydrofuge 2000 Calorie mascara in blackest black. It even comes in waterproof! Hold the wand horizontally and get as close to the base of your lashes as you can. Wiggle the wand slowly back and forth as you make your way to the tips of lashes. This insures they get evenly coated and prevents clumps.

Now for lips! Remember to only play up one feature at a time, or it can be a little overwhelming and scary looking! So if you play up the eyes down play the lips. Don't go with a nude lip though, or you'll look out of proportion. Try a high shine clear gloss, or a berry hue. Just nothing too loud, keep it sheer. Should you want to play up your lips however, play down your eyes, but don't leave them bare. You get the idea, right?

For a powerful lip start by putting a sheer translucent powder over them. This will give your color staying power. Now line your lips with a pencil that matches the natural color of your lips! This is another way of giving your lips definition and your color something to hold onto but should your lipstick wear away you won't be left with a trashy ring! It also makes it easier to correct any lip imperfections you may have. If you want bigger lips, line a smidge outside your natural lip line. Same for lips that you feel are too large, line slightly inside your natural lip line. Now pick a hue that screams show stopper you. Fuchsia, classic red, and plum are all bold beautiful colors to play up lips. However you don't need a bold color to show off your lips.

You can use a girlie flirty pink, or even a barely there nude shade. Just be sure after you apply color to close your lips on a tissue. (Put a tissue between lips and make an mmm sound!) Now that you've blotted, apply the color again! This is all to insure maximum wear. Now add a dab of lighter colored, or sheer gloss smack dab in the middle of your lower lip, make another mmm sound, add one more dab and you're good to go! The dab of gloss on your lower lip adds shine, reflecting light making your lips appear bigger. A good trick to make sure you have no lipstick on your teeth: Insert your index finger in your mouth, the pad of your finger touching your two front teeth and two bottom teeth, pucker up and close your lips around it and pull it out! This got rid of any lipstick on your teeth, as well as lipstick lingering on the inside of your lips waiting to migrate to your teeth!

Add a bit of shimmer to collar bones, back, shoulder, and across shoulders and you're good to go! Strut your stuff girl!