
Teen skin can get oily and prone to breakouts. Wash your
face morning and night with a mild cleanser. Try an herbal or fruit
face scrub or clay mask to open and cleanse the pores once a week.
Complete your routine with an oil-free moisturizer. And in the
morning, use sunscreen with an SPF of 15 or more. To keep blemishes in
check dab on a lotion or zit zapper stick with salicylic acid. Don't
overly dry out oily skin with harsh astringents. And don't over-tan or
intentionally burn your skin to dry out blemishes. You're skin is
delicate and how you take care of your skin now will show years from
now.
How much makeup is “Just Enough”?
Teens are exposed to TV, fashion magazines, rock stars and films.
Everyone is wearing makeup and teens coming into her own will want to
too. But how much is too much? You'll have to check with your parents
and your school for any particular makeup rules. It's best when you're
beginning to wear makeup to keep it subtle, but do experiment. Add a
little glimmer and shine, and for evening some glitter. All the lines
have them currently so explore the counters for what fits your
coloring and price range.
- Concealer: For under eyes use a lightweight wand, pencil or stick.
You can correct undertones by using yellow or green corrector for red
tones, and orange corrector for blue tones. Apply with your finger or
an applicator brush. Covering blemishes calls for a dryer concealer. A
dryer concealer will cover longer and better. Go for skin tone on this
one. And remember a shade on the yellow side corrects red. A trick is
to use a lip brush or Q'tip to apply, then dip the applicator in some
powder and dab on over the concealer.
- Foundation and powder: If you need to wear foundation, choose a
lightweight, non-oily liquid or gel stick that matches your skin tone.
If you are very light, don't depend on a foundation to darken your
skin. It will leave a demarcation line around your jaw. To give your
face more color, add some bronzer in either stick, powder, gel or
liquid to temples, cheeks, jaw, and a dab on the nose, where the sun
would normally tan you. Do use a little under your chin and neck to
even out the look. Use a loose, or pressed powder to match your skin
tone or translucent that works with all skin tones. Keep a pressed
powder or oil blotting papers with you during the day to stay fresh,
give your makeup staying power, and keep oily skin in check.
- Blush
comes in powder, gel, liquid or stick. Using your fingers or a
brush apply to the apple of your cheek and blend with a sponge, cotton
ball or your fingers.
- Eye Shadow: Here's where you can have some fun. Look at the irises of
your eyes. What colors are in them? I bet if you have brown eyes,
there's some gold and rust there. Play up the subtle colors within
your eye but don't compete with your eye color by adding turquoise
blue to your gray blue eyes. Try gray or navy instead. Rule of thumb,
stay with neutral beige, bisque, soft lavender, peach, and brown for
daytime and add pizzazz for the evening or parties. Using your finger,
a sponge tip, or brush, stroke the shadow across the lid and blend up
and out. Don't go too dark, you'll look like you've borrowed your
mother's makeup. For summer, bright colors are in as well as bronze,
gold and rust. Line the eyes with color and keep the lid and crease
neutral.
- Mascara and Brow should be in clear or brown. Try Brown mascara. Brush
on and separate the lashes. Your brows should be full and rich right
now. If you feel you need to tweeze and get permission, then use this
system. Align a pencil from the corner of your nostril straight up to
the inside corner of your eye. That's where your brow should begin.
Now place the pencil from the corner of the nostril to the outside of
the iris of the eye. That is the arch area and from the corner of the
nostril to the outside of the eye is where your brow ends. The nose
bridge and from the arch to the tail of the brow are usually where
there are stray hairs. If your brows are unruly, then think about
tweezing. But remember, sometimes it doesn't grow back, so be cautious
and delicate and tweeze one at a time, pulling with the growth of the
brow hair. Usually a slanted tweezer works best. Use a cotton ball
saturated with alcohol to sanitize the tweezer during usage.
- Lip-gloss and lipstick can be in coral, orange, bronze, peach, brown
pink, beige, pink and berry. Reds and dark shades can be too much
right now. You probably don't need to line your lips just yet, but you
can use a liner close to your lip color to fill in the entire lip and
then add gloss for more staying power.
- Here's another trick for
body sheen with sunscreen. Mix a sunscreen
with at least SPF 15 with liquid bronzer or darker foundation and some
loose glitter in gel, or powder form. Apply it like you would body
lotion.
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