10 Makeup Tips EVERYONE should know

Hey everyone, so in today's video I am giving you 10 of like my best makeup tips. These are like game-changing techniques, tips to make your makeup look more seamless, to last longer. I wish I knew these a lot sooner, so let us begin. So for tip number one, I wanted to talk to you guys about something that I think way more people need to talk about. We often spend so much time picking the right foundation, the right concealer, but no one is paying attention to what is going on their face before this. We need to talk about skin prep. If you guys have ever seen my big fat greek wedding, I love this analogy. The analogy is that the man is the head of the family, but the woman is the neck, and she can kind of move the head any way that she would like. It's really funny. I like to think of skin prep as the same thing. Skin prep is the neck and foundation is the head. Skin prep moves the foundation to be a different way depending on what you do. Thin layers of moisture and thin really beautiful skin prep and skincare products completely will change the way that your foundation works. I have tried so many different skin prep and skincare products under makeup that I think I just want to do an entire video on this topic so that no matter what your skincare concern is, what your skin type is, whatever skin issues you're having with your makeup, you will find the right product for you. So make sure that you are subscribed for that upcoming video. I'm really really excited about it, but today I'm going to Now I'm just trying to use this one up. It is expensive. I love it. There are other products that are a little bit less expensive that I also love and really do a good job of prepping the skin, but you can see here this is a liquidy milky essence toner. This is going to really add into your skin without there being a really heavy layer of moisture that creates this awkward film on the skin. It's also a completely customizable product because it layers so beautifully. You can keep adding layers to get more hydration or you could literally just apply this and put sunscreen on if you are more oily. I always make sure to take it up under the eyes and I always take the excess on the neck and on my chest. Also, I always put it onto my lips. This could easily be a tip in and of itself, and I always do this in these videos. I always go way over 10 tips. Taking your essence onto the lips will give you a more moisturized lip because when the lip balm goes on top, it's sealing in moisture rather than just acting as a protectant. A milky toner increases absorption of any other products that you have on top. They're just perfect for under makeup, so we'll get more into that in another video. In that video, I will also be covering sunscreen because sunscreen is so vitally important. Sunscreen and makeup interact in all of the ways you need to make sure that you have sunscreen that lays beautifully under makeup. This is the Haru Haru Wonder SPF 50, non-greasy, more velvety finish. You can see I added only two layers of that Ilia. I am putting on the sunscreen and it's going to act as my moisturizer because some of my other base products are very dewy. Again, if I want to even out my skin and create a good synergy, I don't need 15 layers of dewy product. Again, I'm just taking this all over the face, no white cast. It is so good for sensitive eyes. I love this sunscreen and you can get it reputably on Amazon, which some K-beauty products you can't get reputably on Amazon, but I know for a fact you can get Haru Haru Wonder on Amazon reputably. Here we have the base. Let's move into my next tip. For example, I have the CL Tint and Protect. I have been using this product really on repeat this year. You will certainly see it in Best of Beauty 2025, but with a product like this in this little dropper bottle, and I'm guilty of this too because visually it's nice to be able to show you guys when I put the dropper directly on my face what the texture is like. You know, aesthetically it's pleasing to see in video, but when you guys are just sitting at home, rather than just putting the product directly on the face, it's kind of a two-in-one tip. Again, it's always more than 10 tips. Always take your foundation onto the back of your hand first. I know that some of you guys are probably already doing this, but stick with me here. I'm just taking the IT Cosmetics No. 7 Complexion Brush. You guys, this is a really, really amazing brush. In fact, I have a travel makeup bag video coming soon. I have a feeling that this is going to be in that because it's just so multifunctional. But anyway, so I have my skin tint on the back of my hand, and I'm going to take the product into the brush, and this is actually called prepping the brush. I've learned this from Katie Jane Hughes many years ago, but I had never fully taken the advice until this year. And what you want to do is, again, you really just want to press that product into the brush so that it's kind of saturated very evenly. And you might be thinking, Amanda, why are we doing this? You use less product, I have found, so everything looks seamless for longer because you're using less product. The less product you're using, the less likely it's going to crease and cake up. So again, the next tip that I have for you guys, once you've prepped the brush, is to actually take this brush and put it exactly where you want the most coverage first. This is such an overlooked kind of tip, but you have a good saturation of product on this brush right now. Get it onto the areas where you have the most pigmentation. I don't need a lot of coverage on my forehead. If anything, if I had bangs, like fuller cover bangs, there would not be foundation going on there at all. But I don't. So I am taking it around my nose, which is a very red spot for me, especially this time of year with allergies. And I'm taking it all in this area, really pressing that product in. I get hormonal acne around my chin, so I always like to make sure that area is taken care of. And what's beautiful about this brush is you can really press the product in to your skin, which if you have a lot of peach fuzz, it works really, really well because you're not kind of buffing the product and moving your hair upwards. So kind of pressing the product in and kind of downward motions is always the way I like to do it. But you guys can see here, I really don't, I don't really need that much coverage elsewhere. And I still have all this product on the back of my hand, which I mean, we're going to use it because it's there. Prepping the brush, you really end up starting to get this better idea of how much product you actually need. So it kind of saves you money over time. I'm pressing that all over the face. And by the way, if you do get red ears, especially if you find that, you know, when you're sweating or when you're moving around a lot, some of us get like our ears start to get red. Mine don't, which is why I don't really take a ton of foundation onto them. But sometimes just hitting it with a little foundation can help. Just be mindful of any earrings or anything you have. So again, now I'm just taking the excess onto my forehead, just evening things out, but really not really, there's barely product on there. And this product is not going to sit in my fine lines on my forehead because there's just barely anything there anyway. And in fact, I got to say this sunscreen gives you such a velvety base. Really, really lovely. There we have it. You guys, I used the product right where I needed it. Now moving on to concealer, I actually have an entire video dedicated to my top tips to concealer. So I'm going to leave that in the cards for you guys. If you are really having trouble with concealer, I highly recommend checking out that video. But one tip that I did talk about in that video, and this is like one of my favorite tips. It's something that I started doing, gosh, I want to say like 10 years ago now, and it kind of changed everything for me, is whenever I apply my concealer, I apply it to the area where I want the most coverage. So for me, I have deep set eyes, I have hollow under eyes. This is something I talk about a lot on my channel if you're new here, but people that have watched my videos already know how often I talk about it. But I take my concealer right into the hollowness that I have. I also take a little bit on the outer corner just because I have some pigmentation on the outer corners of my eyes, and I let this sit. This is a huge tip. This already is going to definitely help your concealer, help you use less product, get more coverage out of the products that you already have. Definitely use this technique with creamier liquid concealers. Don't use this with a very dry kind of self-setting concealer that dries out the under eyes because it's just not going to look great. By the way, this is the Tara 28 Serum Swipe Concealer. I absolutely love it. But moving on to my next tip, because this one I am really excited to talk about because I feel like people don't talk about this enough. First of all, I let the concealer sit. While I'm letting the concealer sit, I always go into the brows. Here's the tip though. Before you put anything into your brows, you need to be taking your spoolie and making sure that you don't have a bunch of sunscreen, a bunch of skincare sitting in your eyebrows. Because if you're getting flaking, if your brows are starting to kind of cake up with product, this could be a reason why. Oftentimes, I feel like we immediately blame any of the brow gels that we have in our brows. But if you have caked up brows with a bunch of sunscreen and you put gel over top, the gel is not going to solve the issue for you. So you could even take a little bit of water and just make sure that your brows do not have any product in them before you start to work with them. I'm telling you guys, this will change the game as far as brow flaking. Now obviously, you still need a good formula, but that's where I'm going to use the Rare Beauty today. This is the Brow Harmony. I also am not going to lie, I've repurchased my Anastasia Brow Wiz for years and years and years, probably like 10 years. And that's probably still like my holy grail. But I really like this one too. Let's talk about how to fill in the brows if you want a little bit more lift. Now for me personally, I have, zoom you guys in a little bit closer, I have the most sparseness under here. This is where I did the most tweezing, you know, when I was 15, 16. So all of this kind of can be filled in. But if I really want to add a lift to my face, what you can actually do instead of focusing a lot of the product down here, you know, putting a ton of product down here is going to naturally drag the face down. And again, honestly, completely honest here, I think just going with your natural brow is always a safe bet. It's always going to look good. I'm a very, I'm like very pro natural brow if you guys couldn't tell. But if you do want a little bit of lift, I'm going to show you how I would do my brows to give them a little lift or really to give my whole face a good lift. So I'm first going to just take the product into those sparse areas. I'm not going to really fill in a ton on the bottom. So you can see I'm I like barely put any product in there just like to kind of finesse them a little bit. Then I kind of brush my eyebrow hairs up. And I notice where my arch kind of naturally is kind of up here. Now I have longer eyebrow hairs, but but if I move them down, you can see that I have some sparseness right there, where my arches you just can't see it because I keep my brow hairs longer, which is a little hack in and of itself that you actually don't need to trim your eyebrow hairs as short as you might think, especially if you don't have very dense brows. So you're actually going to take your brow pencil right into that arch and you're gonna cheat your arch. Watch what happens when I kind of exaggerate my arch a little bit. Again, I'm just kind of taking that product and very lightly creating an arch. Do you see that? Like this side of my face immediately has a lift kind of crazy when you see it side to side, but I just love it almost gives it like a little bit of like a kind of again, like a lift or almost a snatch kind of look without like, of course, like shaving off this part of your brow. Some people kind of shave this off and that gives them a lift. I think that that can be kind of risky, though the people that do it well look really good with it. I just don't think I'll ever be able to that. I just don't think that would look great on me. But okay, so I'm going to do the same thing over here. So you guys can see it again, filling in those areas where I have the sparseness or that arches. And I'm just going to exaggerate it with the pencil. But really, we're just kind of adding a little bit of density there and then I is going to naturally kind of be drawn to that arch, your face is just going to subconsciously look a little bit more lifted. You know, just use your best judgment with your natural face shape. But yeah, so here's what the eyebrows look like when I've kind of concentrated the pigment up by the arch. I really like the way it looks, though I got to be honest, I don't do my eyebrows like this a lot. But when I do, I really like it because I just feel like again, just lifts everything up a little bit. I also feel like kind of opens up my eyes. Again, keeping in mind, I haven't put clear brow gel in my brows yet. It's because I am planning on using powder. I always like to wait till like the very end to set my brows just so I don't have a bunch of powder flying into them. But I'm just going to blend this with a little sponge. And you guys, the coverage is, is just always so much better when you let your concealer set. You need way less product. If I wanted this much coverage, I would have had to at least do two layers of product. When I let it sit a little bit, I need less. And I always take the concealer on the lid to prep and kind of cancel out any darkness. But we are going to talk about the eyes and creasing and how to just make all of your eyeshadow last and look really seamless. So we'll talk about that in a second. Then I always kind of take the concealer that I have, kind of do like some, a little bit of like highlighting in the middle of my face. I just take like the excess and do like one of these just to bring a little bit of dimension there. All right. So let's go ahead and talk about bronzer. You know, monitoring the way our skin is looking right now, my skin is looking glowy, but it's not looking overly glowy for me. So I could use a cream bronzer, I think. If I was looking very, very dewy, I might opt for a powder. So I'm going to say, let's go ahead and with a cream, let's go with the Fenty Match Stick. And this is the Swedish shade. And I really like this shade because I find it gives me a bit of a sculpt without it being like a true contour. So what I'm going to do again is I'm just going to scribble onto the back of my hand. And that's when we're going to get into my next tip. So again, I can just take the same brush that I've been using and prep the brush with that bronzer, especially if I want like a really, really seamless blend. And I can start pressing that onto my cheeks. Again, I love this brush because it barely feels like I'm even putting any pressure on my face, but it just is so, so soft. But my tip for you guys is that I feel like we spend a lot of time talking about placement of our bronzer, the color of our bronzer, but no one is talking about the pesky places that bronzer can actually make your makeup look off if you don't put it there. A big one, if you have a part in your hair that is a little wider, so me right at the front, it's a little bit wider, take your bronzer up into that part because there's nothing worse than me going out, then I go to the bathroom and then I just have a bright white part with absolutely no color. Same thing over here. See how you can start to see a little bit of my scalp? Any places where you just have like thinner hair, always taking that product in there makes a huge, huge difference. So let me kind of show you the difference. We have here, here. You see that difference? It's so subtle, but it just makes for a very natural look. Same thing with the ears like we talked about. So I don't put foundation on my ears, but I always take a little bronzer there. The excess on the jaw and then that's basically it. I could, I mean, I'm looking at my face. This is very subtle, especially I feel like on camera. In person, it looks nice, but I feel like I could add some more. So I'm going to add a little bit more, just more so for camera so you guys can see the impact. I don't like to fuss with a contour and a bronzer step. Oftentimes, just being honest, to get more sculpt out of your bronze, just go for something that is more neutral to cool. You don't need like a gray bronzer in order to get sculpt. Sometimes I feel like just taking your bronzer shade slightly more cool can really do that. Let's go ahead and talk about blush. So again, I am going to opt for a powder, but I'm going to go with a more luminous kind of powder to retain a little bit of a glow, but I also kind of want to use it as a way to set my face. You have to be careful with the blush that you're putting on if you don't have like powder on all over your face. Some of them just like do not want to blend on top of cream, but with a good formula like this one from RMS, you don't have to worry about that. So this is the RMS Redimension Blush in Maiden's Blush. I just love, love, love, love this tone. It's kind of like just this beautiful beige. I feel like these beige shades are really trending right now. Let me give you kind of a swatch on my finger. See how it's like gorgeous, gorgeous beige? It's almost like in the bronzer kind of realm. Gosh, that was a weird way to swatch. Very, very pretty. So I want to show you guys my tip about blush. So I'm going to take the BK107. It's really nice for blush, especially if you want like more of a diffused look. So I take it onto the brush. I really like try to take off a little bit of the excess. Now the very classic way that we're often taught to apply blush is to smile and then put it right on the apple of our cheek. But what you will notice is that when you're smiling, when you stop smiling, that apple of the cheek immediately droops down. I'm actually taking the blush way lower, which a lot of people have also been liking. It's kind of that like boyfriend blush look or that almost like renaissance painting-esque look where it kind of complements a rounder face. It kind of adds a plushness. This tip is not necessarily saying this is the right way and this is the wrong way. I actually would love to do an entire video about blush placement. I think it's really interesting how where you apply it can really change the face shape. For me personally, I want to really exaggerate the kind of plushness of my cheeks here. This is where I have the most volume, so I'm not going to smile. I'm just going to look. I'm looking down at a mirror over here by the way. I'm going to concentrate the product where I really want to emphasize a plushness or a fullness in my cheek. That is right in this area. I love this blush because you see how it adds that full look. Then I'll just take the excess and kind of blend it into the bronzer. It's a really lovely color to do that with. Do you see how it really just brings a beautiful kind of fullness to the cheek? Just absolutely beautiful. I'll talk about another place I put blush in or blush on in a second. Same thing in here. I really want to emphasize this area where I have the most fullness. Again, if I was taking it right here, it would be down here, but then that fullness goes away when my skin is at rest or when my face is at rest. Oh, this is the fullest area. Now it's not. This is now the fullest area, so that's where I'm taking the blush and then pressing it. You see how I'm tapping? I mean, this could be a tip in and of itself. It's something that I talk about a lot, is kind of tapping the product on will really ensure that the product is being applied almost as like a setting powder and you don't have to worry about it kind of dragging or picking up. I'm just gonna say it now. I know I am not the only person that does this, so I used to get comments like back at the beginning of my channel being like, what are you doing? I always take blush right here across my nose. This is where I get sunburnt. I love the look. It reminds me of like 1980s kind of polo vibe. There's something really youthful about it and I have always just found it to be very attractive. Like whoever, whenever I see someone with that blush just a little bit taken over the nose, I'm just into it. So I have been doing it, you know, for like seven years, have never stopped. We will talk about powder in a second because I think I might have a tip for you guys for that, but I do want to talk about the eyes. I get a lot of questions about eye bases, like what to put on the eyes to make sure that my eyeshadow lasts all day and doesn't crease. For me, long wear liquid shadows, matte shadows are the answer. So this one is from Ulta. It is the shade Hey Sunshine. I haven't tried this shade, but I have tried a lot of the other ones. These are such a hidden affordable gem. If you are like a long, long time viewer of my channel, you will know how much I have loved these because they're just, again, really affordable, really smooth, and they set down matte. So I kind of take this all over the eye and this is a really pretty shade. You know, a lot of their shades for a long time, they did recently repackage them, a lot of their shades for a long time were very cool toned. This is absolutely warm toned and it's still blending out really beautifully. In fact, this would be a really pretty shade for green eyes. I mean, I have green eyes, so this would be really lovely for that. You can also just find a shade that kind of neutralizes any of the color that you have on your lids. For me, I could actually go with a color that's more similar to my color corrector or my concealer shade and use that instead of concealer if I wanted to, just all over the eyes. I've talked about eyeliner in a lot of my other videos, so I'm not going to really stick here, but I just wanted to let you guys know what I'm doing in this step before I get into my next tip, which is I always take my little eyeliner brush, put it into either a powder or a putty. This is the Danessa Myricks Groundwork palette. If there was one eyeshadow palette that is matte that I could ever recommend, it would be this one. And I always, today I'm just going to take a powder, and I always kind of draw a wing rather than going straight into a liquid liner. This is easier to finesse, it looks more natural, and I just love that little that little lift that it gives my eyes. If you do have more hooded eyes, sometimes it's even more helpful to look straight into a mirror and then apply the liner looking straight into the mirror rather than looking down because then the crease is going to come back up. Now, what I could do to make everything last longer is set the powder with a either like a gel liner or a putty. Now, I love using kind of a putty because this is still going to be a little bit less graphic than a true cream, so this is a putty. I'm going to just kind of coat the brush, taking it on the back of my hand. My hand looks crazy, by the way, every time I do my makeup. And then I just set, and it's going to last longer. Now, if you want like bulletproof liner like this, go with a gel liner rather than a putty, but if you're going for something kind of softer, smudgier, setting this just with the putty is enough. And there we go. And why do you guys think like I love this palette so much? Because honestly, I could have just skipped even using that liquid shadow. I love the liquid shadow, don't get me wrong, but I could have just taken like this putty and then set it even with the powder and gotten like a very similar look. So let's talk about how to like instantly elevate your makeup when you go into your lashes. So first of all, lash curler, it is not a negotiable for me. Again, not a negotiable. I probably should have done this before I put on any other product, but I didn't. This will kind of smudge things if you're not careful. So try and be better than me. You're going to take a waterproof liner and tightline. Now, this is something that is so subtle upon first impression, but it makes a huge difference. It gives you that je ne sais quoi. You're really not even sure right away what it is, but it makes everything look elevated and more professional. So I'm going to show you on this eye what using this is the Soshi waterproof precision eyeliner. I really don't use another eyeliner to tightline, period, because this one is so good. It's very precise, and I'm just wiggling it in between my lashes. And I'm telling you guys, so many immediately just start running. This one does not, and I love this color. This is the color lovesick, which is like a kind of chocolatey brown. So it really kind of pops my eyes without it being like a harsh black. Do you guys see the difference? The density that this eye has in the lashes versus this one. It's subtle, but it like, it really pulls everything together. So doing the same thing over here. You can also kind of take this out onto the outer corners if you want, if you want to make sure the colors are consistent. Let's talk about mascara, shall we? So this is the ritual defeat levitation lash. I love this mascara. However, it kind of loads up on the brush quite a lot, and it isn't at that perfect like dryness level. You know how like a mascara after it's dried out for like a week or two, it's like at that perfect level. Sometimes this is not at that level yet. A tip that people do not use enough, and if you get really, really clumpy lashes, no matter what mascara you're using, it's just to remove the excess. It is such an old school tip, but it just makes such an impact. So I have taken off the excess product on the back of a tissue, and now the mascara, and now the mascara is naturally a bit drier. There's less product, and look at that volume that I get. I'm still able to get that really voluminous look without there being so much excess product sitting on my eyelashes. That's like one and a half coats. Also, this is just a good mascara in general, and have you ever been putting on mascara and you're like, why does the second eye always look better? You know why, because you put all of the product on the other one, and then this one, the second eye, naturally has less product on it. So you're able to like get a very fluffy, non-spiry, like loaded up look, which I also love that. I'm not gonna lie to you guys, like I think that's beautiful too, but for every day, I don't want anything super clumpy. Oh my god, you know when you have an itch so bad, but you know if you itch it, like your makeup is gonna come off? That is the experience I'm having right now. So if you are someone that always deals with that really clumpy lash look, definitely drop me a comment if you try this trick and let me know how it worked for you. So like, I don't think I need a ton of powder for this look. I was kind of waiting on my skin to see how dry it was. For me, I feel like this finish is nice, but I think I'm just gonna take a touch, just a little bit of my RMS. Which powder is this? This is the Hydra Setting Powder. I love this setting powder. Really an underrated setting powder. I'm taking a whisper of this product, whisper of it. Like add as much as you think you need on your powder brush and just tap off a lot of the excess. Like give it another tap if you're worried about it. And I'm just gonna take it in like kind of the center of my face. You see, there was powder that was just applied there, but it's just so subtle and I'm not overloading my face with it. Just in here, I think kind of gives it a nice smoothness. I'll take some excess under the eyes a little bit, onto my chin, around the corners of the nose, into like smile lines. If I want a little chisel, I can do one of these. That minuscule amount of powder I used for my entire face in here. Or not my entire face. I don't know, a third of my face. You need so much less powder than you think. You know, if you were coming to me and you were like, I need my makeup to last 16 hours, we might be adding some more powder. But this is really all you need for every day. Especially if you have more mature dry skin. Another powder I've been loving, the new Givenchy. Thank you Givenchy for coming out with a pressed version of your powder that is actually good. I really like this one too. Before we go into lips, a great time to set the eyebrows. But again, what you want to do before you put any gel in is just take a look and make sure you don't have any bronzer, blush, anything really sitting on the top of those brows. You know what I'm finding interesting? I'm seeing a brow calyx kind of being a trend. I think it's so interesting because like back in the day, I used to be obsessed with like Mary-Kate and Ashley's eyebrows, and they always had like their eyebrows kind of facing in a little bit. I love, I mean, if it wasn't obvious or already, I love kind of this boyish eyebrow, and I always have. But I want to kind of show you how I would do that. So I don't know if this is really a tip. This is just like, this is how I'm doing this right now. But I kind of take the brow towards this way a little bit, and then just use the gel to set the rest of them back. Press them up a little bit in the front. I really like the effect. You could also go for something very smooth and sleek. You can definitely achieve that with this brow gel. This is the Jones Road. But I just wanted to show you guys how you would do more of that kind of boyish, youthful kind of thing if you wanted to. So I'm going to quickly do my lips, and then we'll be back for my last tip. For the lips today, I just kept it really simple. I just used my Fwee 3D Volumizing Gloss. This is the 30% color versus they have like a 70% color with more saturation. Love this color, the formula. These are literally just the best glosses ever. Now my last tip for you guys, if you really want to elevate your makeup look and make everything look very seamless and almost like there's less makeup on your face, one, using a setting mist will definitely help everything melt together. I'm going to do that in a second, but I wanted to show you guys another technique, which is using a freckle pen to add color back to any freckles you have on your face. I can do the same thing over here and just barely tap it out. Now it looks like there's no foundation there at all. I'll show you guys over here on these. I kind of missed that one actually, but you can kind of just blend it out, but let me show you even. Look, I have a pimple there. You can kind of see it a little bit. What pimple? That's not a pimple. That's just a mole. This technique also works really well if you've put like bronzer on your neck or if you are doing more of a glam look and you have like a decent amount of foundation on your neck, adding color back to any of the little freckles that you have can really make everything look a little bit more natural. And that was 10 makeup tips that I think everyone should know. I hope that you guys did enjoy the video. Make sure you're subscribed for my upcoming video on skin prep because again, skin prep really can change every single other step that you put on your face after it. So make sure you're subscribed for that. I'm going to leave links down below to all the products that I used, but overall just thank you guys for being here. If you found it helpful, give the video a thumbs up and I will see you guys in my next one.