Off Campus Star Mika Abdalla’s Refreshing Curly Hair Routine | Beauty Secrets | Vogue

Hi Vogue, I'm Nika Abdallah, and today I'm gonna take you through my current skincare routine, as well as my everyday makeup, and then we'll do a little hair refresh. My first step is actually to take off my big chunky ring. Hair up, pimple patches coming off. I don't ever have long nails in my everyday life, but Ali has long nails. It makes my life so tedious. Now I'll wash my face. I've been using this Tatcha, and it's kind of exfoliating a little bit, which I love, but not in a good way. I've also been trying to get really good at using a brand new towel every time I wash my face, because the lack of sleep, and the travel, and the work, and my skin's holding on by a thread. Now I do my under eye patches. I've been using these Peter Thomas Roth, and it comes with this little spoon. How cute. And then I'll use this thing. It is a microcurrent treatment little thing. After a long flight, after a night out, my face gets huge. You can use this little gel. And it's super cool, because it like Bluetooth connects to your phone, and then there are these videos, different options of like what you want to happen. We're gonna start this treatment out. And then it beeps, and then she talks, and she tells you what to do. It's amazing. I'll do this like when people are visiting, and they're so confused about what's going on. I do feel like the more I sleep, the more I exercise, the better I eat. And the more water I drink, obviously, would you believe, makes your skin clearer. I've been using this Alize Skin Calming Under Eye Cream. And so now I've been using this RCS Vader cream. We've been doing a lot of work, where there's a lot of fog. Just having all that smoke hitting my skin all the time is making it a bit dry. So this has been really great. I don't get super insecure about my breakouts anymore. Also, the makeup team on set is so great. My makeup artist, Rex, he's very skincare forward. And so he starts out my mornings with an under eye mask, and he'll give me a pimple patch. He's been putting Mario Badescu on any breakouts that I have and then just doing makeup over it, which I didn't know was an option. Apparently it is. Now I use this Lawless Lip Plumping. It's an overnight mask, but I use it literally all the time. My favorite thing is I keep it in my purse, and this is what I use as my out on the town lip balm. And when my guy friends will ask if anyone has chapstick, I give them this. And then they're like, what is going on? Because it's super tingly. It's really great. Now that that's done, we're going to do my everyday makeup. I just got into primer. Does it work? Yes. Who would have thought? I will address the fact that I did not put sunscreen on my face. If I'm going to go out and if I'm going to like, I'm going to go to the beach, I'm going to put sunscreen on my face. My freckles come out a lot when I'm in the sun and I don't have sunscreen on. And so if I'm just running around town, I'm going to just leave it off. I've been using this Chanel concealer. It's so good. I typically use my fingers to do a lot of my makeup. Like I feel like the warmth of my hand helps the makeup kind of like blend into my skin better. I've been doing like so little under eye concealer because I'm kind of liking the dark under eye. I'm tired and I'm not trying to hide it too much. I've been on sets since I was like six years old. So I've just watched so many people do my makeup. And I feel like that's kind of where I learned. I also, of course, like went through my phase in high school and middle school of like watching makeup videos and makeup tutorials. I remember the first time I did my eyebrows, I used like the pot of the gel because we didn't really have the knowledge yet. Anyway, but I did my eyebrows and then I went to go watch my friend cheer at like her high school football game. And she saw me standing in the stands and she's looking at me and she runs over and she goes, did you do your eyebrows today? I was like, so that was the last time I tried that. I don't remember what Barney was like. It was like the thing that you did in Dallas if you were a child actor. Like that was just the pipeline. Like everyone who's from Texas did it. That was the peak of my career. Given the brow situation, my trauma, I use a clear gel sparingly on my brows. And I prefer this eyebrow to this eyebrow because this one goes straight up and this one like goes to the side. So I fake it over here and then I kind of brush them up. I do like the tiniest bit of this. I'm gonna go like, it's this brown coal liner thing. It's so soft. And my, okay, and I do this because of my aunt. She has the most beautiful eyes and her eyelashes grow like way into that, her inner corner. And so she looks like she always has this like, she has a very dark inner corner and I love it. And I'm jealous of it. So I put a little bit of this brown in my inner corner. And then sometimes I'll do it out here too. I'm feeling crazy. And I'm feeling crazy today. I haven't processed anything that's happened in the last three months since the show came out. So many things are happening all the time. Like none of us ever independently take a second to like acknowledge how crazy it is. So then we'll go to set or we'll like go hang out outside of work and be like, oh yeah. And then I'm doing this shoot this weekend or then I'm going here. And then have everyone around you remind you like, that's crazy is very nice to have because otherwise we'd all just be like running around like feet not touching the ground, not knowing what's going on. Illya, tubing mascara, brown. Notice the theme of brown on my eyes. I like it. It's softer. The really cool thing that the show does is like all of the characters are fun and we see them just living normal, happy life. But then we acknowledge that they have these histories, these traumas. For Allie, you know, last year we saw her mostly as like the Allie that everyone on the street sees her as, which is really fun and cool. And she's so cute and just bubbly and great. This year we're digging a little deeper into her past. And what she's been through and what makes her the way that she is, maybe why she's so bubbly and outgoing and do you see where that's that, what that energy is maybe trying to hide or trying to compensate for. Now I do something else that nobody's gonna like. I use one brush, two different sides for my bronzer and my blush. Okay, I've been using this for five. Cute, fun. It's warm, but not too warm. And I'm really just pressing it in right here. I actually think I realized yesterday that I was gonna be on the cover of Vogue. I knew about it, but it was one of those things as well where I was like on a phone call, got the news and was like, oh, cool, cool, cool, cool. Okay, and then I fly in when and I do this one. Okay, great. And then I just like put that in my mental calendar. And then I was in the car with India, who plays Grace. And she was like, oh, what are you going to LA for? And I was like, I'm gonna do the cover of Vogue India. And she was like, what? And I was like, oh, what? I was like, that's actually crazy. But this kind of thing happens all the time. This duo thing. Okay, because my makeup bag is like truly this big. So something that is a two-in-one situation, it's a blush, super cute. And then a highlighter. The other night, after a night out, in a silly, goofy mood, Ella and I were like, what should we watch? And we did watch all the cameras. Now I do this little pinky. I do it to my nose, and a little right there, and a little right there, and then I'll get my pinky. And again, with the nails, like I just, I have a hard time. I do it a little bit. Sneak peek of all these nails. I like to leave my skin very dewy. These days it's very warm and I am getting photographed on the street a little bit more, and there's a happy medium. I still love a dewy look, but I will powder my face now. So I use this Chanel, again, powder. And it also helps cover a little extra and keep the concealer on, because I also touch my face. Makeup Forever brown lip liner. I do like a bit of an overline and I do it super, super messy, and then I smudge it out. I've been using this Givenchy lip oil. It's a little pumping, and it looks very red, but it's not. And I'll do just a little bit in the middle. Sometimes I also feel like with concealing spots, after I've powdered it, the concealer does more. I don't know. Hit that one more time, and then I'll probably powder it one more time. So that's my makeup. And then my big thing these days has been a nice little curl refresh. This is the soundtrack of my morning, this bottle squeaking at me. No, what I actually have been listening to a lot is like Missy Elliott, Dog and Heat. Just a good vibe. My last like seven saved songs are Body Bear and Sufjan Stevens. So look, we were doing something emotional the other day on set, and so I started listening to my sad music, and I was like, oh, ****. Now that my hair is damp, I do re-diffuse it. I also didn't know that my hair had any texture to it until like four years ago. I always just thought my hair was super frizzy. The messier, the better, in my opinion. I'm gonna use this texturizing spray, Orbea. The room is gonna get cloudy. I have a colic in front of my head, so I always try to like, with a texturizing spray, I'm trying to use as hairspray, but it actually works. Okay, so now that my hair is just slightly larger than it was before, I'm satisfied. And next, I'm going to moisturize my body. Eminence Solid Body Oil. It's like a coconut oil texture. Just a little bit, because it gets a notch. And you just warm it up, and now you have body oil. And I love it because, again, I'm traveling so much, and I can't have a body oil explode in my suitcase one more time, or I'm going to lose my mind. I use this combo of Le Labo's Matcha, Love, and then my grandma brought me these little perfumes from Bulgaria, which, one more time, I also have tattooed on my body, and it's like this actual thing. And I put it on when I went to the chemistry reads for off-campus. So then I was like, last year on set, any time I had like a, like if we were doing like a stressful like lunch meeting with executives, I would put the oil on, on top of the matcha. And then it smelled really good. It's somewhere between an oil and a fragrance, but I just rubbed this little stick on me. I know that's not what you're supposed to, okay, you're probably supposed to put it on like a normal person, but I don't do that. And I put some right here. I think it's just rose oil. Rose oil is like one of Bulgaria's main exploits. I'm actually going to put all my rings back on, is one last thing I'm going to do, because how can I possibly leave the house without my hands weighing a million pounds? Okay, my hair is looking big. My makeup is done. My skin smells the way that I like it to smell. My rings are back on. And now it's time to go. Bye, Vogue.