Glowy and radiant skin is something I aim for pretty much all year round. It's my favourite finish to a makeup look and the one I find suits me the best. As the warmer season of the year comes round, a lot more of us support a glowy and radiant look to our makeup. Sometimes it can seem quite daunting to try achieve this look without looking like you've either plastered your face in glitter or being overly oily or sweaty. So I thought it would be best that I share some of my own methods and some useful tips of achieving a radiant and healthy look.
Before you do anything, ensure you're starting with clear and clean skin. This will help to not only hold your makeup in place, which is essential with the heat in the summer, but also ensures you can get as much benefit from your makeup products as possible. It's also a good idea to apply a primer before you apply your makeup to help minimize fine lines and pores, as well as to help smooth the skin ready to go in with your products.
Starting with foundation, everyone has their own individual preferences of what their favourite go to brands are, as well as the type and finish they opt for. If you want to achieve a radiant look, you're obviously going to want to sway more to the dewy side of foundations. Something that gives you a nice glow. My personal favourite is Rimmel's Wake Me Up Foundation. This creates a gorgeous radiant and glow to the skin, whilst giving a good medium coverage that looks super natural. It really does help to wake up your skin and make it look healthy. Alternatively, you could go for a lighter base, like a bb cream or a tinted moisturiser to produce the same look to your skin.
In terms of concealer, something that is really going to help brighten up your under eye area is a good shout. This will help to make you look more awake and radiant, concealing those dull areas. Seventeen's Stay Time concealer is a great budget friendly option to achieve this. If you want to conceal any blemishes or spots, then use a concealer correcting palette or a concealer you know will give you a good enough coverage to create that seamless healthy look to your skin.
Moving onto my favourite part of the achieving a glowy makeup look is highlight! Now you need to be careful with this one, because no one wants to look like a disco ball due to too much highlight. Instead make sure you are aware of how intense you want your highlight to be and that it doesn't look too over the top with the rest of your look. I like to apply a subtle cream highlight over my cheek bones, my cupids bow, my chin, my brow bone and down the bridge of my nose, before going in with a powder highlight over these areas to build that intensity. Ensure you go for highlighter shades that work well for your skin tone. Gold tones work best at adding more of a glow than frost tones. If you have dry skin, opt for a liquid highlight to prevent any dry patches being highlighted.
It's also good that when you're using bronzer to ensure you're using one that goes well with your skin tone too. You want it to look as natural as possible. Bronzed skin can really help to make you look healthy and radiant so along with the other steps this can really help bring it together. Go for something that's not too shimmery or too matte. You want something that is going to give you sun kissed skin!
You can also add a blush on top of your cheeks for a light flush of colour to really bring in that healthy glow. But again ensure it's not too shimmery as you want it to look natural and leave the highlight to be doing all the popping against that light.
Other ways you can achieve a glowy and radiant look with other aspects of your makeup is using creamy yet neutral eye shadows on your lids. Colours like pinks and golds will really help to highlight the eyes and keep things natural. Also going for a mascara wand that really helps to open up your lashes all whilst looking super natural. You could also go for something soft and well moisturised on the lip, like a lip crayon or a cream finish lipstick. This will really compliment the rest of your glowy look and keep things as toned down as possible, whilst drawing all the attention to your healthy radiance.
How do you like to achieve a glowy makeup look?
Lauren x
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I seem to have discovered that most of my nail polishes in my collection are more aimed at spring/summer, which just shows a clear indication to me and probably you also that I seem to have a lot more choice over the warmer months on what shades I want to wear. I shared my spring nail picks back in March with you all and got so much wear out of all of them. So I thought it was only right that I let you all in on the nail shades I am going to be wearing throughout the next few months.
Within this post I think it's safe to say there is going to be quite a few pink options, but who can blame me? Pink is an absolutely stunning colour all year round and in particular during the summer time when everything is a lot more bright. One of the more brighter pink shades I own is from Barry M's Gelly Hi Shine range known as Grape Fruit. Not only do these polishes from the Gelly range create such a glossy finish to your nails, but they are also very vibrant in colour. Grape Fruit is exactly this. It's a bright vibrant almost neon pink, one that is perfect for summer and any holidays you might be escaping to.
The next pink pick is on the pearly metallic side of things. One of my absolute favourite shades ever is from Rimmel's Super Gel range and another grape name, but this one goes by Grape Sorbet. When I first got this, I thought it had a slight rose gold look to it, but the more I've worn it, I feel it's more of a dusky pink with a pearl essence to it. It's a really stunning colour and one I've never seen like it before, so definitely must have if you're after something a little different to wear this summer.
Throwing it back to those neon vibes, we have another one from Rimmel in the shade Neon Fest. This is more of a deep vibrant pink with lots of shine. I feel like this is one of my all time favourites. I wear this every summer without fail. It's just such a go to in my collection for summer and it always just looks so lovely on the nails.
Stepping away from the pink tones, I feel like you can't not wear a red polish throughout summer. The red shade I always reach for in my collection is the Maybelline Color Show polish in the shade Power Red. This is definitely more of an eye catching red than your bog standard red shade, which makes it so suitable for summer time. Power Red is also very flattering and will suit a whole range of different skin tones. You can wear this one to so many different summer events, whether they're on the casual side or more formal.
And finally the last of my picks, but no means the least, is the classic Matt White. This is from Barry M's nail paint range. You really cannot go wrong with a white polish this time of the year. Although you have to be careful to avoid looking like you've tippexed your fingernails in the back of your english lesson like back in high school. With this one from Barry M, I find with a careful hand I can avoid this amusing error. White nails are so easy to pull of during the summer and always look so stunning alongside a tan. Another great holiday option!
What are your summer nail picks?
Lauren x
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