My Makeup Journey

I used to be the girl who stayed away from makeup, the girl who thought the other girls who DID wear makeup were snobby and thought they were better than the rest of us. That seemed a little true in my middle school years. I'd see the few girls who WERE allowed to wear it at such a young age walk around school with their noses in the air. They'd talk about their makeup and talk about how cool their parents were for letting them wear it. They'd have a little bit of eye shadow or a dab of mascara. Back then, it was mostly cool to wear sparkly lip gloss. Something I definitely was not allowed to wear at that age.

My last year of middle school I started wearing eye liner—only on my bottom eyelid, though. 'Cause that was the cool, ~emo~, thing to do back then. I never cared for mascara, eye shadow, or lip gloss back then. Just my poorly applied, smudged eye liner that was halfway down my cheeks by the end of the day.

My first year of high school was when I started to dabble a little more into makeup. I had made a new friend who liked to play with her eye shadow, a use bright colors on her lids. I started to copy her rainbow shaded lids every now and then and started putting eyeliner above my eyelashes. The winged look wasn't really a thing, but I did it every now and then and called it a "cat-eye" look. That was all I did, though, because once I got to high school I saw girls who were REALLY into makeup. Way back then, there were no tutorials to show us how to apply it properly and no one knew that you could make foundation match your tone. There were a lot of girls with orange masks and heavy mascara and I did NOT want to look like that. I was also convinced that if you wore foundation, that would give you acne. So I tried to stay away.

I pretty much kept that look up until my junior year of high school. I remember The Big Bang Theory was pretty popular then, and the leading lady of the show, Penny, rocked a dark crease/light lid look. I didn't understand that it was an all-over lid look, and would just smear dark shadow into my crease. I remember wearing it every day, and one day a girl even told me that my eye shadow had smeared up my eye. I got haughty and told her, "No, it's supposed to look like this. This is how Penny from The Big Bang Theory wears it."

My senior year I really got into the winged liner look, and stopped smearing eyeliner into my waterline. I fixed the dark crease/light lid look I had been trying to copy and started putting a little bit of shimmery shadow in the mix. I really fell hard in love with the brand Hard Candy that they have at Walmart stores. I had a few nameless palettes that were pretty cute, but my first, real palette was the Hard Candy Natural Eyes palette that I later found out was just an obvious rip off of the Too Faced Natural Matte eye shadow palette. I started wearing red lip stick to go with the look every now and then, and then really picked up the nude lip trend. And boy, did that make my lips disappear.

It wasn't until the year after I graduated that I finally tried foundation. I was still very much into the brand Hard Candy—unaware of luxury makeup as opposed to drug store makeup. I tried their tattoo covering concealer and foundation that was made from the same formula. At first I would love the way it looked—I managed to get a matching color that didn't make it look like I was wearing the orange mask from my high school nightmares. But by the end of the day, it looked as though the foundation had chipped away, leaving only the residue left behind in my pores. I tried a different foundation that I mixed in with it—which gave me the same color but didn't look like it had flaked off at the end of the day. I wore this for years and years. Buying two different drug store brand foundations to get the color and finish that I was looking for.

In the meantime—I discovered Too Faced, and my first real makeup palette was the Sweet Peach palette that came out a few years back. On top of that—I got that matching blush/bronzer/highlighter palette for the collection. That's when I fell in love with highlighter. The highlight in that palette was the very first product I ever hit the pan of. And I started wearing more shimmery eye shadow shades to go with my sparkly cheeks.

I fell in love with the Too Faced brand and built up a small collection of their products (pictured at the top). I had a hard time branching out and trying other things for a long time. That is, until Rhianna's Fenty Beauty launched. I got a foundation (that wasn't my shade, but I figured it out quickly and got my correct shade), the original Stunna Lip Stain, and a highlighter. They're some of my absolute favorite products and definitely suggest getting them if you're picky about the quality of your makeup.

I now play with plenty of eye shadow shades, including some bright colors. I love lipstick, and lip gloss. I can contour. I love blush, and highlight is still my favorite thing in the world and I have a growing collection of Anastasia Beverly Hills Glow Kits (the most intense highlight I've seen).

I've learned that makeup isn't a scary thing that messes up your skin as long as you wash it off after you wear it. I've learned that the new makeup community (new from the time I was in middle school, anyway) is a loving, kind, supportive, and creative community. I've learned that makeup isn't for everyone if they're not a fan, but is a great way for others to express themselves and feel secure. A lot of people tell you that makeup doesn't make you prettier—it doesn't. It accentuates your beauty. Highlighting your already gorgeous features. I like seeing my pretty face going from natural to red-carpet ready. I encourage all of those who are interested to go ahead and give it a try. It honestly doesn't hurt.

And that is how my makeup story grew. Thank you for reading.