By Rumina Rizvi & Aaisha Zafar Islam

Today we will be doing a makeup tutorial. After Eid, and fast heading towards back to school days, the end of August is always party season. This is a look that can go with many outfits, and take you from day to night. So gather your makeup supplies and lets start away!

Prepare & Prime

Cleanse & tone: Always start with a clean face. Wash your face with a face wash suited to your skin type. Next take a cotton pad and apply a toner all over the face. This prepares the facial skin for smooth and more natural makeup application later.

Moisturize: If you have dry skin, it is better to apply a light moisturizer after the toner. Oily and combination skin types can skip this step and move directly to applying a face primer to their face. A face primer is a lotion or gel that makes your makeup apply seamlessly on the skin and make it last longer.

Face Base

Moving on, apply a ‘base’ product on the face. You can use a liquid, cream or powder foundation, a tinted moisturizer or a BB/CC cream according to the level of coverage you want. Our model already has great skin and we used a medium coverage foundation on her, applied with a foundation brush.

Apply foundation all over the face in even strokes, starting from the middle of the face and blending outwards. Also take the brush down towards the neck for evening out the complexion.

Conceal under eyes and blemishes with a concealer, or you can dab some foundation on these areas for more coverage. Make sure to blend well.

Contour & Highlight

Contour: Now take a matte bronzer, or a foundation two colours darker than your skin tone and apply it under the cheekbones, sides of the nose, on the temples and the hairline. This is called contouring. It helps define your features and gives more dimension to the face.

Highlight: Take a lighter liquid or powder face product and apply it lightly in the areas shown in the picture. This is called highlighting and again, it brings your key features forward, enhancing them. Take extra time at this step to blend away any harsh lines between the contoured and highlighted areas of the face.

Eyes and Brows

Eyebrows: Moving on the eye brows, thick, fuller eyebrows are en vogue these days, so you don’t have to have them threaded or plucked. We will just be grooming them into a better shape here.

Take a spoolie brush (or a clean, washed mascara wand) and brush eyebrow hair up and outwards. Fill in sparse areas with an eyebrow pencil lighter than your hair. Use light, feathery strokes for a more natural look. Brush and blend in everything again with the spoolie brush.

Eyes: For the eyes, use a primer. This is a product that keeps your eye shadow colours from creasing or fading. You can also use a cream eye shadow and layer powder eye shadow on top of it to make it last longer. We are making up our model with neutral, earthy shades for an everyday look.

Take a flat eye shadow brush to apply a medium brown shade all over the eyelid area. Next take a darker shade and apply it in the crease and towards the outer ‘v’ of the eye. Use a blending brush to blend in the colours together and smoke out the darker shade.

Define eyes: Now take an eyeliner, liquid, cream or gel and using an angled eyeliner brush, line your upper and lower lashlines. Make sure you get as close to the lash lines as possible so there are no visible ‘flesh’ gaps.

You can also use a dark eye shadow to line around the eyes or use an eyeliner pencil. Just make sure that it is a long-lasting formula that will not fade way or leave you with raccoon eyes!

Apply mascara on top and bottom lashes to complete the eye make up.

Colour for the face

Smile away: Your lip and cheek colour should ideally be in the same shade family. We have used a beautiful peachy shade for our model as it suits her complexion so well. Smile and blend some blush on the apples of your cheeks. Then use a lip brush to apply a lipstick, or use it straight out of the tube.

Brush out and make your hair. Voila, you are ready for a party!

 Behind the scenes:

• Make up, styling and photos by Rumina Rizvi
• Text by Aaisha Zafar Islam

Rumina Rizvi is a freelance makeup artist with over 8 years of experience in makeup and skin care. She enjoys doing make overs and photo shoots and events when time permits.

Aaisha Zafar Islam aka Mascara Mom is an incurable beauty junkie. She is also the executive editor of MuslimMoms.ca