♥ Make Up and Me

I can't remember when  exactly it was I started wearing makeup, but I know I was what most people would consider young. I must have been wearing it right through secondary school, and I can remember being ten or eleven and coating every last lash with mascara. It probably didn't look too great and I no doubt went a bit overboard from time to time, but I liked how it made me look...  I was inspired by the 'Power of Makeup' tag on YouTube, I wanted to do something similar, and so I felt it appropriate to dedicate a little post of the same nature to my own beauty and makeup habits.


First of all, I'll start by saying my collection of makeup is something that's only recently started to grow. It's definitely the last three years of being at university that makeup has become a huge passion of mine. I don't know where it came from, really. I'd always had - and wore - makeup, but there was a moment I saw my best friends eyeshadow and just wanted to be able to do it exactly the same so that I could look like that too. She did it on me first, explained it a little and I tried and tried myself. After a hundred YouTube tutorials and investing in brushes (as I had always used my fingers) I kind of got the knack of it. I started accumulating way more eyeshadows then I would ever need and eventually branched out to different products, like lipsticks and blush and highlight. It got out of hand, I guess, pretty easily. I don't drink, go out clubbing or smoke, so I spend my 'spare' money on other things like MAC hauls and Naked palettes and I don't feel guilty for it, at all.

All through my teenage years I wore makeup. I remember buying pot after pot of Dream Matte Mousse from Maybelline and swearing I'd never use anything but that. I was still using it in my first year of university, and I still have the pot that I neglected that year after I discovered L'Oreal's True Match Foundation. I pretty much stuck to foundation, eyeliner and mascara.. There was that awkward period that us 'tumblr' kids thought it was the way forward to put way too much white eyeliner in the inner corner and looked slightly silly, but the thought was there and now I know exactly how to highlight and that white looked far too stark and I would have been much better off with a nice nude toned liner to open up the eyes. Now, I'd say I know a lot more about how and why makeup looks good and I've taught myself various techniques and methods of application to get different results.

I wear makeup because I like it. I love how it makes me look and it makes me feel good about myself. I can happily leave the house without makeup on, but most of the time I don't. We all have imperfections and reasons we wear makeup - I use heavy, high coverage foundations because I hate my acne and redness. I over line my lips because they're uneven and I don't have a  defined cupids bow, so I draw it in. On my forehead, I have a scar and foundation covers it a touch. My eyes and the redness of my eyelids is horrible, so I do my best to cancel it out and I have a lot of texture to my skin - something makeup isn't very good at hiding but maybe in fact emphasises. Oh well.

My favourite products, as demonstrated by last weeks posts, are most definitely eye products. I always have around five mascara's on the go, I have a fair few tubes of my trusty Rimmel Glam Eyes Liquid Eye Liner open and I never use any other liner. My friends laugh at the amount of makeup I have, they can't believe my collection of eye brushes and I'd guess they're kind of happy I am so obsessed with makeup. I've done their makeup on plenty occasions and they get to benefit from my huge collection too. I often give away products I hate so that my friends can get some use out of them rather them being sat, unused. The worst thing to happen to me and my makeup collection is definitely my boyfriend. The first bit he ever bought me was the Naked Smoky palette, for no reason whatsoever and he's not stopping buying me makeup since. He never moans when I drag him through the beauty hall in Selfridges, he doesn't care that I take hours to get ready and then take hundreds of selfies in his car. It might be something to do with the fact his sister is a makeup artist, so he's heard it all before, but he just lets me get on with it. He's taught me that I look great without makeup or with a full face of it.

I thought I'd make a little 'tag' of my own with this Makeup and Me post, so I'm tagging Erin (Make Erin Over), Charlee (Charmed Charlee), Claire (Vanity Claire), Danielle (Danielle's Beauty Blog) and Emma (Emmys Beauty Cave) to do it. I want to know when you girls started wearing makeup, why you wear it and the products that started the obsession and the ones that cement it!

Em x

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