[sharlibird]

I am one of the fortunate ones who can wear the cheaper makeup. I use mainly Maybelline, but will use others when on sale.

I have dry skin on my cheeks; normal elsewhere on my face. I use a moisturizer mainly on my cheeks, applied using an upsweeping motion. Then I "dot" my makeup on by placing a "finger-dot" on my nose, forehead, and chin, and several dots in a triangle shape on my cheeks. Then, using light, sweeping motions, I blend the dots of makeup into light coverage. When finished with my face area, I sweep the makeup under the "line" of my chin/lower face edge area towards my neck. This really eliminates the "mask" look.

Then on goes blush. I use a professional makeup brush bought from a dept. store. I sweep it across the powder blush; then tap the brush on the lid of the compact (knocks off any excess blush powder). Looking straight ahead and starting at a point just under my cheek bone & under my eye, I sweep the brush backwards towards my ear. Then I "fill in" the immediate areas both above and below the blush line to blend (without getting anymore blush from compact). I use the brush that comes with the blush compact to add highlights to my eye area by applying a light coat of blush just below my eyebrow.

Then, I use my fingertip to apply eyeshadow starting at the center of the eye, sweeping to the outer edge; then coming back to the inner corner and sweeping across the whole eyelid. Then I apply liquid eyeliner to both top and lower lash lines; then mascara. It helps a lot to "look up" while applying to top lashes/lash line and "look down" when applying to bottom.

I know this sounds like a lot of time/info, but it only takes me about 5 minutes to do my makeup. But it did take me years to perfect the "art". Even with all the makeup I use, depending on the color palette you use, it can look "natural".