I used to be that girl who never wore makeup, initially completely disinterested in wearing it, not wanting to bother with some kind of routine, but very much enjoying a skincare-only morning routine. I didn’t wear makeup because I didn’t “get it” and admit that I became anti-makeup because I was “alternative”, and out from pride of being someone at school who didn’t wear makeup. I did not take the time to try and understand it, which led to some pretty strong aversion towards beautifying oneself with the stuff. I didn’t care to spend the time to learn. Over time, I gradually understood its meaning to other people, who wanted to modify their look, feel more confident, play up some of their facial features, or just have fun using their skin as a canvas.

I am now somewhere in the camp of wearing some basic makeup daily, but applying more makeup in an artsy fashion if I feel like it or if I am bored. It honestly depends on my mood, and also depends on whether I have recently gotten eyelash extensions or some eyebrow treatment. Though expensive, I have liked the option of having eyelash or eyebrow treatments every now and then to enhance the shape of my eyes and eyebrows, and often makes me feel like I don’t want to wear makeup. I like to keep my routine pretty easy and quick, so at the moment I don’t wear any foundation—I stick with tinted moisturiser/CC cream/moisturiser with SPF, something that evens out the surface of my skin and gives it just a little bit of colour—and then use a big brush to add some blush to my cheeks and sometimes on the bridge of my nose. Just to add colour to my cheeks and highlight my cheekbones, I guess, although whether I’m doing it “properly” is anyone’s guess. 🙃 And then lip colour is this whole other thing that I find more fun, but most of the time impractical when it comes to reapplication after eating, and stuff like that.

I’ve been messing around with eyeliner and eyeshadow, and I think the most frustrating obstacle for me has been my hooded/very folded eyelids, which make the lusted-after cat-eye eyeliner makeup to be extremely difficult to do. I have tried multiple different tips from various YouTubers and articles, only to have my eyes smudged with eyeliner each time. Eventually I got the hang of it with a pencil liner but it took a lot of trial and error. I have since learned that each person with hooded eyelids is unique in the way that their eyes are hooded and how that affects eye makeup for them. So, it was a bit of a frustrating journey but I am a little “better” at drawing eyeliner.

During times it got too frustrating, I started looking at eyeshadow—which, by the way, also smudged—then opted to use eyeshadow only on my bottom eyelids. That’s right. On the parts where it literally couldn’t smudge, or if it did, it would look intentional. It was after watching a video by Alexandra Anele on YouTube that inspired me to just have fun with eye makeup and not think too much about what is right, or wrong, or accepted, or weird, or whatever. I may not be using all the correct products or priming my eyes correctly and all that shit, but I never wanted to be a pro and am only doing this for myself.

Yet another part of the journey is finding what colours suit me because I’m pretty sure I have a cool olive undertone, meaning that some colours just look wrong on me some of the time, but OK at other times. My skin sort of looks different whether I’m tanned or not. Generally I’ve found that some shades of blue and green work pretty well, mostly bright shades, and purple and brown just make me look old and not so well. Sometimes my makeup smudges all over my eyes by the end of the day, and that’s pretty shit. Today I actually had some blue colour on the bottom of my eyelids but I decided to do away with that after it smudged during the day and I didn’t particularly like the effect. So I put a glitter colour on there instead.

I’m blogging every day in January 2023. Let me know if you’ll be joining in and trying to blog every day. 😊 The hashtag you can use on social media is #blogeverydamnday.