I’ll be upfront with everyone. If you know me well, you know that I don’t often wear makeup. Everyday, I put on lip balm, use my brow pencil, mascara, then out the door. But, over the years I have experimented with a lot of different makeup and with some help from my makeup guru (my roommate Maddie, seen with me below, who is an artist with makeup) I have some go-tos to share!

So, if you see me everyday, you’ve probably seen me using my favorite lip balm right now from Urban Outfitters. It smells amazing and keeps my lips soft (and right now it’s only $4!). If your lips are super chapped, use straight up coconut oil on them! I’ve had dry skin for awhile now and nothing moisturized my lips like that. Be careful though, too much and things begin to look too shiny. You may want to just use coconut oil at night before you go to bed. As far as my brow pencil, the best one I’ve had yet and the one I’m currently using is the Anastasia Beverly Hills Brow Wiz. It has a brush on one side and a retractable tip on the other. It’s perfect to fix your brows quickly. My brows are a bit sparse in certain sections, the taupe color fills them in without making them look wild. Lastly, right now I’m using drugstore mascara- Rimmel London Scandal Eyes mascara. It is not the best for being waterproof, but it provides a lot of volume and length for only $7.

If I’m feeling like I need a pick me up, I try to step it up a bit. I do think that if you feel down, looking good and feeling confident goes a long way to help get you out of a rut. I go for a look like this:

So, starting with skin, mine has some texture leftover from acne struggles in middle school and  high school. To even out the texture I use the Smashbox Photo Finish Primer. That stuff lasts and gives the perfect base for my foundation. Before I go any further, I also wanted to mention cover sticks for color correcting. If you have particularly red or dark spots this stuff can save your life. For my skintone, I use the green shade. Nothing cancels out redness like it- mine is from Maybelline. It’s creamy and goes on smoothly. On the Maybelline website they have the full range of shades and also note the best uses of the shade (yellow corrects dark circles for example). To continue, the foundation I have right now is from Yves Saint Laurent and was a beauty splurge. Sadly it seems they don’t make my version anymore, but the Touche Éclat Foundation seems to be very close to my original. I loved this foundation because it was the best match for my skintone (BD 40 ‘Warm Sand’)and I wanted to make the investment in the quality.

Once my skin is taken care of, my lips are fairly simple. If I want to be bold, especially later in the evening, I go with a classic red lip. First I go in with a lip liner- I love Nars’ lip pencils, I use the shade ‘Cruella’ when I’m doing a red lip. That step is crucial because my favorite lipsticks are liquid. So I need some guidelines to follow when I apply liquid lipstick.  My favorite brand for those is Kat Von D. They are long lasting and dry without making my lips feel like a desert (which can be a difficult thing with liquid lipsticks). My shade is ‘Protect the Chimps,’ however that was limited edition. So, I would suggest the color ‘Outlaw – brick red’ as a solid stand in. I’m a big fan of strong reds or corals but you can pick whatever shades suit your mood. During the day, if I don’t want to stand out as much I’ll pick a more natural but still brightening color like Cremesheen lipstick in ‘Ravishing’ from Mac.

Lastly, on my eyes I try to continue the trend of not complicating things. Even when I want to be more glam, I don’t want to take forever. Also – here I want to give the biggest shoutout to Maddie who teaches me things about makeup because I’ve always been a bit more of a clothes girl. She helped me figure out this routine because I don’t like looking too over the top during the day, but I want to feel put together. She’s my makeup hero. So, I’ll use 3 eyeshadow shades to give myself something akin to a not-so dramatic smoky eye (I always feel like a racoon when I attempt to use black eyeshadow). The Tartelette In Bloom palette from Tarte is wonderful for this. I use two shades of brown for this – one very light, the other dark. In the Tarte palette they are named ‘Jetsetter’ and ‘Activist.’ The lighter of the shades, ‘Jetsetter’ in this case, should go in your crease and needs to be blended out well to diffuse the shadow. The darker of the colors, ‘Activist,’ can be used to line your lashes (top lash line and lower lash line) on the outer corners of your eyes. You blend that out too and it will already look good. But, if you’re like me and enjoy a bit of sparkle you can add something like ‘Kitschmas’ from Mac. This pigment will last you forever and has such versatile uses. For my eyes I put it in the inner corners to make things pop.

When all that is finished you’ll have a look somewhat akin to this:Hope you all enjoyed this! Make sure to subscribe to my Instagram. If you want more makeup info my favorite beauty blogger is SoothingSista and Maddie recommends Melissa Alatorre.