Whether your little one is a few months old or a few years old, when children become our main focus, almost everything else seems to go by the wayside-including our beauty routine. While we might not have 30 minutes to spare anymore in order to put together a flawlessly made-up face, we still want to look our best when we leave the house.
When it comes to makeup for busy moms, it's all about prioritizing. By creating a short and sweet routine to highlight your best features in the least amount of time possible, you can always put your best face forward when running errands or meeting up for a mommy play date, even if you only have less than 10 minutes to do it.
Healthy Skin is Happy Skin
If you want to look your best without relying on a heavy dose of daily makeup, it's important to take care of your skin. Healthy skin has a natural glow that makes us look and feel our best. To keep your skin healthy, make sure to choose a good daily face wash based on your skin type as well as a great moisturizer, preferably with built-in
It's also a good idea to exfoliate, either using a face wash or an exfoliating facial mask, at least once a week. Depending on your skin type, you may want to increase this to two or three times a week, just make sure not to over-exfoliate. Removing all the oils from your face will only make you produce more oil to make up for it, which then results in irritated, red, and/or dry skin.
Create a Fresh Palette
Your face is your palette, so when you want to create a simple makeup look, you need to start with a clean, fresh face. You can create your clean palette by using a foundation to even out your skin tone. There are a ton of foundations out there, including mineral based foundations which can be quicker and easier to apply than a liquid or cream foundation. No matter what foundation you choose, you want to ensure it is blended well and doesn't make your face look too matted or appear caked on.
If you have dark circles under your eyes you'd like to conceal, you can purchase an under-eye concealer or use a concealer a few shades lighter than the rest of your skin and tap a few dots under your eyes and blend.
Blush
Now that your face looks fresh with a nice even skin tone, you can add a small pop of color with blush. Blush should be applied in small dabs on the apples of your cheeks only. Warm colors like peach or light pink work for most skin tones, but you'll need to find a color that looks great on you. Do not drag your blush across your cheeks or dab on too much. Putting on blush should take less than 5 seconds, anymore than that and chances are you are applying way too much.
Remember, you just want to infuse a touch of color on your cheeks to brighten your face, not look like Bozo the clown.
Eyes
Since you are keeping the rest of your face relatively simple, you'll want to makeup your eyes a bit, but that doesn't mean you should overdo it. All you really need to create a clean and lovely day look with eye makeup is a shimmery white eye shadow (for highlighting), a touch of eye shadow in a neutral or light shade (lavender, beige, or brown work well with most eye colors) and some mascara.
First, take your white shimmery eye shadow and use your ring finger or pinky to dab a dot next to the corner of your eyes then use your finger or an eye shadow brush to apply just underneath your eyebrow where it arches. This makes your eyes look bigger and brighter. Next, take your neutral eye shadow and apply a thin layer to the area of your lids just above your lash line. One quick coat of your mascara of choice and your eyes should look lovely, bright, and definitely not like you've been running after a toddler all day.
Don't worry about eyeliner or creating fancy eye shadow blends with different colors, when you are in a rush you need to perfect your basics. And with the right makeup combination, a little goes a long way.
Lips
Lips are fairly subjective, but for this look, I recommend going with something light and simple like a sheer tinted lip gloss, or if you don't feel like reapplying, a lip stain. The whole idea is to create a clean, simple look that you can wear whether you are running to the grocery store, picking up your kids from soccer practice, or going out to lunch or the movies with some friends.
When you keep your makeup this simple, you are practically assured you can pair this look with anything in your closet. You can also make little tweaks to keep yourself from getting bored by trying a few different shades of lip glosses or eye shadows.
Makeup On the Go
Another benefit to perfecting your simple makeup routine is the ability to keep looking your best without having to haul a giant makeup case everywhere you go. For a quick touch up, just make sure to have your lip gloss or lip stain with you and perhaps a few oil absorbing sheets to blot away any shine should it occur. If you are using oil removing wipes, make sure to blot, not wipe. This is especially important if you are wearing makeup!
Just because we're moms doesn't mean we should stop looking good or feeling good about ourselves. While keeping up with the kids might not give us the time we used to have to indulge in making ourselves up, these quick and simple makeup tips only take a few seconds each and can give us the beauty boost we need to get through the day.
