BEAUTY

Common beauty mistakes that make your face look older

Eyeliner and mascara make your eyes pop, foundation covers up fine lines and blemishes, blush gives our cheeks a youthful glow and concealers cover up dark spots and under-eye dark cycles. Depending on how we use these products and at what age we use them, our good intentions can easily go awry. Product application and certain colours that might look great on a twenty year old might not be as flattering on a forty year old lady. Rather than enhance one’s beauty, they actually enhance wrinkles and thinning skin. If an aging appearance worries you, avoid these beauty mistakes that instantly make you look older than your real age.  Not everyone might need this piece of advice. If you are young and without wrinkle, or if you just want to have fun with makeup, rather than worry about whether it brings out your crow’s feet, be as experimental as you would like. But if you want to mask the pesky signs of aging, it might just be right to re-evaluate your makeup and beauty routine.

Not exfoliating: The older you get the longer it takes for dead skin cells to slough off. But giving you a youthful glow is as simple as using at- home glycolic peel once or twice a week. This will make any anti-aging product you are using penetrate even better.

Applying thick foundation: When it comes to foundation, less is more. One thing you should know is that heavy makeup is a one way ticket to looking older than you actually are. Choose a sheer foundation, and after you apply it, press a damp makeup sponge into areas where you have wrinkles to soak up excess. While the less- is more maxims may seem counterintuitive, the more skin you can see, the better, as long as it is well hydrated. Fresh skin looks much more youthful than an obviously covered complexion.

When you wear the wrong lip stick: Metallic lipstick finishes may look pretty on the runway, but they don’t work after 40. A better choice is to go for a lip stick formula with sheen, not a heavy shimmer, or a sheer gloss which has the added effect of making the lip appear fuller.

Not using sunscreen: You may forget to floss occasionally, but don’t ever get caught forgetting to apply sunscreen. Here’s why, nearly all wrinkles and fine lines are due to sun. Covering your face with a broad- spectrum formula will take a few extra seconds every morning, but can keep years off your face. Just do it and you will be thankful.  

                                               

Applying eyeliner and mascara on lower lids and lashes: Lining the lower lids with dark pencil and coating the lower lashes with dark mascara can bring out under-eye circles once you are past a certain age. Plus, eyes can look smaller overall as a result. But don’t throw out this product just yet. Outline your upper lids with a thin, dark line that gets thicker toward the outer corner, curl your eyelashes; curling your lashes is the easiest thing you can do to make your eyes look bigger (and therefore younger), and then run the mascara wand over the upper lashes a few times.

Know how to apply blush on the apples of the cheeks: The general and most common method for applying blush is to smile.  Find the apples of your cheeks, and then run the blush brush over them. But as sagging skin becomes more prominent on the face, a better method is to find where cheekbones peak and apply blush there instead, sweeping the brush up and back. Skip the drama queen shades, too. Colours like wine and cinnamon will only make you look gaunt if you are thing and clownish if you are not, a neutral rose colour flatters all skin tones and really brightens things up.