How to build up your professional make-up artist kit
Starting out as a make-up artist and hunting for the perfect additions to your kit can be challenging. There’s so much choice and gorgeous packaging to get lost in and before you know it you’ve bought enough make-up to fill a counter or two at Selfridges.
Over the years, I’ve found that the quality of a products is not always determined by the price tag as high-street products are as equally amazing as the high-end brands. Here’s my top tips for what to include in your kit.
Core products to invest in
When I worked mobile for three years before opening my make-up studio, I looked at ways to multi-use products to keep my costs down as well as find essentials to keep my kit smaller. What I found is that a good make-up kit needs a light, medium and dark foundation with matching concealers.
I generally stick to these colours but I will mix them with either a pink, tan or olive undertone product to give me a perfect base shade for each client. This prevents me from stocking shades that I would not utilise as much as others.
My favourite foundations are: HUDA Beauty, Maybelline Fit Me, Boujoir Healthy Mix and MAC Studio Fix. These are medium-to-full coverage products but mixing a highlighting liquid or sun drops into the foundation can help you create a softer dewy look in seconds.
Learn the game changing techniques
Using shimmer eyeshadows for blushers has always been my thing for creating glowing pink and peachy tones. I was forever searching for bright eyeliners to use on the waterline to add some sass to a make-up look. Have you ever used dry eyeshadow in the waterline? It’s a game changer.
That hot pink liner I’ve always wanted to create has been sat in my eyeshadow palette all that time. By using eyeshadows with a mixing medium, you can create a gorgeous precision liner and source a perfect lipstick shade by using this mix on lips too.
Some eyeshadow pallets I’m loving at the moment are: Beauty Bay EYN Fiery Matte, Doll Beauty Peaches and Pop Tarts, Charlotte Tilbury Pillow Talk and pretty much all Morphe palettes.
One brush has multiple applications
However, the main items I multi-use in my kit are my brushes. My fluffy eyeshadow brushes are perfect for creating your transition shades but are also good for buffing over small areas of the face to blend in foundation and concealer. They create a perfect skin spotlight for highlighters using crème or powder and are great to blend lipstick when creating an ombré style.
My concealer brush is used for concealing, colour correcting, crème contour application, cutting the crease, applying pigments and eyeshadow to give a full coverage colour on the lid, patting foundation over the nose and blending the undereye concealer to foundation, and carving a structured or fluffy brow shape.
There’s so much you can do with a variety of products and brushes, it’s just finding unique ways to use them to suit you and your make-up looks. Having the knowledge and confidence to experiment with different techniques gives you versatility. What MUA doesn’t want that?
What’s your top make-up kit tip? Comment below.