Practical - Applying a base

Brushes needed:

Foundation Brush

Duo Fibre Brush

Rounded Brushes

Kabuki Brush

Triangle Powder Puff

Products needed:

Illamasqua Matte Primer

Dermacolour Camouflage mini palette

Kryolan Ultra foundation 8 palette

Illamasqua Loose Powder in white

Foundation:

• Clip the model's hair back and place a cape over them.
• Use a spatula and scrape some product from the foundation palette depending on which colour you are going to use, if you need to mix products use different spatulas to take from each one and mix together on the back of your clean, washed hands.
• Take a foundation brush and pick up some of the product and test it on the side of the face in a downward stripe to see if that is the right colour for the person's skintone. If the colour is not correct, just keep adding either lighter or darker shades until the colour is correct. Once you have the right colour, wipe off the test strips with a makeup wipe.
• When applying the foundation, start on the nose and work your way out. You can mix the foundation with the primer to help it blend more easily on the skin rather than applying it to the face before hand. Make sure you cover the ears, hands, arms, neck and feet when working on camera as otherwise these areas will look a completely different colour to the model's face.
• If the model has a spot, you can take a small bit of product on a cotton bud and apply this to the spot directly by dabbing gently on it. (This also applies if a model has any fresh piercings that cannot be removed, just go around them with a small cotton bud.)

Concealer:

• The next stage is to pick your concealer shade for your model, the key is to go no lighter than 1-2 shades of your model's skin tone colour.
• Once you have your perfect concealer shade picked out, take the product on a small rounded brush and apply to the inner corner of the eyes, under the eyes, on the outside of the eye and round the side of the eyebrow/forehead. Note: if your model has a lot of redness around their nose, you can also apply some concealer here too.
• Next, take your kabuki brush and start to blend the concealer out. As this concealer is grease-based, it will streak so buffing is a very important stage for base application. To blend, just buff the product round the skin in circular motions until it starts to build up a more fuller coverage on the face and makes the face look warmer.

Powder:

• Take your white powder and tip some into the lid of the container. Take your triangle puff and tap gently on to lid to pick up some product on the puff.
• Apply this around the areas of the face that are likely to look greasy throughout the day and will need setting such as under the eyes, eyelids, around the nose, forehead and chin.
• When applying the powder to the face, dab it onto the skin rather than dragging it as this may affect the look of the foundation and cause it to streak or smudge.
• To get rid of any unwanted powder on the face, take a duo fibre brush and lightly sweep the powder off.

Different concealer shades:

• Green is used for getting rid of any redness on the face and also for covering any blemishes.
• Yellow is used to lift the skin and to give it more of a glow (good for under the eyes).
• Purple is used to make the skin look more alive (good for people who have a grey tint to their skin).
• Red is used to get rid of any dark circles or tones on the face.

I worked with Annabel for this practical. She had very pale skin so I took the two lightest shades in my foundation palette and mixed them together, this created the perfect shade for her skin.

(the two foundation shades that I used on Annabel)

As for the concealer, I used a slightly yellow toned colour for her skin as I thought she already had really good skin but I just wanted to make her eyes stand out a little more. She also had a little redness around her nose, so I applied a little more concealer around this area to cover that up. She also had some new piercings in her ears so I couldn't apply any foundation to these areas. 

(the concealer shade that I used on Annabel)

I personally found the foundation quite hard to work with, I am used to working with liquid foundations so it was a bit of a change for me to work with creams instead but I managed it well. I found that I had to use a lot of product to cover the face, even when I added some primer to the foundation I still thought it was quite hard to apply and blend out. I didn't really like the idea of using a kabuki brush to buff the foundation into the skin either but I found it really useful to try this technique out. 

Once I had finished Annabel's face, I thought the foundation looked really nice on her, she had a nice highlighted glow, especially around the eyebrows and on the cheekbones and I had powdered down some parts of her face so they looked nice and matted. Overall I am happy with the outcome of my first base application and I am excited to carry on trying new products and working with different types of products.