First the Bag, Now the Whole Drawer: Elizabeth's Makeup Makeover

Last week I invited you all to bring your makeup wardrobe to Bellacara. Elizabeth Todd decided to take me up on my offer. She brought everything she had and dumped it out on the table. What I found was quite telling.Elizabeth likes the idea of makeup. She likes the idea of wearing it. So, she buys it. She buys a lot of it. What she doesn’t do is wear it much. Which, it turns out, is because when she opens her makeup drawer and sees so much stuff, she feels overwhelmed. She can’t remember how to use certain things and so she defaults to a little concealer and lipstick. Finding makeup that is easy to use and removing the clutter was essential.We began by separating out the old and expired product. There was a fair amount. That was swept into the waste basket. We then divided her products into complexion, eye, and lip products. It turned out there were several duplicate items. This wasn’t a bad thing, necessarily. She could keep some of the duplicate items in her gym bag. This way, she wouldn’t have to worry about misplacing it or not having it when she needed it. I have many customers with second homes who keep duplicate items there so they don’t have to pack their makeup each time.We then began to talk about what steps she would realistically do for makeup each day. We eliminated a bunch of eyeshadows, but kept one small palette; a true foundation; and highlighter she could keep for special occasions. For daily use we kept an undereye color corrector, concealer, and undereye highlighter. We kept her favorite intuitive face corrector, Vita Liberata’s Illuminaze, as well.Some of the items that she had loved really needed to be replaced as they were the ones that had been really well loved. They were dried out or had broken tubes. Once we replaced them, she could see how much better they performed. At that point, she asked how to apply the items we kept. Once we went over proper application techniques, she felt that she would actually use the remaining items. Hopefully, now when she looks in her makeup drawer she feels empowered to use the items she sees and feels a bit more polished every day.