Christmas - the time of may a festive party and get-together. While this is all very well and good in theory, then there's the matter of getting ready. Usually, we'd all like to take as much time as possible - having a nice, long soak in the bath; painting our nails and reapplying our makeup. However, especially over the festive period, more often than not you're a little bit short of time. You may well have just come home from a long day at work, or simply scouring the shops in town for gifts and the last thing you want (or have time) to do is taking all of your slap off and starting again from scratch. But you still want to do something with your makeup - touch things up and add a little more here and there. So that's where this post comes in - some of my own tips 'n' tricks for how I like to upgrade my makeup from daytime wear to night-time glam. Ready? Let's gets into it...
PREPARE IN ADVANCE (IF YOU CAN) - Basically, if you know in advance that you're going out in the evening, try spend a little more time on your makeup in the morning - notably when it comes to your base. This will hopefully make things far easier for yourself later on in the evening when it comes to retouching and amping things up and can simply be a case of adding in a few extra steps in along the way. Make sure you use a good moisturiser and primer to hydrate your skin and help your makeup stay on as long as possible; opt for a long-lasting foundation and ensure you set things into place with either powder or a setting spray. While you may still need to address the odd issue or two when you touch things up in the evening, by slotting in a few extra products into your morning routine you'll hopefully have far less work to do.
CLEAN THNGS UP - Before you go to work at actually sorting your slap out in evening, you need to clean things up first. Throughout the day, things may well have moved around a little and there may be some smudging here and there - probably most likely under the eyes - so it's essential that you remove any traces of that before you go and build things back up again. A good ol' makeup wipe will be your best friend for this, but if not, putting some micellar water onto a cotton pad or bud works just as well - particularly if you want to be a little more precise.
REFRESH AND REVIVE - Now that you've cleaned things up - it's time to begin working on making everything look awesome again. Having dry skin, I love to start off by adding an extra dose of hydration to my parched chops to keep things looking fresh and glowy. After setting my makeup into place earlier in the day, I always find a little spritz of facial mist to help add some much-needed juiciness to the base before I go in again with more - usually cream or liquid-based - products. My makeup looks brand new again (and super dewy - perfect for Christmas when you want to look all radiant and healthy) and anything I layer over the top will blend into what's currently there more seamlessly. Just make sure it's a mist that's suitable for going over the top of makeup!
ASSESS THE BASE SITUATION - Next up, you need to look at your base. You've cleaned things up and refreshed it, so now you need to work out just what you need to do to it to make things look super flawless again. You may need to work on brightening up the under-eye area again or there may be a few blemishes that are peeping out. Once you know what needs some attention, then you need to choose your product. If it's perhaps a more general base replenishing, this may be using some foundation here and there to patch things back up; whereas some concealer will work much better if there's specific, targeted areas that are looking a tad worse for wear.
PRIORITISE - Now that you've sorted your base out, next up comes the more 'finishing' parts of the face - the cheeks, eyes and lips. These departments are a lot more interchangeable than the base itself, and so while some may want to focus on one; others may be happy to stick with working on another. It all comes down to what your personal preferences are when it comes to not only your general makeup style, but also how you like to rock a night-time look. Figuring this out will help you to prioritise - something which is essential when transitioning your makeup from day to night - and make the whole process far more efficient and quicker too.
DEFINE, DEFINE, DEFINE - Personally, when it comes to adding to my makeup ready for the evening if I don't have much going on already, I like to focus on adding some much-needed definition. Whether that be by contouring out those cheekbones to shape the face, adding a slick of liquid liner to frame the eyes or buffing a deeper colour into the crease of the eyes to add some depth - if you want an instant way of making your simple daytime makeup much more night-time, definition is the way to go.
ADD SOME COLOUR - Colour is also an awesome way of transitioning your makeup into the evening. It'll help make your makeup look fresh again and especially for Christmas, add a touch of festive flavour too. If you want to go down the festive route, some gold-toned eyeshadow or - the ultimate festive makeup classic - a red lip is always a good way to go, but if not, simply a touch of blush on the cheeks will work wonders at brightening up your complexion.
FOCUS ON THE EYES - I mentioned earlier how personally, I always like to focus on adding definition when it comes to amping up my makeup for the evening, but another main priority of mine is also to focus on the eye area. My eyes are probably my favourite feature on my face (is that a weird thing to say?), and also the area that I head to straight-away if I need to amp my makeup up in an instant. If you don't want to worry about choosing a lipstick that matches to your party dress perfectly and will stick around all night long - deepening up your eyeshadow, adding some liner and whacking on a big pair of lashes (or simply adding a shedload more mascara) will take your makeup to evening-ready before you can say 'Have you called a taxi?'.
POWDER AND SET - Just as it was super-important to set your makeup into place in the morning to ensure things were still hanging around as much as possible for the evening, after you've done all of the work needed for your makeup to be fully transitioned into the night-time, it's just as essential that you repeat the process and use a setting powder to lock things down once more. The last thing you want is to have put all of this effort in, only for it to not hold up throughout the night - so powder as you normally would and if needed, keep it in your bag for touch-ups.
GO BOLD OR GO HOME - As I said earlier, Christmas is the perfect opportunity for rocking a bold, preferably red lip and in general, it's probably the one thing which can take your makeup into the evening with probably the least amount of time and fuss required. A bold lip generally looks the best when paired with simplistic, pared-back eyes and a fresh, glowy complexion so all you'd most likely need to do at the most would be a general base touch-up and perhaps some added mascara and you're good to go. Well, after you've chosen your outfit. And curled your hair. And taken about a million selfies, of course...
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