To make your foundation look less like makeup and more like naturally flawless skin � "use a good primer and an illuminating foundation (try Stila Illuminating Liquid Foundation). After applying your foundation, take a dab of moisturizer and warm it in your hands, then pat it over your skin for a more natural look. It softens your foundation." -- Val Garland for MAC
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Speed up nail polish drying time
To make nail colors dry faster, apply very thin coats. Do this by wiping most of the polish off the brush before swiping it on your nail. Then, lay the brush down flat on your nail, don't use the tip of the brush -- that creates brush marks in thinner layers. Also, apply polish to your thumbs first and work out. It'll give you more setting time for the nails you usually mess up before they are fully dry. -- Angi Wingle for CND
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Prevent bold lip colors from bleeding into fine lines
To make sure bright or dark lip colors don't bleed into fine lines, prep lips with lip primer or wax pencil before applying color. Then, use only lip liner as your color. Pencils stay in place better and last longer than lipsticks or glosses. -- Lyne Deshoyers for MAC
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Master the winged liquid liner look
Adopt these savvy tricks and you might just get that glam eye look you've been craving.
• Don't use the brush included with the liquid liner -- use a very fine liner brush instead. (Try Make Up For Ever Eye Liner Brush #1N, $14. They're easier to use.)
• To get a perfectly thin line, aim your brush toward your lashes instead of aiming for the base of your lid. It'll help prevent it from getting too thick.
• To make lining easier, line the inner half of your lid first, then flip your brush around and start at the outer corner of your eye and work inward.
• When trying to get the perfect extended tail, aim toward the end of your brow bone -- where your brow should ideally end.
• Have pointy Q-tips on hand. They're the perfect clean up tool. -- Wendy Karcher, Make Up For Ever artist
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Add softer, natural-looking volume to your hair
To get softer, workable volume in your hair, backcomb only your roots and always use a boar bristle brush (instead of a comb). It'll add softer volume that looks more natural and it's easier to disguise if you need to smooth your hair back for an updo. -- Rodney Cutler, owner of the Cutler salons in New York City
You might think that because models are so stunning, exotic, sexy, what have you, that they don't need much in the way of hair and makeup to look fabulous. Think again.
While covering the shows at New York Fashion Week, we saw first hand what it takes to get naturally gorgeous, freakishly thin and tall models runway ready. It's truly no small feat. They, like us "real" women, have dark circles, split ends, chapped lips, dull complexions, etc., etc. It's true. Fashion Week is like boot camp for models -- it's physically challenging. Their skin and hair is put through rigorous heat styling and backcombing and their poor faces have had makeup applied and scrubbed off multiple times in a day. This training leaves them looking more like we do every day (just being honest here).
That's why the artists working in the trenches backstage have such very important jobs to do. In mere minutes (yes, on occasion they literally have five to 10 minutes to get a model completely ready) they turn these girls into the glamazons we know them to be. And they do it by using the beauty tips they've picked up over the years. The go-to secrets that have worked for them over and over again on red carpets, at photo shoots and, obviously, while backstage.
They were nice enough to share some of these secrets with us. Seriously, they had to style hair or apply makeup -- under serious time pressure -- while we hovered over them, notebooks in hand. Thank you beautiful, talented artists!
