I don’t know very many women who would prefer to spend a ton of money on their makeup products. As much as I adore my cosmetics, if I can get by with scaling back on them so that I can spend more money on other necessities (um, groceries for my family of 5, gasoline, a good haircut, etc) then I’m pretty happy. So I am going to show you that it IS POSSIBLE to look like a million bucks on a beer budget…
{My ENTIRE makeup look from Walgreens – BAM!!}
My entire look, minus the tank top and earrings obviously, came to a whopping 40 bucks!
For my SKIN, the products that were my magic bullets to looking pretty darn flawless were :
- Maybelline’s Dream Smooth Mousse in “classic ivory” – applied all over.
- Maybelline Instant Age Rewind Eraser in “neutralizer” – applied under eyes, around sides of my nose, and around my mouth before applying my red lips.
- For highlighting, I got creative and used my Wet n’ Wild Coloricon shadow trio in “walking on eggshells.” I used the pink shade as blush, the brown as my bronzer/contouring, and the ivory part as the actual highlight on tops of my cheekbones and nose. They’re all shimmers by the way, no flat colors in this trio.
For my EYES, the best way to look expensive is to have lots of lashes, so scoring the false lash strips was key.
- Andrea ModLash strips in Bat those Lashes #21 – these were put on after all of the other eye makeup was applied. Luckily, it came with a tiny sample tube of glue so I didn’t have to buy that separately which helped keep my total bill lower! Score!
- Wet n’ Wild Coloricon in “walking on eggshells”- I used this trio for my entire eye bed including the brown to fill in my brows. Which honestly doesn’t look that great because it’s not dark enough and has shimmer in it, but luckily I have heavy bangs to hide that! Ha!
- Wet n’ Wild mega impact mascara – this actually turned out to be an excellent choice for mascara, and it was only a 1.99 after using my Walgreens card – woah! You literally can’t beat that.
- Wet n’Wild H20 proof liquid liner in black – this liner is a product I’ve been using for over 3 years now and it produces the best stay put cat eye in the biz. You have to scrub, scrub, scrub to get this stuff off. Which is great in my opinion because with a cat eye as thick and exaggerated as I’ve created, it has to stay precise to look sophisticated and can’t be fading or running around your face.
And last but certainly not least, the bold RED LIPS addition is what tops this look off to making it look expensive…
- Rimmel Lasting Finish lipstick by Kate Moss in “Kiss of Life”- a gorgeous matte red that rivals any of my department store reds. It’s shockingly similar to MAC’s “Russian Red” I wore here.
One tool that I did use a lot while shopping the aisles of Walgreens, was my Pretty In My Pocket app. This thing just gets better and better with helping me to make wise makeup buying decisions. And it’s super fun to be able to scan barcodes on my own with just my iPhone to pull up reviews of the various products while in the store!! Yes, a 35 year old mom of 3 can get her kicks off something so simple!! Ha! Even a professional makeup artist like myself can use a little help and advice from others in their experience with these drugstore options. This app is changing the way I buy makeup by helping me to not spend unnecessary money on products that won’t work for me.
So what do you think of my champagne face? Does it look more Dom Perignon than Andre??! Ha!! (Andre is a much cheaper version of champagne if you didn’t get that comparison!)
