Secret to Glowing Cheeks Du Jour 4.6.10

In the pursuit of the perfect glowing cheeks I truly believe I stumbled across the secret of ALL secrets of how to achieve this. My personal opinion is that it has more to do with the technique than the product but it doesn't hurt that this product is amazing.

I have been trying to decide if I should show you the results first or the steps to get the results. Which way would be more suspenseful?

Okay, I decided to show the outcome first, then lay it out step by step for you guys. I really don't know why I have never tried this technique or the at least no one has ever told me about it! Is there some secret glowing cheeks club that I was not privy to admission into? Oh well, I was experimenting in the bathroom on a particularly boring makeup day and I stumbled across something that made my cheeks look like this!

Flash

No Flash

Unfortunately my camera washed out the color a bit but let me tell you the effect. It was a glowing pink that looked like it was coming from within. This look is very youthful, like a rosy cheeked doll. It was reminiscent of the queen of glowing cheeks herself, Kim Kardashian. Who doesnt want that effect?

Onto the magic products and technique, I will take you through step by step.

1. Moisturize Face (I used Cetaphil)
2. On a clean, moisturized face take your foundation brush (mine is beauty of essence from CVS around 8$) and dab it onto MAC's Process Magenta Paintstick (this is the magic product, this thing is PIGMENTED beyond belief, creamy and matte). You can try this out with any very bright pink cream blush or base. It needs to be SUPER bright though.
3. Put the color BELOW your actual cheek bones, more like right along the bottom (please note at this point you will look like a crazy clown, or maybe I just did. We'll see..)
4. Blend it in with your fingers or brush.
5. NOW put on your foundation or tinted moisturizer (I use Laura Mercier's Tinted Moisturizer).
6. This tones down the crazy color and gives the effect that it is coming from UNDER your skin. AMAZING
7. I tapped a tiny bit of NARS "Desire" blush along the cheekbones.
8. I then highlighted the actual tops of the cheek bones with DIORS Amber Diamond shimmer powder (you can use any highlighter, MACs MSF, NARS Albatross, MAC CCB's) Anything that has a slight opalescent shimmer to it. This makes those babies POP!
9. An extra step that you can take if you have rounder cheeks is that you can take a bronzer and SLIGHTLY contour into the hollows of your cheeks ( MAC's Taupe is perfect for that, or any bronzer for that matter).

VOILA. What do you think? Really, the key to the whole technique is the cream based UNDER your foundation or whatever to really make it look like real skin that is blushing and glowing from under the makeup, not just color sitting on your skin. It is important that the pink cream blush or base is VERY bright as the foundation will tone it down and you still want to have some strong pink showing though (MAC's Pink Vivid pain stick would work, MAC's Pink Shock CCB would also, I think Illamasqua has a cream blush that would work well. Although, the paintstick is the perfect texture for this, not greasy, just perfect). I have been doing this every day since I figured it out and not deviating from these products.

Try it out and let me know how it goes and your results! Enjoy!

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