My Worst Beauty Counter Makeovers
Maybe I’m just an extremely picky and awkward person with makeovers, or maybe I have bad luck, regardless I never ever have walked away from a makeover truly happy.
I’m only 20 and I’ve been wearing makeup from around 11? Don’t worry, back then it was only a little mascara. That probably means that my views on other people doing my makeup shouldn’t be completed negative just yet, however they definitely are. I cannot stand having my makeup done by anyone.
I can still remember buying my first lot of makeup products. It was from Biotherm, whose makeup collection has been discontinued, I now believe. Which already I bet you’re all thinking how promising the makeup sounds. I don’t remember the exact details but I do remember sitting in one of those ridiculously unbalanced and definitely not made for fat people, beauty stools. We told the lady it was my first makeup collection and the first time I would have had my makeup done, so you’re probably all thinking how she must have done the ‘no makeup look’, oh – how wrong you are. This woman proceeded to put green and pink on my eyes. I’m not going to go into how wrong that is, I’m not. It pretty much went downhill from there, Mum and I both wondered what on earth was wrong with her.
The second memory of having my makeup done was actually by MAC, only a colour match though. High end beauty counters always put makeup on with brushes, but at the time, flat foundation brushes were used instead of buffing foundation on like many do now. This meant that in MAC’s brightly lighted mirror I looked fantastic, then whilst walking around I could actually see brush strokes on my face. Not attractive.
During my Benefit interview we had the task of putting makeup on top of each other’s already made up faces. It was actually terrifying. No other way to describe it, I’m not going to sugar coat it. SHE TOOK MY EYEBROW OFF. So I was walking around a department store trying to convince people to let me do their makeup, when it looks like I can’t even do my own. Patchy, disgusting, just horrific.
Now for the latest makeover catastrophe it helps if you’ve seen my Illamasqua experience post, you’ll see that my friend Cat had a £30 makeover (redeemable in products) and she looked gorgeous. Obviously after seeing for myself what the products could do, I decided that I also needed to invest.
I also decided that I wasn’t going to baby talk a professional makeup artist into what I liked my makeup like or what suited me. The lady could see my face and eye shape and obviously saw how I normally had it as she was taking my makeup off.
I was absolutely distraught. My eyeliner was really heavy in the inner corner making my eyes look round and piggish like (the photo is after I asked her to change it several times and then got a different artist.) My foundation had black dots all on it and my eyelashes were so clumpy that I could physically count them. They felt like they had been glued. Now if you’ve seen ANY photo of me before it’s not hard to see how long and how many eyelashes I have, certainly not 8 short, stubby ones.
The lady also drew my eyebrows on about a millimetre thick and with an arch that could poke someone’s eye out. The eyebrows on my photo were actually drawn on by me using their products, I didn’t have time to do them properly as I already felt like an awkward customer. (The eye cake/eye brow pencil is amazing to use though.)
I asked for Rich liquid to be used, which after having it applied and then trying myself at home, I’ve realised that it is terrible for me. It’s far too drying and brought out practically every imperfection I have. I’ve later been told that it is for makeup artists that aren’t afraid to blend, but as a self taught MUA the only thing I would blend that with would be a complete new mixture.
My eyes in the picture were changed (fixed) by Benefit actually. I found a lovely girl that I had met at the Benefit interview and she really helped me out and made me feel much better! Beforehand the eyeshadow didn’t even meet the eyeliner, even after I asked it to be retouched. At the end I felt really pressured into buying the foundation as I had been, lets face it, an awkward customer. The products are fantastic at Illamasqua, it’s just the makeovers should really be thought about a little more according to the people and what they would suit.
Since then I have taken the foundation back and they kindly swapped it for the skin base, still a little drying but much better. I also received a sample of their hydra veil primer, unfortunately when I came to use it the sample was empty? A little annoying after having such a bad experience. I feel like I should have said more on the day because if I was going out after that, I would have gone and taken all my makeup off because it was truly that bad. The lady who did it was gorgeous looking, with a lovely personality and I feel quite bad for complaining about it, but the makeover just wasn’t me at all.
Have you had any good or bad makeover experiences?
