This is a guest post by Bee at Bee Loves Beauty.
Since the sun is well and truly out and long holiday weekends beckon, I thought it might be a nice idea to share some tips and recommendations for make up survival at festivals.
Based on trial and (considerable) error, I’ve come up with some golden hints I swear by. Hopefully these will help us to avoid the third-day-leprous look that can afflict the make up wearing festie-goer.
Clueless at Glastonbury in 2000
Before we start, feel free to disregard these tips if you’re “going to a festival” by staying in a hotel or rocking up from home with a day ticket. You can have your assistant do your make up and your butler can carry your cosmetic kit around in an adorable little golf cart if you like. You’ll have access to showers, and baths filled with champagne – my humble words may damage your noble eyes so feel free to skip!
For those of us who will be spending three nights in a grubby tent around a camp fire of plastic and rubbish, the following might be useful…
Wear Sunscreen
You know how Baz Luhrmann would like to recommend you wear sunscreen? I’d like you to wear sunscreen even more than that. Aside from cancer, premature ageing and leathery complexion –all of which are likely to affect you after the end of the festivities– sunburn sucks.
Sunburn hurts and makes you feel sick and hot, no good for festie fun times. As someone who experienced completely drug free hallucinations at a festival, and risked brain damage thanks to sunstroke, I’d also like to strongly recommend you wear a hat or head covering of some kind!
Ace of No Base
Usual “Primer, Foundation, Powder” routines just don’t work in a camping context. Even if your campfire is composed purely of organic sapient pearwood, a thousand nearby fires of crisp packets and stolen trainers are not. There’s smoke, grease and dirt in the air and your seldom-washed sleeping bag and backpack-as-pillow are not really helping.
Your face responds by becoming extra greasy itself to wash the smoke-ick out of your pores and suddenly nothing will stick to your face. Carefully applied base and powder ends up as a muddy slick at your hairline, and orange rings around spots and anything else you’d rather not draw attention to.
The answer to this is to skip your usual base entirely. You’ll look a lot better. If you really need something, a smidge of tinted moisturiser or b.b. cream will do. In the picture above I’m wearing a little bit of Garnier Miracle Skin Perfector BB cream in “Light”.
If you’re a concealer user, I understand I’m not going to be able to talk you out of using it. Take a versatile one that is easy to apply and you don’t mind losing (make up bags, like wallets, are highly stealable, so don’t take anything you can’t face losing). Superdrug 2true do three products for a fiver or £1.99 each, and their concealers are decent enough. If you bring your Touche Eclat and lose it, don’t say I didn’t warn you!
Emphasis for three-day eyes
With all the grot floating around and all the laughing and crowd surfing you’re going to be doing, your eye make up is likely to run or smudge. You can embrace this! You can Michael Stipe it and ninja turtle mask your eyeliner over half of your face. It’s a festival! It’s fine!
If you don’t want to do that, you’ll want to select eye make up products that aren’t soluble in the things they’ll be exposed to, and stick to them. Chief among these genius products are mascaras with “tubing” formulas like L’Oreal Double Extension Beauty Tubes mascara (pictured).
The two-step formula sets to form tubes around your lashes that are only soluble when warm water is applied for a couple of minutes. Once set, it won’t dissolve in tears or face grease, it’s non-transfer and gives you super huge lashes to boot. I wear this mascara surfing and even the repeated cold-water dunkings won’t shift it.
I’m going to go really grungey here and make a suggestion that may horrify some – don’t remove your eye make up at the festival. Wipe your face clean with your baby wipes or whatever, regularly, but if you choose a powerful eyeliner and a tubing mascara, this won’t actually remove them. Ignore this completely if you have contact lenses, sensitive eyes or OCD, and never do this at home, but at Glasto? It could work! The eyeliner I’m using is Collection 2000 Extreme 24H Felt Tip Liner, which is just brilliant.
It deposits colour like a new Sharpie on good paper, then leaves it there as a stain rather than a layer of material. It dries quickly and once on, it’s hard to remove. I say, get your eyeliner right before you go and just top it up while you’re there. Getting it all off and getting it right again in a hand mirror in a tent? Well, you can do this if you like but I’m not going to.
Cheeky Girls
Like foundation and powder, sophisticated blusher, bronzer and contouring is likely to lose its sticking power by the end of day 1. This is where a sheer, creamy colour product like this Daly Face Bronze I picked up in the M&S sale for £1 can be your friend.
Applied lightly to areas in need of colour, a product like this can eliminate pale pastiness without building up a layer of powdery mess on festival skin.
It’s also handily packaged with a mirror so you don’t need to bring a separate one. I’m too pale for bronzer at this point in the year, so I’m wearing the cream blusher from the Boots 17 All About Nude compact, which is another useful mirrored kit. Choose one that suits and stick to it – sorted.
Flaming Lips
For lips, your best bet is a balm with sunblock in. You’ll be outside all day, imbibing many fine beverages, partaking of peace pipes and organic falafels, and you will need your lips to be in good shape for that. If you want to add some colour, a gloss like this one from MUA can add a glamourous touch for just £1.
MUA glosses are nicely pigmented and can double as a cream blusher, saving even more space in your backpack for essential beer and baby wipes. You’re welcome.
So, that’s seven essential products to make you up without messing you up this festival season. If you can reduce the number of products even further, I’d love to know how you do it.
If after all this you’re feeling naked, not made up enough –How will they know I’m a girl?– do not fret, I’ve done some research and tacky bejewelled tiaras still exist!
Still clueless in 2012
Enjoy the festivals kids! Wear Sunscreen!
Love from Bee
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Thanks so much to Machiavelli Id for inviting me to do a guest post. My name is Bee, I’m a beauty blogger usually to be found at http://beelovesbeauty.com. I’m not a beauty expert or a make up artist, just an ordinary make-up wearer who likes to blog about it.
Handmade feather headband from a selection by Bijou Bijoux.
Photography credits: Image 1 by D. Trezise, 2000; Images 2 to 9 by Bee Loves Beauty, 2012.
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