10 Beauty Tips to Help When You're in a Pinch! (Especially When Traveling) | Makeup & Beauty Tips, Tricks Tutorials & ReviewsMakeup & Beauty Tips, Tricks Tutorials & Reviews

Uncategorized / April 1, 2013

10 Beauty Tips to Help When You’re in a Pinch! (Especially When Traveling)

Every time I travel, I forget like 75 beauty products that I wanted to bring, and only discover that they’re missing WHILE I’m trying to get ready to go out. I swear it’s some sort of mental block!

Usually I end up going to the store to get a reasonably priced replacement the next day, but on the spot you need to know what products can pull double duty. (You know… so you can get ready and not keep those traveling with you waiting while you search the local Target for a decent eyeliner.)

This also applies to when you’re home! If I had a nickel for each time I didn’t realize I was on my last pump of foundation. . .

So here are my ten tips on how to use products you will probably have with you, when you’re in a pinch!

Brow gel seems to be the thing I forget/lose most often. I don’t know why, maybe it just blends into the sea of mascara tubes that I swim through daily.

Luckily this one is an easy fix though, spray a little hairspray on a spooly or an eyebrow brush, comb it through and you’re all set! Sometimes I do this even when I have brow gel available, because it seems to hold them really well. I mean, your eyebrow hairs are still hairs after all.

But hold up, your eyebrows aren’t out of the woods just yet. That skinny little brow pencil, or itsy bitsy compact of brow powder often get left behind too, or at least mine do. Now what? You can’t be running all over town with patchy brows.

No worries. Grab a mid-tone matte brown eyeshadow and run it through your brows on an angled brush. Simple and effective. I always prefer pencils to shape my brows, but there are makeup artists who ONLY use eyeshadows to fill brows in. It’s really effective, and you can get really good control on a thin brush.

The only thing is that it doesn’t set as well as a pencil, so make sure you don’t swipe them off your face by accident, and it may not be as pigmented as a brow powder, so you’ll have to put more effort into applying it. Other than that, you’re good to go.

Forgot your contour color/bronzer? Grab that matte brown shadow again. Just make sure you choose a cool toned shade for contouring. You can easily contour your cheeks and nose with a brown shadow. It’s totally not cost effective for daily use, but in a pinch it will sculpt you up, just like your favorite matte bronzer. Wow matte brown shadow is a useful little bugger isn’t it!

Forgetting eyeshadow primer probably isn’t the end of the world, but if you are trying to look cute for pictures, you want your eyeshadow to look its best. Try using a concealer to prime your lids! I recommend using something that is meant to last all day on your skin, because more creamy or dewy formulas might cause premature creasing…no thanks. I like using MAC pro longwear to prime my lids when I’m in a bind. It doesn’t last as well as an actual primer, but it helps!

But what if you don’t have your favorite, go to, neutral eyeshadows? Try using a powder highlighter as a wash of color over the lid. Make sure you do it lightly, so you get a sheer shimmer. A heavy layer will look crazy, but with a light hand this can actually turn out quite pretty.

Good news! This works the other way around too. Don’t have your highlighter? Use a pale shimmery eyeshadow to highlight your cheeks, cupids bow, etc. Just like using a brown eyeshadow to contour, this is not cost effective for daily use, but damn if it doesn’t work well when you need it!

I HATE having dry cuticles, and nothing accelerates cuticle dryness like traveling. Between the dry air on the plane and the different water, it’s like a cuticle tragedy waiting to happen.

So what do you do if you forgot your cuticle oil/cream? Well you should probably try to buy a new one, but until then instead of picking at them and letting them get out of hand, try rubbing some of your trusty chapstick or lip balm on them. It should keep them moist until you can get your hands on some oil.

Not having liquid liner sucks if you are the type of person that likes to rock a cat eye every day. It’s one of those of those products who’s absence can make you feel really naked if you are used to wearing it. Like a makeup security blanket.

I wrote a whole post on using eyeliner sealer to make eyeshadows into a liquid liner (go ahead and click that if you want to give that a read) but odds are if you are on a trip, you aren’t carrying a liner sealer.

Luckily you can get decent results by mixing a little bit of eyeshadow with some setting spray. You can use black, brown, navy, purple, whatever shadow you want, load up whatever brush you prefer, dip it in the setting spray and apply.

It wont be waterproof, and it may take a few passes to get it opaque, but it will get the job done.

Being on a trip can be exhausting, and with exhaustion comes pale, colorless skin. You really don’t want to skip out on the blush if that’s the case, but what if you forgot it, or it got crushed in your luggage? A red or pink lipstick can make a beautiful cream blush!

You can apply it straight from the tube and then rub it in with clean fingers to blend, or even rub some onto a stippling brush if that’s how you prefer to apply cream blushes. Just be careful not to apply too much, as lipstick tends to be more pigmented than cream blush.

I say start with a tiny bit, you can always build it up if need be.

I have saved the biggest nightmare for last. You forgot your foundation. What in the name of all that is holy were you thinking?

Ok no biggie heres what you do. Mix a dollop of your concealer into some moisturizer or sunblock (a sunblock that is made for your face of course)

The mixture should create almost a BB cream type of product, and you can control the coverage by adding more concealer or more moisturizer to suit your needs.

This actually makes a really nice, natural finish, but it can tend to wear off so you will probably want to set it with a translucent powder or a setting spray, or BOTH to make it stay nicely on the skin all day.

I hope these come in handy, and let me know if you have any tricks of your own in the comments!