Pro Makeup Artist Kit Building Part 2

Here we are at part 2!! I'm Hoping Part 1 has given you a better idea of what a kit should contain, while giving you options to choose from. Again, these post are intended to assist you with building your first professional kit or revamping your current one. I'm still going to dish out on the best ways to build cost effectively.

I just can't stress enough that this is no easy task and may take you a little time to get everything I talk about. But if you stick to this guide line you'll have a very nice pro quality starter kit.
 
Lash Kit
 If you're going to have a lash kit, please ALWAYS use PROFESSIONAL products. A lash kit should contain a variety of lashes, small scissors, & professional grade LASH adhesive. I always recommend human hair lashes, the synthetic hair lashes do not work well with applying mascaras and can come across on camera as really artificial.

Lip Colors

This should be easy as pie. I'm currently de-tubing (removing lipstick from the original tube & melting them down into a palette) 39 lipsticks!! Save yourself the trouble and get a lip palette with the primary shades you'll need. DON'T waste you money buying those palettes that have those tiny circles of lip color. They have a lot of colors but not a lot of product. You'll be out of your favorite shades in about 6 good uses and the other shades will expire from not using them. Yes, expire. Every makeup product has an expiration date, just check the package for the cosmetic symbol.

Makeup Expiration symbol. This means from the day you open/ break the seal, you have the said amout of months before the product is expired.

Coastal Scents has 4 lovely lip palettes that I love playing in. My favorite of the four is the "Sun Kissed" palette. The perfect nude palette I've come across. Just like the eyeshadows having a neutral set and a color set will work for starting out just be sure to grab staple colors that clients may ask for in red.

Off hand I suggest you keep the following red lipsticks in your kit, MAC's Ruby Woo &Viva Glam 1 and the Coastal Scents Power Play lip quad. With these you have reds covered in my book for a beginners kit.

Blushers

Highly pigmented and worth every penny these blushers I'm going to suggest have been the only blusher I have been loyal to. I'm not saying that I don't own other brands of blush that I love, but these have been a staple in my kit always. La femme Cosmetics blush are my hands down favorite. You can get them in palette form or as singles and build your own palette. I personally get my refill pans from CameraReadyCosmetics. Because there are so many colors to own I started out with what I figured would be my basics. Those shades are Peach, Dusty Rose, Sienna, Coral, Pink Velvet, Plum Passion & Heather. I know that's a hefty list of colors, but when you can get them all for the price of one MAC blush, yup I said ONE MAC blush! I'm not complaining at all! You could splurge and get 14 of them for $40! That's amazing considering the quality of the product is AWESOME and they seem to last forever.

Brow Kit

Framing a face is of course important in any makeup application. The brow struggle is crazy these days, I see so many women sporting horridly shaped brows. Please do your brow shaping research and practice proper brow techniques. No Joke! To do this you'll for sure need the right brow products. I have to be honest and admit that I love MAC's brow pencils, but have found favorites in more affordable brow pencils from Kiss Cosmetics and NYX. A snazzy brow kit is a must have as well. My starter brow kit was a combination of MAC's Spiked and Strut brow pencils (Kiss has a Spiked & Black Brown that work great) , angled tweezers, Smashbox Brow Tech and a brow brush that had a spool attachment. Some clients may require a brow powder and for that reason I keep all 3 of Milani's Brow Fix Kits around.

Eye liners & Mascaras


Keep it simple, starting out you'll need the basics. Cream liners and pencil liners in black and brown. From there the colors and formulas are limitless. Get the basic and grow, this holds true for all items in your kit. It would benefit you to get waterproof cream formulas for long wear. But any great quality liner will do the trick. Makeup Forever has the best cream Aqua liners and they carry their waterproof formula in pencil form as well. Liquid liners are cool but aren't mandatory. Glitter liners are really fun to have around for prom, birthday, or junior bridesmaid or flower girl makeup.

Mascaras have the same rules in the case of building a pro kit. You'll need the basics, black and brown in waterproof and non-water proof. The reason muas have so many mascaras is because of the different formulas. The key formulas to have starting out are lengthening and volumizing. Makeup hygiene is super important and there is no way you should be using the wand that comes with your mascara on clients. Try getting disposable mascara wands that mimic the original wand. You should be using disposable wands on every client! Please keep in mind that there are tons of great mascaras but these are my personal favorites. L'oreal Paris Voluminous Carbon Black, Maybelline Falsies Volume Express, & Maybelline Lash Stiletto.



Lip Liners

Not the easiest of products to gather, but can be made very easy if you start out with neutral, red, pink, and plum tones. I have never had a main brand of liners I love or hate. I buy, try, keep, or replace. However, I will let you in on some of my "keepers". I found a site Cherry Culture one day while roaming the web for beauty buys. They have an amazingly affordable products. Not everything I recommend from this site however, the NYX & Amuse long pencil liners are great buys and a beauty steal for the price tags they carry. Grab them all!



Here's the heartbeat of you kit. Your supplies kit will be a tad massive as there are a lot of things to have. Just remember makeup hygiene is no joke and it's best to have everything on hand. I think this would be easier to breakdown in a list. These items can be found in places like drug stores or online.


Makeup remover wipes- My all time favorite are from Neutrogena. They don't come with a lot in the package so for my kit stock I love Walmart's Equate brand. If ordered online you can get a jumbo double pack for under $7. They are great dupes of Pond's wipes.

Disposable mascara wands- These are a MUST!! If your lucky you can find disposable that mimic the original mascara brush.

Makeup sponges- There are so many to choose from! I personally love the original latex-free triangle sponges for setting powders. And the ever popular Beauty Blender for super flawless and quick foundation and concealer blending.

Small Scissors- These will serve as a big help when needing to trim lashes and brow shaping. I would suggest having 2 pair and that they are sharp. It's also a great idea to keep them in a safety case too.

Beauty puffs- Keep your finger prints and hand made smudges to yourself. These puffs come with an attached band to slip around your fingers so its close by when you need it. It allows you to touch the client's face without actually touch them.

Client Cape- This is a key item to have. Using a cape assures that their are no makeup messes on a client. Translucent powder on a client wearing black can be a disaster, a cape will help you avoid that situation.

91% alcohol- When it comes to keeping your supplies clean 91% alcohol or higher can do that. Just tote some around in a labeled spray bottle.

Paper Towels & "soft" tissues- Nothing like being prepared for a spill or a teary eyed bride.

Cotton Swabs- I have only 2 uses for these. The 1st is cleaning up lipstick smudges around the corners of the mouth. The 2nd is cleaning out the inner corners of a client's eyes. The worst thing is trying to apply liner to the water line and a glob of eye boogie is sitting there waiting for you. A simple dab of a cotton swab can handle that problem allowing you to keep your fingers out of your client's sensitive eye area.

There you have it, a full professional quality starter kit. I hope I've made this process of kit building a stress free and simple task for you. Just remember that building a full kit takes true investment and a dedication to quality.  Please feel free to comment and share you kit building experience as well.

 

Pro Makeup Artist Kit Building Part 1

Here's the post you have been waiting for!! I have been working hard going through my kit researching and remembering how I was able to build my 1st pro kit, while sorting out what worked and didn't work for me starting out. Thinking back I remembered that it took company gratis (because I started out behind department store makeup counters & they gift employees company products) and a lot of money invested in pro quality products.

If you're planning on becoming a pro makeup artist you might as well get ready to spend your money. But with quality pro products in your kit your rates can reflect your skill level and your kit quality. I'm hoping that with my help you won't have to buy top dollar brands to build and have pro quality it. The saying goes "you got to spend money to make money" but you don't have to spend a ton of money. Just remember that having a well equipped kit will allow you to be a successful makeup artist.

If you're a student it's likely your school will provide a starter kit for your early beginnings. And if you're an artistic self starter you are going to have to start from the very bottom of the kit building process and flat out buy your own products. Either way we all have to start from somewhere, right?  To help you get started and sort of get you on the right path to pro artistry, I'll be listing and dishing all of the items needed to build a starter kit. This isn't the text book kit building list but it's universally the list of things you'll need a products that are worth saving & splurging on.

Starting out I suggest getting as many pro quality products in palette form as possible or buying "refills/single pans" and building your own palettes. Palettes save you money and kit space as far as storage goes. As your kit grows you'll see that getting palettes or downsizing/ depotting into pallets is going to be your best bet if you want to be organized and have kit space for other items to come. On top of the fact that "refills/single pans" products are less expensive to purchase.


 Makeup Brushes

Important tools to have to be a makeup artist. Don't cheat yourself out of quality trying to buy quantity. If you're in this profession for the true long haul, then your brushes should be prepared to be with you for some years. So INVEST in PRO brushes and not on  those random brush sets with a zillion brushes for all of $30. Even though my kit has brushes from great companies, I seem to prefer buying Sigma Brushes. Sigma has the same quality and standard range of brushes as the popular MAC, but they carry a more affordable price tag. I snagged this Sigma Face and Eye set for $98 from Amazon. That's about the cost of 3 MAC brushes, however, I was able to get a full set of all of the basic brushes needed to complete a makeover. Hope you can see where I'm going with this??

Eye Shadows

I suggest you shop until you have what you need, I haven't met an artist who has said "I don't need any more shadows". However, the clear and easy way to do this is to start out with a "neutrals" palette and a "colors" palette. The "neutrals" palette should be equipped to get you through a wedding or professional headshots. And well, the "colors" palette is just that a palette full of color for everything else like prom or party makeup. Once your collection starts to grow you'll then be able to organize by "shades" where you then have a palette for purples and one for browns and so on. But starting out these two palettes should do you just fine. I would suggest Coastal Scents for the"28 neutral palette" (left) and the  "smokey eye" palette (seen here on the right)

Concealers

gKeep in mind you'll need shades to match & color correct a wide range of skin tones. There are so many concealer formulas to choose from it's best to get something universal like creams to start. My advise is to get a concealer palette that has a good range of shades and mix those to create the shades you don't have in the mean time. The Coastal Scents Eclipse palette and the Cameo Quads in dark & medium are both a small staples in my kit today. Once you're ready to start building up I then suggest adding liquid concealers to give yourself a selections of textures for your clients.

Foundations

There's no way around it, you're going to need foundations. Just like with concealers you'll need a wide range of shades and formulas. The easiest way to save money and do this is to buy oil free foundations. Oil free formulas work for all skin types, however, when you get a dry skin client be sure to prep their skin with a fitting moisturizer for their dryness. Buying bottle after bottle of foundation can cost a lot and take forever to build a complete collection. Unless you have the free will to drop a few hundreds on foundations alone, you'll want to get started with the most affordable route. To help you cut corners and make it easy, I'm going to suggest what a large majority of makeup artist are currently using Graftobain HD palettes! Graftobain has made foundations easy for makeup artist with these palettes. At an average of $65 per palette it's super affordable compared to buying each shade individually in any other brand I've searched. I personally love these palettes, they contain 18 mixable shades of HD foundations that mix, apply, and read beautifully on camera and on film. A huge bonus because HD makeup is very popular in the industry now. It's my advice to start with the Warm Palette, if you can only take one for the moment, as it has the "middle" shades that covers a wide range from light to dark and can again be custom mixed to create a "missing" shade you may need. I would only start with the Neutral or Cool palettes if the majority of your clientele are of really lighter complexions.You can control the coverage by sheering them out with a mixing medium or moisturizer. If you plan on adding airbrushing to your kit they also have a airbrush foundation line as well. You can even purchase smaller sets that contain 5 HD foundations and 5 airbrush foundations together for about $36 each.

Powders

Before you go out a buy a powder in every shade, hear me out. I thought I needed a matching powder for every foundation I owned and ended up buying, collecting, and NOT using a ton of products. When it really came down to it all I really needed was my life saving HD powder. I found that I didn't really need a color powder once I got my hands on a HD powder. HD powders not only set the foundation but gives the skin a beautiful HD Camera ready finish. I love Makeup Forever's HD Powder but found my gem with ELF's HD powder. Let me just say the ELF Cosmetics is a cosmetics brand worth looking into for some great high end beauty dupes. Once you're ready to grow your kit with other selections. I suggest getting Light, Medium dark, Dark, & Deep dark from MAC's Mineralize Skinfinish Natural product line. These are great powders to have and work wonders with creating a natural finish.

 

With all of this being said, I hope this first part of this post is going to help you get on the proper pro kit building path. Remember Rome wasn't built in a day and neither was a full pro makeup kit. :) Please feel free to comment and ask questions. Be sure to check out part 2  for everything else you'll need!