Make-up Time: Foundation & BB Cream

Choose the right foundation is very important and it's the base for a good make-up.
Foundation's consistency is variable: you can find it in cream, smooth and compact.

Smooth foundation is set for normal, mixed  or oily skin.

Cream foundation is more suitable for dry and very dry skin and it's often enriched with active, smoothing and moisturizing ingredients.

Compact foundation is composed of pressed pigment powder and it's good for all skin types.
It can be used in 2 ways:
Dry:  with a soft bristle maxi-brush. It has a quite light coverage.
Wet: with a slighty moistened natural sponge. It as a better coverage than dry application.

Mineral foundation can be considered as a subcategory  of the powder one. It's composed exclusively by fine, natural powder so it doesn't occlude the pores and it creates a very natural effect. The coverage is quite light again, and it's not particularly suitable for dry skin. You can apply it with a special brush called kabuki brush. It has soft and very dense bristles, which can also be dampened for a better coverage.

For the skin with acne in any case you must use only non-comedogenic products, ie products that don't disturb the skin and don't demage it. They don't clog pores or anything like that.

Remember: the more the foundation is thick, the greater its covering effect.

Once choosen the most suitable foundation for your skin type, pull back your hair and look your clean face in the mirror under the sunlight (you can do it in front of a window). Put next to your face a yellow cloth, then a pink one. One of them will make you look pale, the other radiant.
If the yellow one looks good on you, your skin as a yellow undertone, conversely a pink undertone. If you look good in the same way with both of them, you have a perfectly neutral undertone.

03 -yellow  04-neutral  05-pink

Another way to understand what's your undertone is to look at the veins in your wrists: If they tend to green your skin has a yellow undertone, if they tend to blue, your undertone is pink.

Before buying a foundation is important to test it on your skin.
It can be good in the store and when you go out it becomes a disaster. If you don't want to risk, you can ask for a tester before making the purchase.
The foundation may also have a wrong formula an on your skin it can oxidize (becoming orange).


The BB Cream is a good alternative to foundation.

BB Cream is the abbreviated form of Blemish Balm Cream. 
It's a multi-function product. It has a sun protection factor (SPF) of -at least- 20, that protects the skin from the sun, it has a moisturizing and nourishing action, being colored, it covers redness and slight imperfections, it reduces the skin aging, it prevents acne and it gives an healthy and bright apparence.
The BB Cream helps us to save time, because its only application includes moisturizer, sunscreen, anti-redness primer, and foundation, and to save money, because it one product for 7 different actions.
It also has a very mild bleaching effect which isn't considered dangerous. It's designed to reduce dark spots, acne marks and scars.

[Click on the pic to enlarge it]

As you have to do with the foundation, you need to choose the right color and type of BB Cream.
First: Actually, the BB Cream has a minimum rage of colors, at most 2 or 3, and they are quite light. If you have a mediterranean or tanned skin, it's better for you to avoid it because your skin might appears gray and unnatural.
Enlightning BB Cream isn't reccomended for mixed/oily skin because it could make the skin look too shiny.
If you have a problematic skin only the BB Cream won't give a uniform result. In these cases, you can use it as base and retouch critical areas with concealer or foundation.
Here's a chart to determine the perfect bb cream for you.

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A final warning:
The giants of cosmetics are companies that invest large sums of money researching new technologies to create  more advanced products. All of this obviously has a cost that is reflected in the price of products. None of these famous brands wants to lose the solid reputation with low price and poor quality. Everything has a very long time of study behind.
So in the case of cosmetics (so even foundation) the price is the quality.


I use mark. ivory powder foundation, and I think it's just perfect for my skin.

Rika

The first pic belongs to http://littlepenguin-princess.blogspot.com/
I found all the other pictures on google images.
mark. website >CLICK<