Transcription
I am a high maintenance to be low-maintenance kind of girl. Obvious overt glow-ups are great and they are needed sometimes, but undetectable covert glow-ups are even better. That's why in this video, I'm going to share 12 of my micro beauty habits that I practice to elevate my appearance in the most subtle way, but still have people looking at me trying to put a finger on what's different about me. Undetectable, "but better" glow-ups are my personal favorite.
This is today's video outline, and as always, stay until the end of the video to get today's key takeaways, aka the video summarization of everything we talked about. Don't worry about taking your own notes, 'cause I already got you. Comment along your favorite micro beauty habits that you practice so we can all be put on game, because that's what this channel is all about.
The first micro beauty habit is self-tanner as contour. So I underpaint my face the night before, two to three times a week with self-tanner. I use this chart, I face paint for my face shape to get me snatched in all the right places. So use this chart to see your face shape and self-tan accordingly, but this just literally gives you that snatched look as soon as you wake up. All you have to do is wash your face and you're already looking good and glowy and radiant. And then for that overall even base, I take it a step further with self-tanning drops. So I will do both at the same time. So on the nights that I'm doing the underpainting, I will first go in with self-tanning drops in my face cream, put that all over, and then I will underpaint. I will do my nose, I will snatch everything.
And then the biggest key that I have changed in my routine is self-tanning a lip line around my lips. The reason why I do this is because I hate that harsh lip line that stays when your lipstick starts smudging off as you go throughout the day. You've got no lipstick on, you've got this weird ring around your mouth, and then you've got your skin color, and it's like all looking very harsh and very contrasted. And so to mitigate that, I will self-tan a lip liner. And then as I'm doing my makeup, I will go in with my real makeup lip liner, then my lipstick. And to take it a step further, I will also go with a powdered eyeshadow, brown eyeshadow, and I will go over the perimeters of my lips as well. That way, when everything starts moving and smudging off my lips, I'm not left looking nuts with this weird ring around my mouth. It's just more of a seamless blend. The crazier you look going to bed, the hotter you're going to wake up.
The second micro beauty hack is blow-drying my eyelash curler and then curling my eyelashes. This just gives me a very, very long-lasting eyelash perm within five seconds. Like, literally, just heat up your eyelash curler with a blow dryer. Don't get it piping hot. Test it on the palm of your skin. It should be warm, and then just curl your eyelashes, and they will stick straight up, and it will last you all day. I will do this also before I go to bed.
And then the third micro beauty habit, we go into this second one, which is I will go in with castor oil as mascara for a clear mascara gel, and then I will use castor oil as brow gel as well. So two things. You can do this for a no-makeup makeup look instead of just using regular clear brow gel and clear mascara, and or you can use this the night before. Curl your eyelashes with the warm curling wand, and then just go in, stipple through some castor oil, and then you'll wake up. Your eyelashes will look so good. They'll be separated, they'll be fluffy, they'll be sticking up straight, and it will literally look like you've just gotten a perm. So you're also waking up again looking cute, looking snatched, because you did the most the night before.
The fourth micro beauty habit is more of an internal beauty thing. Everyone's going gung-ho about drinking a liter of water a day, and that's great, but unfortunately, I'm here to break the bad news to you that it won't do anything for you to consume one gallon of water if you are not supplementing it with electrolytes or minerals. Let me break that down for you. If you're drinking a gallon of water and you're having to go to the bathroom every 30 minutes, that water is literally not attaching itself to your cells in order to provide hydration. It's just one, flushing out all your already good minerals inside, and two, it's quite harmful for your kidneys. I didn't want to believe this, but then I actually was told by my cardiologist that it's just really not a proper way to hydrate yourself. So instead, ditch the gallon of water. Drink a liter of water a day and supplement it with Celtic sea salt or electrolytes. So my personal favorite is to take a pinch of Celtic sea salt first thing in the morning, chug it down with water, chug it down with water, and then I will put a pinch of Celtic sea salt in my actual water bottle and I will do this throughout the day. And then either pre-workout, post-workout, or right before bed, I will mix coconut water with my regular water and I will drink that. That is going to provide you so much more hydration. The water is actually going to cling onto your cells and do what it's supposed to do, instead of just you having to go to the bathroom every 30 minutes and you're not noticing any difference to your skin, to the way that you look, your hair, all that, because you're not actually consuming the water.
Fifth micro hack is setting my under eyes with eyeshadow. Once my entire face is done, and I let the creases sit and settle, because we all have creases. It might not look like that on social media, but we all have creases, and they're very noticeable because as we get older, things start to settle in all the wrong places. To mitigate that, I go in with an eyeshadow that is either pink or yellowish undertone. Sometimes it's just clear, stark white because I don't know where the palette has gone, but I tend to go for a yellow or pink undertone. And then I will just go underneath my eyes and literally like smudge that out, get all the creases out, do my smile lines, and I found that it makes my makeup look so much better, and it also significantly reduces the amount that it creases over time. I, again, we can't avoid creasing full stop, it's going to happen, but this reduces it significantly.
Number six is mewing. Mewing is very popular and it works wonders. So when I'm walking, I'll mew. When I'm sitting on the couch, I'll mew. Whenever I'm doing a task and I remember, I will mew. But just me doing it a little bit has significantly changed my jawline and the way that my face looks. And the reason for this is because mewing is like straightening your muscles. So you don't want to put your tongue against your roof, but forward by your teeth. You want to put your tongue against the roof of your mouth and have it sit at the back of your throat. Now, it might feel a little bit uncomfortable at first, but you will get used to it, and you will actually feel your muscles contracting backwards and like tightening and pushing backwards. Just continue to practice it and continue to implement this into your routine, and you will see a difference.
A little side note with this mewing portion, if you are a mouth breather, your face probably looks significantly different than somebody who breathes through their nose. Some people really can't breathe through their nose and they have to breathe through their mouth, but you should really practice breathing through your nose because if you open your mouth and breathe through your mouth constantly, it has a very big impact on the way that your face looks, like your overall bone structure, and especially the jaw chin area. So just try practicing that micro beauty hack.
Number seven is finding the right part for your hair. My previous video was all about personalization, and I continue to bring that theme across to this video because anything that you're doing for a glow-up should involve you just better. Should not be about trends, should not be trying to look like this person or that person. It should be trying to look like yourself, just a better version of yourself. For me, I was trapped in the middle part cult. Okay? I was doing a middle part, and there was just something about my face and my hair that just really bothered me, and I couldn't put my finger on it. I would always just end up tying my hair up 'cause something, something just bothered me. It's because the way my face is, my hairline, my overall like facial features do not suit a middle part. It's too harsh for my face because I have already very big facial features. Then I found the part that suits me well, and that is directly above my eyebrow to the left. But I did try above my left eyebrow over to the right, and that looked a lot better than the middle part, but this part is a game-changer for my face. This, this is super subtle. This is such a subtle micro thing that you can do that will completely change your appearance. Play around with the different parts and see what suits you best. But the rule of thumb is to go above your eyebrow, either to the right or above the right eyebrow to the left, or if the middle part suits you, congratulations.
And then a little bit of an addition to this is tweezing my hairline. So I parted my hair this way, and then I'll go in and I will tweeze a little bit of my hairline just to make my, my hairline look as best as it can. We can get some hairs here and there, and I just like to tweeze my hairline and clean things up a little. And you can actually manipulate your hairline to be better or the way that you want it when you do this. So just go in with a couple of tweezers and just...
Number eight is castor oil in your belly button. In Ayurvedic practices, the belly button is the window, the door into the soul, into the entire body. So it's like the entrance. So when you put castor oil in your belly button, but it actually directly enters your bloodstream. It helps purify your blood, it helps detoxify, it helps give you a glow from within. So it literally makes you moisturized from within. And I have been doing it for a couple of months now, and I barely even have to wear moisturizer on my skin because it's just so soft and hydrated and supple because of the castor oil. Now, it does remove heat from your body, so it's going directly in your bloodstream and purifying and detoxifying, and it's removing the heat from your body. So you might feel a couple of symptoms here and there, you might feel a little bit groggy, achy. So just incorporate it two or three times a week at first to see how you feel, and then you can do it nightly. But it's honestly a game-changer and it will have you looking glowy and smooth and hydrated from within. Consuming water with electrolytes and actual minerals so that it's actually hydrating you, plus doing the castor oil in your belly button, moisturizer, body oil, who? We're still going to do it, but we don't need to.
Micro habit number nine is face taping. I do have a little bit of a personal stance on it though. I truly don't believe that it really helps if you're face taping the neck, face taping the chin, and all of that because the tissues that make our skin sag over time are so deep underneath our skin that I'm not sure if just surface level tape is helping that. The reason why I do it is so that I can bring symmetry to my eyebrows, but then also prevent my 11s right here from creasing in the middle of the night. I might have a bad nightmare, okay? I might be in a dream where somebody's bothering me and I'm getting a little bit irritated, and I could be creasing in the middle of the night and not even know it. So I like to cover my forehead. I don't really have wrinkles up here, luckily, but I do have 11s, so I will cover those. I will cover the forehead. I will tape the eyebrow up that way it's very hard for my skin and my muscles to contract. Also tape my smile lines and my nose. The reason why I feel like taping my nose is beneficial for me is 'cause I wake up and my nose looks a little bit bulbous and it looks a little bit swollen. So the face tape kind of reduces that swelling and honestly just kind of lifts my tip a little bit. I mean, I already kind of have a lifted tip, but I just, you know, who knows? We want to be a little bit cuter, okay? That's why I'm saying the crazier you look going to bed. Can you just picture all these habits and the way I look in the middle of the night? Exactly.
Number 10 is so micro but so important to the overall look: cuticle oil every single night. The rest of your sunscreen from your face on your hands, and cream or oil on your hands. We age here first. If we look about 15 up here, but then we look 75 here, it's just confusing. So why not take care of your hands? You have to take care of your hands as you get older. You don't want your hands looking ashy and dusty because if you look good here, you're focusing all your attention on your face, your makeup, your wrinkles, you're getting Botox, you're doing all the stuff up here, but then you're neglecting the body, you're neglecting the hands. These are all very detail-oriented things that add to your overall aesthetic. And yes, just changing a few of these micro things will change your appearance, will have you looking more presentable, more put together. You don't want to be the type of person that looks good from afar, and then we come in a little bit closer with a magnifying glass and we see ashy, dusty, hangnails. There's not much more to say on this, but just take care of your hands. A fresh, good-look manicure can have you in another dimension on the scale of, "Wow, she looks good."
Number 11 is one of my favorite hacks, and I just discovered it like three months ago, so it's relatively new. But I personally have always hated contouring my face. It doesn't look good on me. The underpainting looks good 'cause it becomes very subtle, but harsh, obvious contour does not look good on me. I've tried it, I've wanted it to work, it doesn't work for me. Instead of that, what I do, I like a bright under eye. I will go in with my blush, and then I will set the perimeter of my face with my skin-colored powder, like a powder foundation, or I will go a shade darker, one shade darker, but I set the entire perimeter of my face as if it's contour. So it just gives me this overall glowy, bronzed look without the harsh lines. It's more airbrushed, it's more subtle, it just looks really, really good. Did I invent this? I'm not sure, but let me know if you've ever done that, but try it out and tell me how it goes. It gives you such a cohesive, airbrushed, harmonious look with your makeup, and that's always what we're going for: just you but better.
And just you but better. Micro beauty habit number 12, I saved the best for last 'cause this habit, this thing is incredible. It changed my life. It is lip blushing. Lip blushing is basically just getting a natural-looking color that's literally your lip color, just more pigmented, tattooed onto your lips. It lasts two years, it's super affordable. The only snag is that it involves needles. So if you don't like needles, I do have an alternative, and I will get there. But this hack, this little habit, and this thing that I practice, it has changed my life. Again, high maintenance to be low maintenance, get it one time, look amazing for two years, and all you need to do is just get a touch-up. It's not like a completely new thing that you have to get done again in two years. It doesn't dissolve, it doesn't go anywhere. You just need to brighten it up a little bit. When I'm not wearing makeup, when I've got the castor oil through my lashes, the castor oil through my brows for that natural look, I've got the self-tanner going, I've got that glow, and then I've got the lip liner plus my lip blushing, it literally looks like I just woke up like this, and I did wake up like this. The other thing is it makes you look like you got plumper and more juicier lips than you do.
But the alternative if you don't like needles is Wonderskin lip stain. So you just put this lip stain on, you spray a little something something, peel it off, and then you've got a nice rich color the rest of the day. It's kiss-proof, sweat-proof, whatever you're doing, it's proof of that. Those are really, really detail-oriented, subtle micro things you can do to elevate your appearance that have people being like, "Whoa, she looks so good. Something's different about her, but I just can't put my finger on it." And to me, that's the best kind of glow-up.
Here are your key takeaways. Here's your video summarization. And if you're sticking around, watch this video next.