Hallo!

About 2 months ago, I got an opportunity to interview a Bobbi Brown makeup artist from Thailand. We talked and talked and all of the sudden, he told me he would do my makeup. Now, I had on full makeup with foundation and everything. Yet, he took it off and redid my makeup with BB products. Then, he took a look at my eyeliners and he was like, "This is too harsh on you. Let me show you how to do soft liner!"

And then came this look. It has a soft grunge edge that I like and you totally don't see a line because I already smudged it out. One of these days, Imma buy a tripod and do a tutorial on this.

While soft liners are very feminine and nice, sharp, crisp liners are always modern. I got me a liquid liner from Maybelline that's really black and shiny. On top of that, it has incredible staying power. While it doesn't look much in the pictures, I had quite a thick line.

Now, for those of you who have problem with they staying power of your eyeliner, I have a small tip: it's called layering! For the sharp liner look, I didn't even use an eye shadow base at all. Yet, it stayed for hours and hours without even a smudge or a smear. And you wanna know why?

I lined my eyes with a waterproof pencil liner first.

Yes, that's the tip, sweetheart. I did that to give myself a guide before using my liquid liner. While pencil liner is easier to use and wipe away, the smudge/waterproof formula is actually a nice base for the liquid liner to hold on to. If you take as much time as you can on lining with a pencil, the later part is going to be very easy. On top of that, your lines will look incredibly black, which is an obvious result from layering a black liner on top of a black base.

Also, did you notice how long and dolly my lashes look? 100% real lashes, baby, with the help of mascaras, of course! I'll share a secret on another day.

Ciao, sweetheart!
Dao xoxo


P.S: Please show your support by following my blog and subscribing to my feed. Thanks a lot!

Hi everyone,

I've interviewed many makeup artists lately and they all said the same thing: when it comes to blush, use at least 2 colors. I am a monochrome kinda gal when it comes to blush but it took a bit of coaxing from a Bobbi Brown makeup artist to make me realize the importance of using 2 blushes. You look more natural, that's all!

Both Margin and Fresh Rose blushes are gifts, one from MAC team and another from my mom. Margin (the one on the left) doesn't look much in the pan. It looks like dirt with shimmer. My initial reaction was, "That's it?" and I pretty much did not have so much hope for it. But when I came home and applied it on my cheeks, wowza! It is this very light and fresh peachy color with a nice sheen, not too much shimmers to make your cheeks look all disco-ball but just a nice sheen.

Maybelline Fresh Rose on the other hand is just what it is: a nice rosy matte pink color. It's quite dry, not as soft and buttery as Margin when dusted on my cheeks. But since it is free and the color build-up is lovely, I've been using it non-stop.

And here's the trick to get the best blushing cheeks ever:

1. You need 2 colors: a lighter one to apply all over your cheeks and a brighter one to apply just on the apple of your cheeks. Depending on your skin tone, they can be either pink or peach. You can mix and match peach with pink like I do but if you want to be safe, just use 2 colors in the same family (warm or cool.)

2. With a fluffy blush brush, apply the lighter color all over your cheeks. Remember to smile!

3. Then, with a smaller blush brush with the size of the head a tad bigger than a quarter, brush the brighter blush just on the apple of your cheek. If you don't know what it is, smile and see the fleshiest part of your cheeks that protrude up on your face. You apply very lightly, skimming the bristles on your skin, not pressing the brush down at all.

4. Then, use the bigger blush brush and lightly blend everything together.

The reason I love Margin so much is the sheen: I don't have to use a highlighter at all. However, if you are around the NC-25 area like me, this is a tricky blush to use. You don't seem to notice it when you apply, but it is there bright and clear when your face is on film. I was a little bit heavy-handed with Margin before I went to an event and seriously, I looked like I was drunk. So, lesson learned: a little bit of blush goes a looong way. And also, blend well!

With love,
Dao xoxo



P.S: Please show your support by following my blog and subscribing to my feed. Thanks a lot!

Hi everyone,

Steve Jobs, the king of minimalism
I bow down to his awesomeness as I'm not there yet!

After years of being a beauty blogger, I have to admit I'm becoming a minimalist. Now, these two concepts usually don't mesh. After all, being a beauty blogger means having drawers and drawers and a room full of makeup that rivals the beauty department at Barney's. Well, once upon a time in a different land, I did have a makeup closet. But that feels so far away already.

Now, living in Vietnam has one thing when it comes to makeup: the lack of drugstore makeup. Even Maybelline and L'Oreal are expensive here. But who am I to complain? When I look at the pricing of makeup in the UK and the rest of Europe, a $12 bottle of foundation sounds like a steal.

This leaves me to a certain state or sparseness in my makeup drawer. Although I feel sad at the lack of having new toys, I do have to admit my makeup routine has been faster. I know what to use, where to get, and how to get them fast. There's no longer moments when I have to debate which brown I need to use, the MAC one, NYX one or (insert brand name here) one. Now, the choices are less, which leaves me more time to apply makeup than before.

On top of that, I just got a new brush set and I'm happy about it. There's something about having all your brushes laid out in a brush roll and saving time. Before, I used to fumble around just to find one brush. Now, I know where it is and I know how to use it. I am going to blog about this brush set soon and believe me, you'll definitely need it in your life.

In order to be a minimalist makeup lover, here are what you need:

1. A storage system: although I almost busted my back last year to work on this system, it was worth it. Now, I can't go back to storing everything in a bin anymore. That makes finding stuff hell. This system, or any non-bin, non-bag system, works great in saving me time.
2. Core products: the essential items you use everytime you apply makeup are your core products. They are primers, foundations (liquid, solid, gel, powder, etc), finishing powder, brow pencils, eyeliners, mascaras, brushes. You should store them separately and within arm's reach so you can get them as fast as you can.
3. Star products: these are your colored products like eye shadows, blushes and lipsticks. Sooner or later, you'll realize you use one more than the others. With these star products, you should put them in prime spots within their own categories/groups.
4. The will to weed out products you don't use: Expired products? Throw them away. Bad formula? Either throw or give away. Unsuitable products to your skin/hair type? Give away. You'll be surprised of how much more space you are going to have once these products are out of the way.

That's all for today, folks. I hope you'll have more time to work on your makeup this year.

With love,

Dao xoxo

P.S: Please show your support by following my blog and subscribing to my feed. Thanks a lot!

Hi everyone,

When I was in my 20s, I could stay up really late to study and still looked fresh in the morning. But only a few years into the 30s wonderland and here I am needing concealer like a calf needs milk! When I got a chance to interview James Molloy from MAC, one of his tips is to really conceal the dark circles under and around the eyes. He prefers to bring lights to a woman's face and I took his advice. A little bit of well-blended concealer can make you look wide awake and take years off your age. Trust me, I know!

Lately, I have found an effective way to conceal my raccoon eyes. It's not cakey and the products I use are not outrageously expensive (YSL Touche Eclat, I'm looking atcha!) If you have the same problem, I hope this post is helpful to you.

What I use:

• Maybelline Super Stay Concealer 24HR in light: this is a drugstore product that works really, really well without setting into lines. Unlike many concealers out there, this has a peach tone which works great to conceal darkness on cool tone skins
• MAC Studio Sculpt Concealer in NW 20: I know MAC has a ton of concealers with different textures but this one is the easiest to use. The texture is mousse-like and I can blend it with my fingers. Definitely a nice product to use when I'm in a hurry
• MAC Mineralize Concealer in NC 20: I got this as a gift and since it's a cool-tone product, it doesn't work that well to conceal dark circles (you need to use a concealer with an opposite tone to your skin to conceal darkness on your face.) However, it has tiny pearlized particles that reflect light so I use it for a different purpose: to highlight.

 Let's get to work, shall we?

 First of all, here is how I look without any under eye concealers. I have a few fine lines and bumps around that area. The bumps make it tricky to conceal as too much product can make that area look cakey.

I decided to get a lil' bit creative and used the Maybelline concealer on my right eye (your left, the one with the dots undearneath) and MAC Studio Sculpt on my left (your right)

I blended the concealer on my right eye with my finger and used a small dual fiber brush like MAC 188 to blend out the concealer on the other eye. Yup, that was moi looking quite mad while blending out concealer (which, btw, I think is the key to success here: you need to look mad so the dark circles would stay quiet and take the concealers like they should!)

After I blended things out, things started to look like this.

But wait, there's more! This is when the Mineralize Concealer comes handy: I've found out that in order to completely take away the darkness and brighten up the whole face, I need to add some sort of luminizer to this area. The Mineralize Concealer has this wicked wand that can reach to small places like none of your bidnez. I feathered it out like this, waited for a couple of minutes for the concealer to thicken a bit before I blended things out with the small dual fiber brush.

And here is the end result:

You have seen this picture before in the Benefit post. I used the concealers here and foundation/primer from Benefit. The products I use in this post are excellent. The trick to make them work is to use a small amount of product and let it get a bit tacky before you blend out. Please don't pile on your makeup but work them into your skin. MAC has reliable concealers and if you are loaded, try Cle de Peau. That thing costs around 70 bucks but from what I've heard, it's the best in the biz.

Also, I wrote a post about how to create beautiful skin with makeup. This is essentially what I do these days to get that porcelain skin that celebrities have. Believe me on this one: when it comes to skin, less makeup is more. And if you haven't had a dual-fiber brush in your kit, please get one. It's a gift that keeps on giving. I've never been happier since I started using this brush again.

If you give this a try, please let me know what you think. I'd love to hear from you!

With love,
Dao xoxo

P.S: Please show your support by following my blog and subscribing to my feed. Thanks a lot!

Hi everyone,

Our weekly dose of Polyvore is here! Lately, as I leafed through magazines, blogs, and other beauty medias, all I have seen is beautifully made up skin. Porcelain skin is in and my bet is it's going to stay for a year or two. This skin trend, while looks so simple and easy to do, in fact requires a lot of skills. But fear no more! With the help of Polyvore, I compiled a list of favorite products that will help you achieve the Hollywood skin status in no time. And the catch? We only need 1 brush!

Let's do it!

1. Prime your face
I'm not even kidding! Face primer is one of the top products that changed my life, makeup-wise, of course! The 3 products I select are (1) L'Oreal Studio Secrets, (2) Bare Minerals Prime Time, and (3) Urban Decay Pore Perfecting primer. These 3 are good and Prime Time is designed for mineral makeup so it's a bonus.

2. Conceal, conceal, conceal!
Srsly, the secret to flawless skin is concealer. I chose Benefit Boi-ing, Chantecaille, and Maybelline Super Stay 24hr concealers. I didn't add Cle de Peau concealer because it's tres expensive but it works really well though. Except for the Chantecaille, I tried them all out, even the Cle de Peau so I can vouch for their goodness.

The trick of blending out concealer is not to use a concealer brush. I've used one since forever and guess what? My face always ended up cakey. But once I switched to MAC 188 brush and voila, cakey no more! Only fresh and wide awake face that looks 10 years younger!

3. Foundation
The 4 I selected from MAC, Shu Uemura, Neutrogena, and Benefit are all good. The MAC Mineralize Satin Finish is the one people use for editorial photos as it has a beautiful and ethereal glow. I'd say you should use it for parties and events at night only. Shu Uemura Face Architect is light and awesome! You don't feel like you are wearing makeup at all! The same with Neutrogena Healthy Skin. Last but not least, Benefit Flawless Oxygen Wow is going to give you that glow without any extra highlighters. It also has vitamins C and E, which is an added bonus.

I also use MAC 188 brush to apply foundation because it can fit into small nooks and crannies. Also, I am lazy and I don't want to wash both MAC 187 and 188 :)

The trick to applying foundation is quite simple: you use the minimal amount of foundation and you blend like mad, that's all! Seriously, you should spend more time blending out foundation and you'll notice the difference. I personally think people tend to apply their liquid foundations way too fast.

4. Powder
There's no doubt that Make Up For Ever HD Powder is the one when it comes to translucent setting powder. And the ELF HD Powder is an exact dupe as they both have micronized mica as the main ingredient.

The trick to use this product without making your face look ghostly is to use a tiny bit of powder on the puff and roll it onto your skin. Using a powder brush is too much for this, btw.

So yeah, there you have it: My Makeup Blog's official guide to natural-looking skin. You do this often and people won't even believe that you have makeup on.

Practice and have fun, you guys!

Love,
Dao xoxo


P.S: Love the weekly Polyvore installment? Please show your support by following my blog and subscribing to my feed. Thanks a lot!

Hi everyone,

First of all, have you joined my latest giveaway sponsored by Skintritious yet?

Lately, I have seen a couple of pictures and YouTube videos with claims of doing "the new smokey eyes." We all know this technique is very popular, especially now with the recent launch of MAC x Carine Roitfeld. However, people tend to confuse smokey eyes with its cousin, the cut the crease technique. And I don't blame them! On certain eyes, these two can look eerily similar until the wearer closes her eyes, of course!

The purpose of this post is no other than to distinguish these two techniques. In the past, I already wrote posts with detailed explanations on how to create smokey eyes as well as how to cut the crease. It's safe to spend a couple of minutes to click through these links before we move on :)

• Smokey eyes: my first tutorial on the smokey eyes and another one that's a bit easier to create, all from 2008!
• Cut the crease: the first FOTD with instructions (not quite a tutorial but it's not that bad!) and Jessie J inspired makeup using this technique with orange and brown.

The thing about smokey eyes and cut the crease is you don't have to use black or nudes to create them. In fact, they don't relate to a color family at all. They are just techniques. However, people tend to think of black as the color for smokey eyes and nudes as the color group for cut the crease. Therefore, I decided to use these techniques on my eyes using a different color family altogether: blue. With cut the crease, I added a pop of pink for drama :)

Colors I used:
First row: MAC C-shock, Pink Blossoms pigment by the same name company,  Steamy
Second row: Cool Heat, Warming Trend, Flashtrack

Brushes I used: (L-R) MAC 217, ELF eyeshading brush, EcoTools slanted eyelining brush

And now, for the fun part: which technique was used on which eye?

Of course, this is easy to tell since it is a close up. But how about this?

A little bit harder, yeah? I guess this is where people makes mistake in distinguishing the techniques, especially when the model has deep set monolid eyes like mine. But once you take a closer look at the close or semi-close eyes, the distinctions are more palpable:

Let's see:

This is a blue smokey eyes look. You expect to see a gradient with the darkest color closer to the eyelashes and the lightest color blended upward and outward to the eyebrows.

The only brush I use for this look is MAC 217 blending brush. In fact, I think it's the only brush you are going to need for smokey eyes.

And this is a cutting the crease technique using blue and pink:

Because I wanted to emphasize the technique, the cut was a lot deeper into the inside of the eye and a lot less blended. For the other looks I did in the past, I blended the line a lot more and emphasized the darkest color on the outer-v area.

I used the angle liner to cut, the slanted eyeshading brush to add more color to the crease line, and the blending brush (MAC 217) to blend. In the past, my cutting the crease brush trifecta used to be MAC 266 (angle liner), MAC 219 (pencil brush), and MAC 217 (blending.) But I found the first two to be ineffective for this technique and the ones I am using now are much, much better.

To me, smokey eyes are more seamless and romantic than cutting the crease eyes. You can do it quite haphazardly and it still comes out right, as long as you blend the colors together. Cutting the crease requires more control but the result is a much, much more emphasized and dramatic look that smokey eyes do not have. Both techniques require practice but once you get a hold of them, the results are lovely.

Oh, btw, I took the pictures at around midnight. Hence, the bad lightning and my face was duller than butter!

That's all for now, y'all! Have fun!

Love,
Dao xoxo


P.S: Please show your support by following my blog and subscribing to my feed. Thanks a lot!

Hi everyone,

Recently, I posted a FOTD called "I'm not Me" and you guys seemed to like it very much. I actually posted a picture from that look on my Facebook account (which remains private, btw) and many, many of my friends asked me how I did it. I thought long and hard about it because of various reasons.

While it is somewhat of a transformative look, it requires a lot of skills that I have acquired throughout the years. As I thought of doing a tutorial for it, I realized I have done a couple of tutorials on techniques used in that FOTD already. Some of them I need to redo as I used a different camera then and the photos were not up for snub. I know I haven't done tutorials on magic line and cheek color technique yet but you guys should expect to see them here soon. Compared to cutting the crease and contouring, these two are quite painless, actually.

Therefore, this post is not a tutorial on how I did the "I'm not Me" FOTD but a review of some essential makeup techniques everybody should master. This year, surprisingly, makeup is not all about colors but more about skills. It's all about what you can do with the minimal amount of makeup to look exceptional and flawless.

So here we go, a review on cutting the crease, contouring, and highlighting.

1. Cut the Crease

I first did a FOTD on cut the crease back in 2010 and believe me, I had the hardest time with it! Of all the makeup techniques I've learned, this has to be one of the toughest for me since I don't have a defined crease line. The crease is the place where the concave part of your eye meets the flat part. If you are Caucasian, African, Hispanic, or Asian with big eyes, the crease is very easy to find. It is right there! All you need to do is to close and then slowly open your eyes: the line isn't there when you close or semi-close your eyes but once your eyes are wide open, you'll see it.

Source

The model in the above picture has defined crease line. For those with eye shapes similar to me, you have to feel around your eyes with your makeup brushes to find where the concave meets the flat part.

In 2010, my three favorite brushes for cutting the crease were MAC 217, 219, and 266. Now, I use EcoTools angle liner brush for cutting (it's similar to MAC 266 but thicker, which makes placing the line a lot easier), ELF defining eye brush for placing the color on the crease, and of course, MAC 217 for blending.

I found this tutorial on YouTube on cutting the crease. It is not what I do but for beginners, it's quite easy and doable. (And also, it makes me want to do a cut a crease tutorial again. Very, very much!)

2. Contouring and Highlighting

For contouring and highlighting, I would forever refer to this image from Kevyn Aucoin's book "Making Faces" (review here)

Robert Jones also wrote a book called "Looking Younger" with extensive contents on highlighting and contouring. I also learned so much about this topic from it as well.

If you want to see how I contour my face throughout the years, here are a few links:

• Nose contouring
• Face contouring and highlighting
• Face contouring and highlighting, redux

Cutting the crease, contouring, and highlighting are advance makeup techniques. They are hard to do right. And why should we bother to do them anyway?

Because, boys and girls, makeup is essentially the game of lights and shadows. Once you apply foundation on your face, those lights and shadows are erased. By doing all of these techniques, not only do you bring back the lights and shadows on your face but you get a chance to enhance your features. Just think of them as the tools you use to chisel out your face.

These two techniques do take time to master but once you do, the payoff is fantastic. It's like you get to know your face all over again or getting the face that you want. Makeup is very deceiving and in order to get what you want, you need to practice, practice, practice!

That's all for today, folks! I do believe that once in a while, we should brush up our skill sets and I hope this post inspires you to delve more into cutting the crease as well as contouring and highlighting. If you have any tips on these two topics, I'd love to hear from you.

Love,
Dao xoxo

P.S: Please show your support by following my blog and subscribing to my feed. Thanks a lot!

Hi everyone,

Lately, my lips have been feeling très dry. But the strange thing is, the dryness is not all over the whole lip but only at the left corner of the upper lip. I tried moisturizing my lips with many, many things in vain. That specific area remained dry and flaky for days!

Therefore, I had to bring in the big gun: I must exfoliate the heck out of that area. Instead of using my now famous sugar-honey-olive oil scrub, I decided to be a little bit adventurous and use the new sugar and vaseline scrub instead.

What you need:

• Petroleum jelly or petroleum-free jelly  
• Granulated sugar: you don't need a lot of sugar. The amount shown in the picture is just for show.

How to wing it:

•  Squeeze a pea-size amount of Vaseline or petroleum-free jelly onto the palm of your hand and sprinkled a teeny-tiny bit of granulated sugar. The sugar is used as a physical exfoliator while the jelly is a lubricant so you won't tear out your skin while scrubbing. Also, since sugar doesn't dissolve in Vaseline or petroleum-free jelly, you are not afraid of the sugar being dissolved.

• Mix them together. They should look like one fine mess like in the above picture.
• Then, apply the mess with your finger onto your lips and gently scrub it around. The key word here is gently, people! I really don't want you to bust your lips open at all!
• After some gentle scrubbing, wipe the sugar off your lips with a damp towel and apply some lip balm on top. Your lips is going to feel silky smooth from the exfoliating action.

I did the scrub twice before that strange dryness went away. Although it is tempting to do a batch, this is a rather easy mix and I would suggest to do it as you go. This lip scrub is very effective and save you a lot of money on having to buy lip scrubs sold at the store. I personally don't believe in those products as they are just a waste of money. Besides, you can do this at home with easily available (and cheap) ingredients as well.

That's all for now, folks! I hope you are having a wonderful week!

With love,

Dao xoxo

P.S: Please show your support by following my blog and subscribing to my feed. Thanks a lot!

Hi everyone,

Remember I told you about my visit at the Shu Uemura counter? To fill in the basics, Shu Uemura just opened their first counter in Vietnam and as a part of this event, Atsushi Kokawa flew in from Japan to train the makeup artists who works for Shu Uemura from the entire country. I was lucky to have an opportunity to interview him for an article at Elle.vn website.

I checked last Friday and they posted the article already on their website. You can go there and read it (and use Google Translate just in case you don't understand Vietnamese.)

I love this brush canister!

Shu Uemura is a company built by the makeup giant Mr. Uemura himself. Although he already passed away, there are still many of his extremely talented students around to guide and teach new waves of makeup artists. Atsushi Kokawa is one of them. Currently, he is one of the six trainers who go around Japan and the rest of the world to train makeup artists who are working for Shu Uemura. He was trained for a week every year for 5 years by Mr. Uemura himself before being released into the world. If you go to his website, you'll see his credits in films, commercial and editorial beauty shots, as well as fashion.

Atsushi Kokawa at work

After the interview.
(L-R): Shu Uemura VN brand manager, Elle beauty editor, moi, Atsushi Kokawa, the translator, head makeup artist of Shu Uemura HCM City
(and btw, I used the TOJI sunscreen as a makeup base and look how Snow White I was!)

Before I say anything more, here are the two things I need to get out of my mind:

1. Mr. Kokawa looks better in real life. He's very tall and good looking. The pictures I took as well as his head shot on his website don't do him justice. Also, his skin is amazing!

2. He is uber talented! I have watched makeup artists work before and one of my cousins is a makeup artist but all of them could not compare to him. The whole time I was watching him, my mouth was hanging open. It was not even makeup artistry anymore. It was makeup magic and he is a magician!

OK, now moving on to the things I actually learned from him:

1. He is meticulous:

Remember the brush canister? Well, he has this system for them: one for clean brushes and one for dirty brushes. I have seen makeup artists at work before and many of them just kinda throw their brushes around. This guy, however, came up with a system that works very well.

2. He has so many brushes and his brushes are not like yours:

First of all, remember that white brush in the canister? You think it's a blush brush of some sort, right?

Eh, wrong! It is a foundation brush!

I was shocked to see him using it on the model. As a brush whore, I know the kind of brushes I'm supposed to use for foundation and to see what looks like a giant Ann's Mini Mop used as a foundation brush is a novelty to me.

On top of that, look at all these eye brushes he has in his kit:

Mr. Kokawa told me he usually carries around 15-20 brushes for a gig. This looks like a whole lot more than that and at first, I thought they were made of taklon.

But eh again! These are handmade kolinsky and kolinsky sable bend brushes all from Shu Uemura! My mouth flew straight to the floor! I mean, can you imagine how much all of his brushes cost?

On top of that, his brushes are interesting: I did not find a dual-fiber brush in his kit. I could not find anything that resembles MAC 217 at all. Except for a few face brushes that are round, the rest are really flat.

And small. Teeny tiny brushes for eyes and lips.

Look at the brush that has pink paint on it. You think it's an eyeliner brush? Think again! It's a lip brush that looks like something I would use to tight line my lash line.

I'm telling you, the whole experience was very freaky to me! It's like the whole time what I know about makeup and brushes are wrong and there is another way to do makeup that we don't even know about.

You notice the eyebrow pencil on the right? Well, compare that to the second brush on it's left, which is an eyeliner brush. It is really small!

3. The way he holds his brushes and eye pencils:

The way we hold our brushes and pencils are similar to the way we hold our pens: we grab them. But his way is the way people use to hold their calligraphy brushes. It has less pressure and the model told me she did not feel anything the whole time he did her makeup. It's a part of the Shu Uemura way of makeup artistry: to provide comfort for the model.

Also, I noticed since he held his brush that way, his movements were very precise. He applied eye and lip makeup and there was hardly a fall out or even a stray line. I had an opportunity to look at his portfolio and I noticed how clean the smokey eyes were. This has a lot to do with the way he holds his brushes as well as their sizes.

4. Blush is not the product of one color:

This is one of the photos I took of the model. It was not the final look but already, he used a wide array of blushes on her. I lost count at 5 but basically, he used a very light pink blush to highlight right underneath her eyes to the top of her cheek bone. Then, he used a pink, then orange, then brown, then red, then really dark brown on her cheeks to bring out the natural color of her blush. The blush brush he used was very small and it's actually the black brush at the front of the canister on the right.

The model worked it!
Look at how glowy and natural looking her cheeks are!

The model did her thing and they stopped after 5-6 frames. Mr. Kokawa looked at her, then adjusted the blush accordingly. In the end, she looked really amazing and I could hardly recognized her at all. What I saw was a much, much more confident and sexy woman.

5. He did the eyeliners twice:

Mr. Kokawa wanted to do a sexy, confident makeup look. The first time he did the eyeliner, he used a tiny brush (the one he held on the left) to tight line her upper and lower lash line using gel liner. Since the brush was small, the line was also very clean.

Then, he went over with the liquid pen liner. The line is not thicker than the previous one he did. However, it was lightly winged out. His eye lining technique is extremely meticulous and it produced the crispest line I've ever seen. He did not even fix anything with a Q-tip at all! Applied and done!

I can go on and on talking about how great a makeup magician Atsushi Kokawa is but it would probably take me another day and another night to write! I have no words to say but "wonderful" when it comes to describe him and his makeup artistry. At one point during this experience, I came to a place where I just wanted to quit my science career and learn makeup from him.

Last but not least, a few pictures I took of the people at Shu Uemura:

I love this picture as it shows team work between the makeup artist, the model, and the hair designer (who is actually the head makeup artist at Shu Uemura Sai Gon!)

"I need to concentrate, people! I need to concentrate!"
Btw, he did the model's hair really well!

He's also very funny!
Glad to get to know you!

(L-R): the translator, Atsushi with his peace sign, Shu Uemura counter manager

I had a fantastic time at the Shu Uemura counter. Now that I have witnessed greatness, it is hard to go back and watch YouTube videos. I am extremely thankful for this opportunity. Thank you, Atsushi Kokawa for showing me your passion for makeup artistry, Shu Uemura Vietnam and ELLE magazine for this opportunity.

I am so happy!

Love,
Dao xoxo

P.S: Please show your support by following my blog and subscribing to my feed. Thanks a lot!