Are you the girl who practically lives in the makeup section of Wal-mart, CVS or Walgreens but dreams one day to have a vast collection of higher end makeup? Maybe you are that girl who goes into Sephora, collects samples from the hottest and most luxurious brands, never purchase anything but then run off to meet your friend the Wal-Mart shopper, where you purchase a cost effective lipstick. If you are anyone of these girls, don't feel shame, we have all been there. With drugstore makeup improving each and everyday, most girls will never dare to try a more expensive brand even if money wasn't an issue. Building a high end makeup collection to some,would be like starting all over again. They wouldn't know where to begin. After years and years of being frugal, where is a girl to begin if she were to be transplanted into a Sephora.
If you feel overwhelmed or before you end up with every Urban Decay Naked palette ever created, here are some tips I created to help you to slowly build your high end collection.
1. Purchases based on application and/or uses.
Unintentionally, when I started purchasing high end makeup, I bought an eyeliner, then I purchased 2 lipsticks. After realizing this, I decided I would buy items based on uses. So instead of buying 5 or 6 eye shadow palettes that were higher end, I decided to separate my purchases into categories similar to what you see on a cosmetic website: face, eyes, lipsticks, accessories. My intention was to purchase one item from each category so I could have a complete look that consisted of high end makeup.
For example, you can start off with a foundation from MAC, then you can move across to one of theirs or another high end lipstick, then eye liner and so forth. So you end up with a completed high end look. Additionally, you can purchase all the necessary items from one category and then move on to the next.
For example in face you can purchase, foundation, concealer, blush, bronzer and highlighter then move on to eye shadow, eye liner, mascara. The key element to this is to prevent yourself from purchasing all of one of the same kind of item. You don't want to end up with 4 MAC Lipsticks.
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| Courtesy: Lancome website |
Some of the higher end items I have acquired and are interested in became plausible due to sales or discontinued items. Sometimes companies such as Urban decay are changing up the formulation of items or coming out with newer versions so current faves that may be discontinued become more affordable.
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| Courtesy: Jetemo.com |
Holiday season is one of the best times to dive into higher end cosmetics. Companies like Benefit and Too Faced offer great deals on some of their most sort after items, in sets during the holiday season. These sets usually contain one or two full size versions of their popular products. These sets usually retail for less than the value of the items they contain. For example Benefit's Its a Love fest set which was part of their Holiday Collection 2013 was priced at 36 US but the total value of the items were 75 US. In fact that Benefit Porefessional face primer alone is 30US. So at this price it was steal.
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| Courtesy: Musings of a muse |
There you have it, 3 simple techniques you can use to build your high end makeup collection.
Happy Shopping!
