vicariousLA: ysl

with holiday festivities on full blown mode, i wanted to jazz up my makeup and do something unique for the season. whereas i normally do a heavy smokey eye and nude lips, going for a bold lip and more subtle eyes seemed to be right on trend. with the brilliant help of celebrity make-up artist, jeffrey paul (hello freida pinto, emily blunt, jaimie alexander!), we're going to guide you step by step on how to achieve a classy and chic holiday face.

1. always starting with a rich and wonderful moisturizer like retrouve (ps: i'm in love with this product!!!) helps set the face for foundation. we also blended their face serum to the foundation and with a brush blended unto face.

2. layout what make up you'll be using. simplify your life and choose brands that you love and know do the trick. christian dior does tend to be pricey but i love investing in my face and not buying a million products which ends up costing the same as one good product. ya feeling me here?

3. lightly line your upper eyelids with a shimmery black shadow using an eyeliner brush. for a more dramatic affect, wet the eyeliner brush and apply shadow. by wetting the shadow, the color intensifies.

4. with a lighter color (grey), go along the crease of your eyes and work upwards. blend blend blend!

5. highlight the eyebrow bone. in this case, we used the christian dior shimmer (we'll be using the same product for my cheekbones). lightly blend to create a seamless affect from the grey eyeshadow.

6. i'm all about those eyebrows! fill! fill! fill!

7. using the same shimmer as my eyebrow bone, we highlighted my cheekbones. going out and around eye area also creates a lifting affect. in other words: highlight cheekbone + sides of eyes/face. think of it like the letter "c".

8. blush has always been a bit tricky for me. add the color right on the apple of the cheeks and with a brush go along the hollows of your cheeks. jeffrey mentioned that a most common mistake with blush is that people tend to do their apples and go straight up (ie: the clown affect). by going a bit lower (try a shade darker), you can create contour on your cheeks. as i like to say: hello angelina jolie!

9. the trick to any lip color is to add a bit of foundation to your lips should you not have lipstick primer. jeffrey pulled out a vast array of ysl glossy stains and became quite the scientist mixing colors and slathering it on my lips. when i kindly asked if he had to put soooo much on, he said yes. industry secret: slather it on! with this gloss, your lips will begin to absorb the color. that way as the day/night progresses, you'll still be left with color on your lips because of what was originally absorbed.

10. if you know me, you know i can't have my hair be tamed. i take a certain pride in having a "just out of bed" look. so i just took down my ponytail, tousled my hair around and voila! the finished product.