Althea Makeup collection - worth a try? |Althea x BCL Sunrise & Moonshine Eye Palette

Lately, I spend more money on makeup than on skincare but that's all because of my current education - I just started to enjoy using makeup and having fun with it so when Althea asked to share with you a makeup tutorial I knew that it's a good idea. Asian makeup is usually told to be less pigmented and based on different trends than Western makeup and that's kinda true - the trends are bit different but is makeup really less pigmented?

What's Althea?

Althea is an online store full of K-beauty brands but they also have their own line of skincare, do you remember Althea x Get It Beauty Real Fresh Skin Detoxer series? I made a post about them in December but Althea has way more products now - even makeup! In a box which I got from Althea,  I found products like concealers, eyeshadow palette, lip tints, glitter eyeliners but also toner, body mist and skin relief patch. In this post, I'll share with you easy makeup which I'm sure you'll be able to use on Valentine's Day and tell you a bit about products. Unfortunately, I have an allergic reaction to eyeshadows - it happens with many different brands including expensive ones so the tutorial will be mostly based on old makeup look I did which was very delicate and it's a great base to show you where I applied eyeshadows. 

A base for makeup

We need a base for makeup and I'm not talking about primer or cream - we need to clean the skin first, use toner - Althea's Pore Purifying Serum Cleanser will work well. I can share with you first pro tip: if you have rayon pads then soak them in toner and put on your face for 5 minutes instead of a sheet mask. Then you can use the rest of your skincare and sunscreen - I use Althea's Petal Velvet Sunaway couple months now and I plan to post the review of it later this month because at first my relationship with it wasn't that good but then everything turned well. If you have problems with acne then Skin Relief Spot Film Gel can be helpful - you just need to apply a thin layer of the film gel on the pimple and leave it for about 5 minutes to change from sticky formula into a film formula, this way your pimples are protected from the environment but also the ingredients in formula care about your pimples and make them smaller. I would also recommend you to use lip balm - this way when we apply lip tint, lips are going to seem softer.

Face

When we have the base then we put makeup on - use your favourite foundation, bb cream or cushion. I always apply makeup on my face, lips and sometimes even on my ears if the difference between face and ear is too big. The next part is concealer - we always put it on eyes, near eyebrows and between them, near the nose and near lips. I made a small sketch to show you all the important places to put concealer on and blend it. I used Flawless Creamy Concealer, this concealer is available in 4 different shades - #01 Vanilla, #02 Ginger,  #03 Honey and #04 Mocha. Usually, if we select concealer, we go for a shade bit lighter than the skin. In my case #01, Vanilla is very similar to my skin colour, it's always better than too dark concealer. Ginger seems to be great for contouring. Concealers are creamy and easy to blend, coverage is good and they don't seem to fill in wrinkles. In the upper eyelid, the concealer might make a crease - blend it with a finger before applying eyeshadows but before eyeshadows, we still need to apply powder - even if I like the glow, to make makeup stay longer on my face I apply powder. Althea has 3 different shades of powder - Petal Velvet Powder in shade #0 Translucent and #23 Warm Beige but also #Pink Lavender - which I use as a blush. If you're pale then Pink Lavender and Warm Beige are ideal for contouring.

Eyes

The next step is eye makeup, this part is going to be the longest. Before we start using makeup let me tell you more about eye shape and how to apply makeup according to eye shape. My eyes are very small so usually, Asian makeup trends work for me better than Western trends, if you have big eyes then you can experiment more with makeup. The palette used in this makeup is Althea x BCL Sunrise & Moonshine palette, it's a palette made in collaboration with BCL. Eyeshadows don't have names, they only have their numbers so to make it easier I called some shades but also gave numbers which you can also check on a photo where you can put each number. On the entire eye space - upper and lower eyelid but also under the eyebrow we put the lightest shade of the eyeshadow which I called "BASE". After this step, the eye shape is going to be very important, we need to put eyeshadows near an orbital bone. I see this mistake a lot and I can admit I used to do this a lot with Western eyes - putting eyeshadows in a crease instead of putting it on the orbital bone. The orbital bone helps us to create the eye shape but it also makes easier to apply makeup. Look into a mirror and keep your sight straight, you should see that open eye has some space between crease and eyebrow, I don't put that line straight from the eye corner but I make an open composition. I mark this space with a bit darker eyeshadow (eyeshadow 1)  to know how much I can do with my eye. Below I took an old photo from times when I knew nothing about makeup but I think it's the best photo to show you where my orbital bone is and where I need to stop putting makeup, it's the same place which I marked as 1 & 3. With Asian eyes, it's going to be tricky at first and I'm sad that I have no model for this makeup because this technique works on Asian eyes as well and I even guess it makes it easier to apply makeup.

Next part is to cover the lid with pink eyeshadow (2), on the photos the eyeshadow is going to look red but that's because I take photos without additional light, I'm trying to avoid putting eyeshadow in a crease and inner corner of my eyes - with my eye shape putting too much eyeshadow in inner corner changes a lot and it's not always a good change, if your eyes are too close to each other - avoid this, but if you have lots of space and you feel like your eyes are separated from each other then adding colour to the inner corners - especially darker colours like pink can be a game changer. I use two layers of eyeshadows, they are very easy to apply, you can ever use your fingers for better effect.

The next step was adding the purple eyeshadow (3) on the lower lid and on the orbital bone like - the one we made before. Blend it well, it shouldn't be a problem - if you do makeup for photos just like I did, you'll always need to put extra amount so the camera doesn't 'eat' the colours. Next step should be an eyeliner - this is a part which I'm not going to focus on since dark eyeliner was not in a set I got from Althea and that wouldn't be fair to promote other brand if this post is made in collaboration with Althea. I used Althea's Spotlight Eye Glitter in shade #01 Gold Light, the #02 Pink Light Eye Glitter can be used on eyeshadow while the #01 Gold Light worked for me better in the inner corner - especially on the lower eyelid and to be a bit extra and put the glitter around the wing. The last step with eyeshadow - I used two glitter eyeshadows from the palette - named on a photo as "GLITTER" with a finger on my lid in both looks. The last step should be mascara and white or beige eyeliner in the waterline - it changes a lot even if it's one of the most uncomfortable things to do in makeup, believe me, once you get used to it, it won't be a problem. Just to mention - the photo of eye palette in natural light is the one with numbers, with the light it looks like the 2nd photo.

Lips 

Althea's Watercolor Cream Tints at first seemed to me to be a bit too dark but somehow I ended up using them every day - we primed our lips first with lip balm and foundation so the tint should look really soft on the lips. Normally, when I do makeup, I need to put lipliner first and then lipstick or tint but in this makeup, I tried to make a gradient look - you can mix 2 different colours or just like I do - put one colour in the middle of the lips and dab it from the middle to the lip line with a finger. Do not do this weird lip thing that people usually do to smudge the formula all over the lips - yeah it'll smudge but not only on lips but around it as well. #03 Peach Cream and #04 Marron Cream are my favourites, but I can't deny #01 Plum Cream and #02 Strawberry Cream are pretty as well.

I didn't contour my face, I wanted this makeup to be pretty easy and I hope that even some of my tips will be helpful. All the products I've mentioned are available at Althea - since Althea made it possible for me to share this post with you I didn't mention what foundation I use, eyeliner, mascara, etc. How does the cost of the makeup on Althea look like?  The base of the makeup -  Pore Purifying Serum Cleanser costs $8, Petal Velvet Sunaway $10 and Skin Relief Spot Film Gel costs $4.50.
Petal Velvet Powder costs $4.50 but you can get Sunaway sunscreen with Petal Velvet Powders as a set for $13. Watercolour Cream Lip Tints costs $5 each but you can get a set of four for $18. Flawless Creamy Concealer costs $4 each and the Althea x BCL Sunrise & Moonshine palette is not available yet on US website, but on Malaysian version of Althea, it costs 140 MYR so it's about $35. Spotlight Eye Glitter costs $5.50 each.

I hope you like this tutorial, let me know if I should post more makeup posts.

More: BLOGLOVIN | INSTAGRAM | FACEBOOK | PINTEREST | YOUTUBE

*** This post was made in collaboration with Althea, even though it still shows my personal opinion on the topic and product**