I love sharing with you top-notch high-end and drugstore makeup products that are so good and that I love so much that I’ll definitely be repurchasing them. And of course, I’ll just be focusing on products that work beautifully on our mature skin. So, I hope you’ll find this roundup of products to be especially helpful.

Brow Pencils

Let’s start with some all-important brow products.

I usually end up combining eyebrow pencils and powders; sometimes eyebrow gel. When I want a soft eyebrow look, my go-to brow product is a high-end product from Anastasia of Beverly Hills. It’s their “Brow Powder Duo” in a medium brown. Even though this is a high-end product, and I use it often, I’ve had this same powder for well over a year. I haven’t hit “pan” on it yet, so in terms of cost per wear, it’s an excellent value. I do love the fact that there’s a lighter and a darker color in each of these powder duos from ABH. It’s wonderful to have the option to go lighter or darker on your brows. Or lighter or darker on different parts of your brows—by using this one handy product. But, I hardly ever use this powder alone since I need a little more definition along the top of my brows since they definitely fit the term “scraggly.”

To create this brow definition, I either use my Elf Instant Lift Brow Pencil in taupe. Or, a newer product I’ve come to really like is my Clinique Superfine Liner for Brows in soft brown. This really is a superfine liner, which I’ve found is great to use right along the very top of my brows. Then, because I have some unruly brow hairs in my brow tails, I finish up with my Almay Brow Styler in a medium brown.

The Soft Brow Look

But there’s one other product that I also love for a soft brow look. It’s Charlotte Tilbury’s Legendary Brows. I use the color Super Model. It gives a soft, natural look to the brows and fills them is quite well. It also has an extremely tiny applicator tip which is really wonderful for filling in thinner, sparser brows so they look fuller but not penciled in.

Before applying eye shadow, I can’t go without my eye primer. Because I have quite a bit of discoloration on my eyelid area, I use a shade that matches my skin tone. And none of you will be surprised by this choice. It’s my Urban Decay Eye Shadow Primer Potion in Eden. As far as I’m concerned, this is a miracle product for preventing my eyeshadow from creasing or smudging. And, for covering up discoloration. It lasts all day and into the night without a problem.

Eyeshadow Palettes

Now we’ll move on to my favorite makeup product: eyeshadow palettes. I’m going to share three palettes with you that I use the most frequently, including two newer palettes. The first palette is my “go-to” palette for an all-matte neutral look which I wear quite often.  And these are colors all of us can wear no matter what color eyes we have. It’s my Juvia’s Place, The Warrior II. It not only has light, medium, dark, and very dark browns, but also a black and a beautiful, deep red-brown. But what I also love are the two light and deeper orange colors. I almost always apply just a small amount of one of these orange shadows along the top of the crease color. The orange adds some warmth to the eye area and a little more interest or “pop.” It’s subtle but very effective.

The second palette is one I purchased just a couple of months ago that’s a great complement to the Juvia’s Place Warrior II palette. It’s the Juvia’s Place Warrior palette, which has a combination of golds, bronzes, and browns. It’s a beautiful mix of 3 mattes (which on their own create a beautiful look), 2 shimmers, and 4 metallic colors. And, it’s stunning.

A New Palette

And the final palette is one I truly love and is my favorite palette of 2020: Colourpop’s, At Forest Sight palette, which is a collaboration with a YouTuber by the name of Kristi. There are so many things I absolutely love about this palette. The first thing is that in a year that produced many palettes with pastel or primarily mid-tone colors. This is a palette with a full range of light to medium to gorgeous, rich deeper colors. And even though there are 4 quite deep colors in this palette—including a deep green, a blue/green, a deep reddish/brown maroon, and a black that has some shimmer flecks—if these colors are applied very lightly with one dip into the color, they definitely will look softer and be more wearable for many people.

The second reason I love this palette is that in a year where a lot of palettes included a host of shimmers and pressed glitters. 9 of the 12 colors in this palette are mattes, two are shimmers and one is matte with some shimmer flecks mixed in. So for many of us with a lot of texture in our eye area, having more mattes as options in a palette can be a real plus. Third, these colors blend together beautifully well and are very highly pigmented. They’re just top quality.

My Favorite Makeup Products

Next, I can’t leave out my Laura Geller French Vanilla Baked Highlighter. I use it on my eyelids, under the arch of my brow, on the inner corner of my eyes and to blend out the upper edge of my eye shadow so there are no harsh edges.

Under the eyes I use a fantastic product: it’s Colorescience’s Total Eye 3-in-1 Renewal Therapy. It not only color corrects because of the colors it comes in, but it also decreases puffiness, hydrates to reduce the look of fine lines, and has a mineral SPF of 35. It’s definitely pricey, but you only need to use a very small amount. So, it lasts for quite a long time. I’ll also be trying out a new Colorescience product which sounds very interesting:  it’s a mineral sunscreen that provides some glow. It’s called Sunforgettable Total Protection Face Shield Glow with an SPF of 50. I have high hopes for this product.

Now onto the Face…

A relatively new product I’ve tried, which I absolutely love, is Tatcha’s The Liquid Silk Canvas face primer. It’s an oil-free, light primer that really helps makeup glide on. But most importantly for many of us, it also minimizes the look of pores and fine lines. In addition, it contains some pink and gold pearl which helps even out skin tone. It also contains some skin-enhancing ingredients such as green tea, rice, and algae. Now, it is pricey at $52 dollars, but there’s also a travel size at $22 dollars. I also like Benefit’s The Pore-fessional Hydrating primer—but it doesn’t have all the wonderful skin-enhancing ingredients that the Tatcha product has.

Blush

Our next products up are blush, contour, and highlight. One of my favorite blushes is one that was included in a new makeup line launch from Selena Gomez called Rare Beauty.  The blush is so easy to apply and very highly pigmented so you literally only need about half a drop on each cheek. And another of its many pluses is that it lasts longer than most other blushes. My other long-standing “go to” cream blush is from RCMA. RCMA stands for “Research Council of Makeup Artists” and it can be purchased either in a palette of 5 different colors or each color can be purchased separately. These are so buttery soft and smooth and absolutely glide onto the skin. This product can be found on the Beautylish or Camera Ready Cosmetics online sites.

Highlighter

For highlighter, I really like another product from Rare Beauty: their Liquid Luminizer. And I hope Wet’n Wild never stops making their wonderful contour sticks. They come in two colors; this is a color called Where’s Walnut. It is a cool-toned color that is the deepest option. The other color they have is a warmer toned color. But, I find it easiest to contour my nose with a powder highlighter rather than a cream highlighter. So I use Benefit’s powder bronzer in Dallas. It comes separately in a mini version, but I happen to have it in a Benefit blush, bronze, and highlight palette called Cheek Stars Reunion Tour.

Concealers

I have three different concealers I regularly use. Two I use for the face and one on my lips. For a long time I’ve been using Laura Mercier’s Flawless Fusion Ultra Longwear Concealer in the shade 2C, but I’ve recently discovered Clinique’s Even Better Concealer in Alabaster. Both of these concealers are creamy and have about the same amount of coverage, but I often combine them to get just the right color. And to help camouflage my lip line and lip color, I like to use a less expensive concealer: Maybelline’s Age Rewind Concealer in Light Pale.

Powders

Moving on to powders. I have both a Holy Grail setting powder as well as a Holy Grail finishing powder. I love Laura Mercier’s Translucent Loose Setting Powder and the finishing powder is one I’ve talked about in quite a few videos. It’s in my Hourglass Ghost Edit palette. I love the lighter colored Diffused Light Finishing Powder in this palette but I’m also interested in eventually purchasing a shade called Ethereal.

Because of my very sensitive eyes, I’ve only found one mascara I’ve been able to wear on my top lashes. It’s Tarte’s Lights, Camera, Lashes or their Lights, Camera, Flashes mascaras. And I use Clinique’s Bottom Lash Mascara on my bottom lashes.

Lip Products

We’ve finally reached the last products I’ll be talking about today; products for the lips. Because of the fine lines I have around my mouth, which seem to attract lipstick, I definitely need a lip liner. This will act as a barrier between my lips and those fine lines.  I’ve found L’Oreal’s Age Perfect Lip Liners really do the job. But I do apply a double coat of liner around the edge of my lips.

I’m also a fan of L’Oreal’s two Age Perfect lipsticks: their Luminous Hydrating and Nourishing Serum Formula. In this formula, I have the colors Perfect Burgundy and Splendid Plum. Then their Satin Lipstick with Precious Oils formula which I have in Vibrant Fuchsia. But to get just the right color, I have to mix in either Too Faced’s Marcia, Marcia, Marcia, or Huda Beauty’s After Party.

What are your favorite makeup products? Let us know in the comments at the bottom of this page! 

 

Elise Marquam-Jahns is a professional, working makeup-artist who is passionate about helping women 50+ get their glow back.  In addition to her work as a makeup artist for a major cosmetics line, she founded Boomer and Beyond Beauty and recently launched her “Boomer and Beyond Beauty with Elise” YouTube channel for women 50+.  Elise is also an author and speaker and hosts Normandale Community College’s monthly Learning Well Edge Talk Radio show where she interviews experts in the field of health and wellness. 

 

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