What Every Professional Makeup Artist Needs in their Kit

Becoming a professional Makeup Artist is something that has taken me a lot of trial and error to wrap my head around. There’s so much more to what makeup artists do then simply “make you pretty”. With years of industry experience on various ages, ethnicities and skin-types, I have prioritized my top 10 products in what I believe every professional makeup artist should have in their kit

#1 Hand sanitizer, this is a must! You need to show and demonstrate to your clients you are clean and hygienic, seeing as you’ll be in close proximity to their face, they need to physically see you sanitize and clean your hands – a subliminal way of demonstrating your professionalism and cleanliness

#2 Isopropyl alcohol and brush cleaner - to spot clean and sanitize brushes in between clients, as well as lip liners, eye pencils and palettes. Just because you can’t see germs, doesn’t mean they’re not there!

#3 Foundation Palette – one that preferably caters to various undertones and skin colours. As a professional artist, you should be catering to your whole audience’s needs and not simply just the mainstream, plus it’s 2020, colours, shades and undertones are becoming more diverse then ever!

#4 A neutral and colourful eyeshadow palette – you don’t need to have every eyeshadow palette under the sun to curate, design and apply beautiful looks, simply a couple of palettes with different colour stories. A neutral palette to cover your transition shades, warm and cool tone browns, taupes and creams as well as a neutral black and brown shadow to add depth. Also a colourful palette for when you want to accentuate and add depths of colour to your looks, whether it be a pop of blue, green or yellow, don’t be scared to get creative

#5 Disposable mascara, lip wands, cotton pads and tips – this all comes back to hygiene, hygiene, hygiene! I can’t stress this enough, yes, with proper sanitation and cleanliness of your brushes you know that your kit and self are clean, however you can‘t guarantee your clients necessarily are. Now I am not suggesting your client isn’t clean, but just thinks like air born bacteria in the air, maybe they have been around someone sick or have ferment symptoms themselves, you need to play it on the safe side and use disposable tools for the intimate areas of their face, being the eyelashes, lips and under eye. Basically where there is natural occurring moisture in the skin. This is why it’s important to give your client an intake form to understand every persons basic needs and dermatological history. It’s what’s best for your present and future clients, to ensure you have a clean and sanitized kit, plus double dipping definitely ain’t Gucci

#6 Skincare – start with the basics at first, a micellar water, toner, serum or oil and moisturiser tailored to your clients different skin types. A long-wearing base all comes down to how it’s prepped, refer to my other blog here to understand why: https://www.makeupbyaylce.com.au/post/the-importance-of-skincare

#7 Lip Balm – something to put on your clients lips to hydrate and nourish their lips before their lipstick. I put on lip balm with their skin care application, to let it settle while I do the rest of their makeup first and to ensure my clients are getting the the most hydrating effects of the balm before lipstick and lipliner is applied, plus it will make the lipliner and lipstick glide on so much more easily if their lips are primed and ready to be a perfect pout!

#8 A lipstick palette – something with again neutral and bold shades, but not only that, to double as a cream blush palette for your clients faces, which you can either leave or set with similar colours/tones from one of your eyeshadow palettes. When building a kit, you don’t have to have literally every different product out there to cater to your clients and audience, you just need to be smart in what you invest in. A lot of products can be doubled up and used as something different entirely to ensure you getting the most value and quality out of your professional kit

#9 Colour Correcting Wheel or Palette – foundations can easily be thinned out or used as a concealer, so as an artist starting out, don’t feel you need every shade or concealer product under the sun to be able to cater to your clients needs, this where a colour correcting wheel comes in handy. Colour Correcting Wheels or concealers with the undertones of peach, pink, green and yellow are essential in ensuring that you can cover any clients various dermatological concerns, whether that be hyper or hypo pigmentation issues, acne, scarring or texture, a colour correcting wheel used properly will help camouflage these issues to ensure a flawless and even base

#10 The last one goes without saying, a diverse brush belt – your brushes are like the tools of your trade, they are essential in ensuring you can curate a beautiful tailored eye look for your clients. Specific ones I would recommend would be: an angled brush, this can triple as an eyebrow, eyeliner and lipstick brush, 2-3 blending brushes of different sizes which can also double up as highlighter or undereye brushes, at least 2 blush brushes, trust me you can never have too many blush brushes, a bronzer brush for bronzer and powder, they are bigger so they’ll cover more areas of the face in a quicker time frame and 2-3 flat concealer brushes that can double as eyeshadow brushes too for foiled eyeshadows as well as glitter and pigments

I hope this list helps anyone out there who is unsure where to start when it comes to building their kit. Of course this is a basic overview, but without these essentials in place, becoming a successful and professional artist may be difficult without the understanding of a basic kit.