If you’re a mother, you’re always on-the-go, running around. This hardly leaves you any time for beautifying yourself. And if you’re perpetually living a nomadic life, morning-commute primping and back-of-cab refreshes are a way of life, you’d love a hack or two to quicken our makeup routine. Armed with determination, here are 8 tried-and-true tricks you must add to your on-the-go routine.
1. Blot your T-zone with a Brown Paper napkin
Because even when you’re running around, you always make time and pit stop for that coffee. While you’re at it, stuff a few napkins (or any that are brown and recycled) as freebie blotting papers to blot away shine on your forehead, nose and chin, and anywhere that gets oily.
2. Used pressed powder or cream foundation for coverage
For on-the-go, outside our bathroom, we prefer pressed powder or cream foundation compact as it’s easy to apply, you can build coverage, and apply touch-ups in seconds. As much as we love liquid and loose powder foundation, things can get messy outside the confines of a bathroom.
Try: Laura Mercier Smooth Finish Foundation Powder, $47; sephora.com.
Shiseido Advanced Hydro-Liquid Compact SPF 15, $30; sephora.com.
3. Use finger smudge for a super-quick smoky eye
For a touch of sultriness, quickly sweep eyeliner along your top and bottom lash lines—the messier, the better. Then use your ring finger to smudge the liner up and out along your lid and lower lash line for a cool-girl smoky eye, without shadow.
4. Keep Handy Dry Shampoo
If we could, we’d carry a can of dry shampoo with us everywhere. Incase, we don’t have the room in our already-overflowing bag, toss a tiny, travel size bottle of Bumble and bumble’s Prêt-à-Powder into our purse as we can use it as a dry shampoo, as well as to create texture or add some volume to our roots.
Try: Bumble and bumble Prêt-à-Powder0.3 oz, $12; sephora.com.
5. Use hand lotion in your hair
If you’re a moisturizing freak like us, chances are you have hand cream stashed in your purse or at your desk. In addition to keeping your hands silky-smooth, it can also be used on your strands to make them sleeker, minimize frizz, and add some fragrance.
6. Use a lip pencil instead of lipstick
Of course we’ll always keep our go-to tubes in our makeup bag, but for ladies that don’t have the time for painstaking precision, lip pencils make life easy. You can trace the outline of your lips with ease, plus when you fill in the rest of your pout, it’ll stay put throughout the day—whereas lipstick is more likely to smudge or transfer.
7. Make your mascara and brow gel interchangeable
Our foolproof recco is clear mascara, which in addition to perking up your lashes au naturally, can be used as brow gel to groom your arches. If you’re keen on black or brown mascara and have darker brows, you can also use that to tidy up your texture and add a tint—but tread lightly. Additionally, you can coat your lashes with a tinted brow gel.
Try it: e.l.f. professional Wet Gloss Lash & Brow Clear Mascara, $0.99; walgreens.com.
