BEAUTY — SALTY BLONDES

There's something about the holidays that makes us want to go bright and bold with our lip color. Maybe it's all the glittering lights and festive decorations, but if there is ever a time to break out the bright lipstick, it's the Christmas holidays. Bold lipstick dresses up any outfit and even makes you feel more confident and cheerful! Almost everyone looks great with bright lips, the trick is to find the perfect shade.

For this post we just had to feature Paige's cute sister-in-law, Noelle. She has the kind of gorgeous, full lips that people pay money for and we can't help but be a little jealous! All her lips need is lip balm and gloss...but for those of us who weren't blessed with natural, full lips, we need to add liner to make ours stand out. We like to add the liner around the very outside of our lips, then use the side of the liner to fill them in a little and blend it. Then we add our lipstick or gloss to the inner part of our lips.

Below are our top three favorite shades for the holidays and coordinating lip pencils, as well as a short video tutorial to show you the best way to apply :)

Noelle: Balm: Eos // Gloss: NYX 'Dolly Pink'

Regan: Liner: MAC 'Vino' // Lipstick: MAC 'Rebel'

Paige: Liner: Smashbox 'Ruby' // Lipstick: Smashbox 'Firecracker'

Today we want to share a few make-up tips and tricks that our good friend, Ashley Armstrong, recently showed us. Ashley is a hair stylist and makeup artist at Amara Day Spa, Salon and Boutique.

The first is using this Smashbox foundation primer.

She introduced Paige to this primer just before her wedding. She loved it and has used it ever since. Now we both use these products daily and love them! Regan uses the hydrating formula on the right because she has dryer skin, and Paige uses the color correcting blend on the left. This stuff is seriously awesome. When using this primer, your foundation goes on perfectly and stays all day! Just using this alone makes your skin look better, even before foundation. Try it, you won't be sorry! You can buy both HERE and HERE :)

Next, we want to talk about brows. Good eyebrows can make a dramatic difference. We're probably a little behind on learning how to do our eyebrows, but we just recently started filling them in. Like most of the world right now, we're obsessed with Cara Delevingne and her bold brows, which really made us want to up our own brow game!

Below is a little video that shows Ashley doing Regan's brows. It was hard to believe what a difference her bolder eyebrows made! Thank you Ashley for showing us the light!

BEFORE // BOTH // AFTER

The two products being used in this video are Brow Tech To Go in Taupe, and MAC Eyebrow Liner in Fling. One important thing she taught us, is that your eyebrow should start in line with the corner of your nose, and end at a diagonal from there as well. Start by making a dot with your liner where your brow should start and end, then begin filling in the bottom part of your brow, and lastly, the top. Use a brush to blend it in a little, and voila! It definitely takes a little bit of practice. If you don't feel comfortable using a liner right away, start by filling in your brows with eyeshadow!

All products can be found at Amara :)

Ps. Amara also has the AMAZING Holiday Smashbox collection right now. Check it outttt.

Big thanks to Ashley for all your help :)