Have you heard of Barbara Bort cosmetics?  I hadn’t before I met Sophie Spark at Olympia in London.  The owner of Sparkle Cosmetics, Sophie and her team import a fantastic range of makeup from Italy. I’m always a little dubious about companies that import brands and are basically distributors, but Sophie’s enthusiasm for the brand captured my attention and made me stay and find... 

It’s competition time again! This time, it’s for non-makeup artists only, with judging to be done by all the professionals. All you have to do is create a full face, totally glamorous, full eyes, lips, cheeks, the lot!  This is not a ‘whacky’ or overly creative look, just something (in the words of Sharon Osborne) “faaaabulous darling” that you could readily wear... 

Alex Box, famous for her unconventional approach to makeup, has created a book, with Rankin Photography and it shows some of her wildest and most creative looks to date. Starting out as a fine artist and installation artist, her career took her into makeup where she melded nature, science, art and magic together. Today, Alex works with such world renowned designers as Gareth Pugh, Alexander McQueen... 

      Since I became a MUA I’ve always used a MAC 190 as my main foundation brush and always been pretty happy with that. I have 2 of these, along with about 4 others (Mac and other brands) but have never really been 100% happy with any of them. I’ve found that over the past few months my 190 isn’t performing as well as I’d like it to and last month the head came away from... 

As a make-up artist, people are forever asking me “is this foundation good?” “What foundation do you use?” “How do you get the flawless skin that you see in the magazines?” first of all, bear in mind that all of your favourite actors/singers/models are extensively airbrushed before their pictures reach the pages of magazines. With that in mind, the good news is that flawless skin can be...