Makeup mishaps happen. Unfortunately, we only realize them when it’s too late and we’re already out in public.
You can be a makeup aficionado who has mastered contouring and strobing, but that doesn’t mean makeup mishaps don’t happen to you. You can put on your lipstick perfectly with your eyes closed, but you’re not immune to embarrassing makeup moments. They happen to everyone, including celebs. Nicole Kidman recently attended an event with white powder that hadn’t been properly blended on her nose. It definitely has happened to you. Of course, you also didn’t realize your blending error until you had gone outside and talked to about five different people.
Here are 12 other cringe-worthy makeup mishaps that happen to everybody:
1. Leaving the house with mascara on only one eye.
You’re in a rush in the morning because you really need to leave soon. You coat one eye with mascara, then something distracts you, and you don’t remember to do your other eye. You realize your mistake when you go to the bathroom at lunch after everyone has been giving you strange looks all morning.
2. Rubbing your eyes and smudging all your shadow and liner.
Your eye is really bothering you, so instinctively, you rub it to soothe it. You don’t remember that you have a smokey eye with three shadows, liner, and mascara on until someone points out that your eye makeup is on your cheek.
3. Completely forgetting about blending your foundation into your neck.
You were so focused on making sure you had a flawless complexion that you didn’t look beyond the borders of your face. Therefore, you go out with a crisp line between your foundation and neck. To make it even worse, you probably decided to wear your hair up that day.
4. Forgetting to cover your white mascara primer with black mascara.
You can try and blame your phone, the radio, or the broken coffee pot for distracting you, but it doesn’t change the fact that you left the house with only step one of your mascara on. White mascara may be in, but it’s a tricky look to pull off, especially when you don’t know you’re rocking it.
5. Blotting your forehead to get rid of shine and being left with a mark where you rubbed off your foundation.
If you’ve run out of your handy blotting sheets, you’ve probably thought that toilet paper or a napkin would work just as well. You gently use the extra napkins from your lunch to soak up your forehead shine but don’t bother to check the mirror. When you finally look in one, you realize it got rid of the shine but all your makeup too.
6. Getting lipstick all over your teeth and not realizing it until after your 15-minute conversation.
Lipstick formulas can be so light and nourishing that you don’t even know they’re on your lips or your teeth. Naturally, the migrating lipstick had to be a bold color; it couldn’t have been a more subtle soft pink or nude.
7. Using a powder that definitely isn’t transparent for a midday touch-up.
The powder is supposed to get rid of shine and set your makeup without changing the color. However, not all formulas are created equal, and some definitely aren’t transparent. Some powders show up so well on your skin that you can even see the brush marks. You never realize this until about three hours after your application.
8. Having your lipstick rub off, but your lip liner remains perfectly intact.
You may have been able to get away with this look in the 1990s, but not now. If you want to enhance your lips, make sure you fill in your entire lip area with liner, not just the outline. It only takes a few hours of walking about with a red lip liner border on your mouth to learn this lesson.
9. Getting your hair stuck in your lip gloss.
This could be why some people are so against lip glosses. It only takes one windy day when your hair gets caught in your gloss. You think it’s alright until someone points out that you have a hair stuck to the side of your mouth, and it’s about eight inches long.
10. Wearing sunglasses and smudging your “long-wearing” brow pencil.
Sunglasses protect your eyes, but they can also really mess up your makeup. You probably loved your trendy cat-eye sunglasses until they rubbed part of your eyebrows off. What make it worse was they left an obvious line under your eyes where your concealer had been.
11. Resting your head in your hands and leaving finger marks on your blush and foundation.
You’re tired and stressed and just need to cradle your head to get your thoughts together. Who was thinking about ruining foundation when they just found out their appointment got switched, so it conflicts with the other mandatory appointment you can’t reschedule?
12. Wearing a too-light concealer that highlights all your zits.
You thought that shade of concealer matched your skin in the store. You even tested it out. It looked perfect at home. You didn’t realize anything was amiss until you looked at your reflection and saw that concealer matched a skin tone that definitely wasn’t yours.