Cleanse Your Palette: 7 Amazing Makeup Tricks for Women Over 40

I turned 45 this year, and after looking pretty youthful for a long time, suddenly in these last two years or so my age hit me like a truck. In my face. My skin suddenly changed dramatically, becoming much drier yet also more prone to acne. I've got the beginnings of age spots (OY). My eyelashes no longer stand up; they point forward making it look like I don't HAVE eyelashes. But worst of all, my makeup suddenly stopped working for me. I've always been a cheapskate when it came to makeup, buying all my stuff at the drugstore because it was pretty good quality and inexpensive. However, now that my face is a mess of fine wrinkles, I began noticing some problems. My eyeshadows - all typical sparkly type shadows - began falling into the wrinkles and highlighting them. Because my upper eyelid now droops a lot more, I'd end up with a shadow of my lash eyeliner on the lid - making it look like I had two sets of eyebrows. My eyebrows are thinner and patchy. And putting eyeliner under my eyes was disastrous, with the eyeliner slowly falling down and making me look like I have two black eyes. So I started doing some research about what other women my age were doing (there is surprisingly little info out there), and I learned a couple of things. First, time to switch to matte shadows instead of sparkly. Second, buy better quality makeup. Third, get waterproof products. It's worked! Lately I've gotten a ton of compliments on my makeup, so I thought I'd share what I learned. Here we go! - By Cecily Kellogg

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