Let's face it, if you are a woman who is over forty, you probably don't have the best eye sight to apply make up with. Hence it is important to buy a good make up mirror. You can get one of those Revlon 8x magnifying makeup mirrors if you want. Or, I really like the ones that you can find in places like the beauty supply store or even Ikea. Ikea has a makeup mirror that accordions out and one side is a regular mirror and one side magnifies your face a few times. Be careful of too much magnification because you have to see your entire face as well. The best thing for your home make up application is to have good natural light, a regular bathroom mirror and also have a magnifying make up mirror that accordions from the wall so it takes up no space. If you have the room you can set an illuminated make up mirror on the vanity counter.

Some women literally need eye glasses to apply make up or they just can't see what they are doing. Having good vision can make or break your eye make up. If eye make up is applied sloppily it is really a detriment to your beauty. Wear reading glasses low down on your nose if you need to just to be able to see what you are doing when applying your make up.

A cosmetics mirror is going to help you conceal flaws since the view enables you to easily see subtle skin discolorations that need flaw conealer. A make up mirror is going to help remind you to blend your make up better which will look more natural. And finally, you'll be able to catch all of those little wild hairs that come. Haven't you seen older women with wild chin and cheek hairs? If you can't see that well, these hairs can hang around and you'll look kooky not glamorous if you don't catch em. A quality make up mirror is a good investment.

Eyebrow Shapers

Nicely shaped eye brows truly enhance a woman's beauty. As we age our eyebrows tend to become less populated with hair. Not only does the hair become sparse, what eyebrow hair you do have tends to grow too long. Therefore it is essential to have two tools on hand, one is a good tweezers and the other is a small precision hair cutters for trimming eyebrow hairs into place. These are two tools that the eyebrow waxers have and you need them too.

Even if you pay to wax and shape eyebrows at the local beauty salon you need these tools on hand for neatening up the brows. Eyebrow stencils are somewhat clumsy so if you are clueless about shaping your brows you can get it professionally done. Try a few different arch styles until you find what suits you best. Once you have a shape done by a professional, then you can use the tweezers and trimmers to maintain the shape yourself for quite some time without having to return to the salon.

I like tweezers with the two round loops on the handles that you can put your finger through as they are easier to control than the chopsticks style tweezers. I also like a nice sharpened end that is at an angle which makes it easier to get into hard to reach areas. After tweezing out of bound hairs, make sure to use the trimmers to clean up hairs whose roots are in bounds but are growing too bushy. You can use an eyebrow brush or freebie tooth brush to brush brows up then trim across the top for a neater edge. This works wonders to clean your brows up. Watch what the salon esthetician does when you get a pro brow wax and tweezing.

Organizing your make up can help you see what you have and what needs replacing. I have a tall five container stacking drawers from Wal-mart that nicely stores all sorts of make up that I've accumulated. Then I have a smaller three drawer stack that stores just the make up and beauty supply items that I use/wear on a regular basis. It's amazing how much make up we women amass yet how few products we actually use on a daily basis. Your daily makeup items will be pretty small in number and you'll see that if you have a nice set of natural colors that you will rarely if ever go into the extra makeup you keep stored.

Your make up should be arranged in an easy to access manner. Your makeup tools should include nice metal tools (makeup pencil sharpeners and tweezers), sponges and brushes, along with a good selection of natural earth tone colored make up. With the tools and the natural shades, you'll have every thing you need. Once you get an organization system you'll have the easy access set of basic make up products and will barely need to go onto the overflow draws. You'll be set. You may need to try out quite a bit of make up, but once you've figured out what works you'd be surprised how little make up a woman actually needs to keep at hands reach. Try to throw out unused makeup periodically as it does go bad. Likewise, replace stale makeup. Mascara is the first to go bad and clumpy, so replace that every few months.

What you'll need to store are your metal tools such as tweezers, trimmers, eye pencil sharpeners, nail cutters etc. These tools cannot be underestimated and are almost more important than the make up itself. For example, you will want to get a nice sharp metal eye pencil sharpener so that when you apply eye liner or lip liner you get a neat clean line. When pencils start to get too dull the application looks sloppy. Keep pencils sharpened and your make up will look that much neater.

Next, you have your make up sponges for applying concealer and so on. Make up brush sets will need a spot too. Always buy sponges and brushes separately and throw away what comes free with the make up. Even if you get inexpensive brushes and sponges the separately purchased ones are going to work far better than the freebie ones.

Organize your make up into an order. Astringent pads to cleanse skin, moisturizer to prime skin before applying your makeup, concealer to hide flaws, liquid foundation to give a light tinted cover. You should purchase a few different increasing shades of pressed powders, eye shadow and mineral powder to gradually add a sunkissed glow to your skin. Next is your lip balms and lip colors which should be in natural pretty shades. Never forget mascara, and finally eyeliner and eyebrow filling in pencils.