What kindled your love of makeup?

I was curious how everyone here first got into makeup?

For me, perfume was the gateway, lol. I quit smoking about a year and a half ago and wanted a nice perfume to celebrate not smelling like stale smoke. I went to Sephora and discovered the Benefit selection and it was downhill from there! I tried makeup in high school, but could never make it look good (this was also 13 years ago when drugstore makeup wasn't as nice!)

beauty videos started my love for makeup...now I love applying it and trying to come up with different eye looks!

I wish we had beauty blogs and videos back then! I would have probably started really getting into makeup much earlier!

I started wearing makeup in 6th grade. All I wore then was one eyeshadow color. In 8th grade I started with eyeliner. I used to only do 2 eyeshadow colors, eyeliner, and mascara through high school. My obsession started in college. I started ipsy last year and that just made me go on a hardcore Sephora haul. Now I pretty much do a full face. I just love putting it on.

Quote: Originally Posted by colorfuldez /img/forum/go_quote.gif
  beauty videos started my love for makeup...now I love applying it and trying to come up with different eye looks!
Same for me. I don't even remember the first makeup video I watched or what drew me to watch it but it sure did spark a fire!

ohh yessss.... I use to only do mascara and eyeliner...maybe ocassionally use eyeshadow and blush but that was like a once every few months....nowi love doing a full face most days

My mom jokes that I was born wearing too much eyeliner...

So when I was a little girl there was this huge cosmetics shop in Baltimore, it was similar to Sephora before Sephora was in the US.  My mother used to take me there when she needed a bottle of Shalimar or Poison (lol 80's).  She would take me to the drugstore afterwards and get me Tinkerbell Cosmetics because I would pout ( http://www.buzzfeed.com/leonoraepstein/a-tribute-to-tinkerbell-cosmetics for those who are not of my generation.)  In 8th grade she took me to get matched at the Prescriptives counter and started giving me her GWPs.  My mom is pretty cool, even if she complains about my eyeliner. 

Getting my colors done at Prescriptives in 9th or 10th grade began my love of makeup. I love the transformation it can create. That's the artist in me coming out.

Great question --- I'm an oldie (or at least I feel like it)  and I've never been super into makeup until a year and a half ago when I went through a really horrible time and had just gotten out of the hospital. I started watching YouTube videos and I got hooked. It was like watching cooking shows, so relaxing but also inspiring and fun. And I found it all so upbeat and uplifting. It was an amazing distraction from everything going on in my life at the time. I took a makeup course - started a blog recently and am now looking at going to esthetics school. I just find it so fun to do something that builds my confidence and can make others feel good about themselves.

I'm getting into makeup as an offshot of striving to revamp my wardrobe to match who I am now, rather than who I was 5-10 years ago. I bought a ton of clothes over the holidays and plan to get makeup next month. I've been watching tons of videos--reviews, tutorials, you name it--on YouTube. And I'm totally coming at this as art. If the goal for my new clothes are to express who I am, why shouldn't my face, nails, hair...you name it. We live in a world where the ability to make this happen is both available and accessible, so I'm going after that in 2014. 

I recently did the. Same thing! I bought more fashionable clothes became more girly . Use to only wear band tees in high school. With barley any. Makeup. I thought it was time to grow up

Perfume was my gateway too! I discovered Emeraude at the age of eight, and raided change from my father's pants hanging in the bathroom to buy my very first cologne. I went to a very strict parochial school, and the nuns were just horrified that I was coming to class smelling of strong perfume. (My mother was too, but she was upset that it was Emeraude instead of something more light and little-girly.) Because my nature was basically rebellious, it was not long before I was breaking the rules and wearing makeup to class two years before the rules allowed. I did keep to the color rules (only blue or pink shadow, pink blush, pink lip gloss, no full coverage lipstick) but I was bound and determined to thumb my nose at the powers that were. Had I heard of Wicca back then I probably would have pulled out the stops!

These replies are great! Rebellion, self-expression, building confidence... I love it! It really is amazing how relaxing and expressive makeup can be.

I started using makeup when I was 16. I was a goth kid and I only wore reallllyyy thick black eyeliner. One of my friends had gotten me into the eyeliner lol And then when I was eighteen I started wearing foundation. Shortly after that I started hanging out with a group of Filipina girls, and another group of Korean girls. They all liked makeup a lot and I thought I'd give it a try. So I stopped with the foundation and black eyeliner and started using BB cream and trying softer looks.

I was always into art and makeup felt like painting. I love it still because I feel confident with a great face on! And I love sleep

but will always get up early enough for makeup.

When I was in 5th grade I felt not very pretty. I had glasses and they sort of hid my eyes. One day my mom asked if I wanted to try mascara. Of course I did! She put a pale pink shadow on my lid and a layer of mascara and the difference was life changing! I got contacts in 7th grade and all hell broke loose! I started wearing ALL the makeup and never looked back!

For me, it  was a way to express myself.  As a performer, I've always found it fun to experiment with image and stage looks, and mixing it with more casual day-to-day styles.  Over the years, I've become more and more interested in makeup, nails, and hair/wigs as I've slowly learned more about how to use it all *properly* lol.  It's taken a while, but I'm glad I started learning at some point /emoticons/[email protected] 2x" width="20" height="20" />

I started using MAC Cosmetics around the age of 16. However, that specific line is a bit pricey so I never experimented with it like I wanted to. However, about three years ago, I started watching YouTube beauty videos and never realized how many amazing things you could do with drugstore makeup. It's around that time I fell in love and started loving everything about skincare and beauty.

My classy grandmother was a huge Elizabeth Arden and Chanel user. I found myself wanting to put it on after being intrigued with it's ability to enhance your features. Then, at the age of like 10 (it's been so long, I forget sort of) I forced myself to buy a magazine so I could learn/attempt to tweeze my own eyebrows because I was bullied (plus, being Persian I had to do something before the infamous unibrow developed). I ended up finding interest in magazines such as Vogue, Bazaar, etc. I started wearing makeup to school in elementary school and then in Jr. High I started doing the whole glam thing that went with the 90s persuasion at the time. Now at the age of 33, I still love makeup (never will put it down, unless of course I am heading the gym), but tend to be more into skin care now than I ever have been.

It's so interesting to read how you guys got into makeup. For me it got going through blogging. I was having extremely difficult skin with dry patches post-pregnancy and when I finally figured out a way to get it back to normal, I wanted to talk about it so I created a new blog to do so. From there, I started to read beauty blogs and started being "into" all the latest releases, etc. and little by little I started to wear makeup and was able to branch out my look. Now I own a whole drawer full of makeup and I wear it most days, I experiment with different colours, etc.