SusiMakeup Blog ★ English: August 2011

I had the great honor of being Shannon Ford's (Mrs Florida) makeup artist for the Mrs United States 2011 pageant in Las Vegas.

I was so happy and excited she won, but I wasn't surprised at all because she is incredibly beautiful, sweet, smart and the most important thing, it was her dream! And when you have a dream and you work hard for it, you get luckier! She deserved it so much.

This great job has been the most exciting experience in my three years as a makeup artist. I would like to share some of those happy moments by showing the makeup process for her glamorous stage makeup. The idea was to bring out her features and focus on her gorgeous eyes so they show up from a distance.

The first step was to make her eyes pop. I did the eyes before the foundation because when you use dark shadows it could soil the under eye creating dark circles. Fake eyelashes help to make the look deeper and give definition in order to look great from a distance.

For stage make up we use two optical illusions in order to highlight features and give dimension to the face. We darken the spots we want to see deeper and lighten those zones we want to bring forward.

Once the foundation is done in the right color of the skin tone, I put a foundation or concealer two tones darker in the zone I want to push down and a two tones lighter to push out. I prefer using cream foundation, this makes it easier to blend with a sponge.