“Testing Out January’s Most Popular Beauty Hacks”

• TikTok is full of sometimes helpful, sometimes terrible beauty hacks.
• These include adding contour under foundation and using your hand as a blush stencil.
• Insider producer Celia Skvaril gathered some hacks to try for herself.

Following is a transcript of the video.

Celia Skvaril: The internet is full of makeup hacks, so I pulled three of January’s most-popular hacks to try for myself.

This hack is apparently a way to apply false lashes easier. You put the glue on the lash, place it on your lower lash line, and blink. It’s supposed to go right in its spot and stick. I don’t have high hopes for this hack. I’m just not sure how it could possibly work. Also, I’m, like, inept when it comes to applying false lashes. So that’s also why I don’t have high hopes. But, I mean, I might wear them more if they were easier to put on. I am going to cut the lash to be a little bit smaller. So, I chopped a little bit off, and what you’re supposed to do is you’re supposed to just apply the glue to the top part of the lash rather than the bottom, which you usually would do. OK, so we’re glued, and now we’re just going to let it get a little bit tacky. I have my tweezers. I’m scared. I don’t get this. What am I doing wrong? OK, let’s just try with our finger. Um. Yeah, no. It’s just as hard to get it on your bottom lash than it is on your top. I’m over it. I can’t do this. I’m getting too upset. I hate it.

This hack is from celebrity makeup artist Scott Barnes. It’s also really popular with a bunch of other makeup artists, but from my research, I believe it was started by Scott Barnes. Basically, you contour before applying foundation, and it’s meant to blend out any harsh lines and make the contour look more seamless and natural. This is a little bit more warm-toned than a typical contour, but I always contour with a bronzer, so. I don’t know if it’s the foundation, the contour, or this brush, but that blended out, like, so seamlessly. Wow. I guess my only worry with this is that it’s going to make your foundation darker because you’re, like, mixing it with your contour shade. I would 100% say this hack works, and I would use it again. I think it blended out the bronzer super seamlessly. And I feel like it’s really good if you’re in a rush too, because you just get to do two steps at once.

This next hack is supposed to be the perfect blush shape for your face. Basically what you do is you put your hand in an L shape on your face starting at your nose up to here, and then you put the blush in this little area here. Make sure we have the right shape here. OK. OK, so we have it in this corner, and then we blend it out. Obviously you’re blending it outside of that little area that you started with, but I actually do think the placement of this blush is really nice. In general, I’m not sure if it’s specifically for my face shape, but I do think it’s a very nice place that I put it, and I definitely think I would use this again. Well, if I don’t say so myself, this base, all these hacks together, worked pretty well. Besides the eyelash one. I hated that.