Improvising with Beauty Items

I recently went a mini getaway for the weekend and decided to pack light. I only brought one small toiletry bag with my makeup essentials and a few makeup brushes.
In my attempt of practising a minimalist approach and due to haste, I forgot a few key items and my beauty routine looked like it was going to go awry for the weekend.

My minimalistic travel makeup/skincare kit all in a small toiletry bag

Thankfully, after calming down from the initial shock and horror of the forgotten items, I realised that I did have all the key items in my tiny bag, even if I had to improvise a little.

Here's what I learned:
When you leave your facial cleanser and makeup remover at home...
Grab a tube of your body lotion and apply a thin layer of your body lotion or cream, and rub into face in a circular motion, this will remove makeup, and oil with ease and then rinse off to leave face soft and also moisturised.

For the delicate eye areas, remember to be gentle and if you have cotton balls handy, pop the cream on the cotton ball and then wipe it gently across your eyes to remove shadow colours and mascara.

If you do not have body lotion handy, use your moisturiser or even hand cream instead as this cream cleansing method can always be used to clean your skin.


If your brow pencil goes missing...
I have very sparse brows and absolutely must darken my brows to provide a frame for my face if I want to look anything decent and was quite horrified when I realised that I didn't bring my trusty brow pencil and began hunting around my bag for a substitute.

Usually  in such situations, I would use a deep brown/black or grey eye shadow to fill in my brows but my mini Lancome eye palette were filled with light bronze and mauve colours that was not going to suit brow use. The only dark item in my kit was my Max Factor False Lash Effect black mascara.

Macara to fill in brows

Desperate times calls for desperate measures right? Well it worked at treat. Lightly wipe a brow brush against the wand of the mascara (a cotton swab could also work), and after brushing off excess colour onto the back of hand, use the remaining colour on the brush to fill in brows. It stayed on for the entire day and looked as natural as my normal brow pencil (this would obviously not work as well if you have light hair colours but you could probably get away with a brown mascara).

If you lose your lippy...
Or you have just plain forgotten and you have a lip liner handy, just line your lips and fill in lips with your lip liner. Blot with a tissue and then apply a lip gloss/balm on top for glossy lips that are coloured and well moisturised. Another substitute for lip colours are creme blushes lightly patted over lips followed by lip gloss.

Lessons learned
I think next time I'll create a list to tick off when I go away to avoid forgetting key items but it was good to know I had trusty beauty products that could double up in use in times of needs.

What other unconventional uses do you have for your beauty products?