Friday Featured Corner: Jennifer Hudson

Hi Beautiful People!

    What a hot day it is I think it's like 105 outside and 150 in my house everywhere except my beauty lair. Can't have my makeup going bad :). Any who I realized I hadn't posted anything since my giveaway so I wanted to do a feature Friday corner and one of my favorite singers... Jennifer Hudson. Since her days at American Idol this beautiful woman has been a household name making a great big splash unto the movie scene with Dreamgirls (one of my favorite movies ever), and then her highly anticipated album self entitled Jennifer Hudson was another great gift bestowed to her fans. Tragedy hit her but it never seemed to dull her star which only seemed to shine brighter with time. Ten sizes down, baby, marriage, more movies and a great new cd, there seems to be no stopping Ms. Hudson. Here I honor everything JHud with my top 5 favorite looks.

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The lips, the eyes, the hair, Jennifer seemed to have everything necessary for this sultry yet funky look. Look at the layering of the necklace... I Die! Love her here.

Jennifer Jennifer Jennifer. This look by Derek Blanks screams that I'm not just your American Idol anymore. I'm every woman. Sculpted cheeks, her signature bronze glow and lips. She can do no wrong. Give me that necklace JHUD!

Love the bang and she just can't stop glimmering and shining with those eyes. And the nude lip look never looked so good.
(courtesy of momoshow.com)

Essence loves Jennifer and featured her on the April 2011 issue. I loved every look so I included the video :)
(video courtesy of Essence.com)

This beautiful makeup look was created by the amazing and 

legendary Sam Fine. You'll find the tutorial for how he achieved 

this look below (courtesy of Essence.com)

Makeup Tutorial

Coverage: Every great look begins great coverage. Jennifer has beautiful skin, but like many women of color, she has varied tones. I use foundation to unify those varying tones. One of my favorites is the Queen Collection Natural Hue Compact Foundation because its cream- to- powder, so it dries down to a powdery finish and looks really natural.

Bronzer: Bronzer is always a must for all women to illuminate their complexion. Its important to choose a bronzer thats one shade darker than your natural skin tone and apply it to the outer perimeter of your face to warm the skin and create a halo of glow. After applying bronzer, you can go back and layer over blush to give the skin a pop of color. On Jennifer, I used CoverGirl Natural Hue Mineral Bronzer and Cargos matte blush in Laguna.

Eyes: To create Jennifers classic, natural eye, I used a brown shadow. Shu Uemura makes a great pressed eye shadow in an array of shades in this case, their Matte Taupe with Golden Flakes Eyeshadow works perfectly. For this look, I didnt use a ton of liner, and totally avoided lining underneath her eyes to keep them soft. We used tons of mascara to enhance her look my favorite isLashBlast from CoverGirl. I always like to apply a coat of mascara, and then move on to something else to let the first coat dry. Ill come back a few minutes later, curl the lashes, and then layer on a few more coats of mascara to really build the lashes. This makes them much more dramatic and makes the curl hold well. Its like spraying your hair with a coat of hairspray before using a curling iron.

Lips: To complete her look, I gave Jennifer a beautiful nude lip. The key to a nude lip is to begin by lining the lips with liner that is one shade darker than your natural lip color. Dont worry about matching the liner to your lipstick if you match it to your lips, it will look great with any shade of lipstick. After lining the lips, feather the liner towards the center of the mouth to great a base for the lipstick. Next, apply your lipstick. On Jennifer, I chose IMAN Cosmetics Luxury Moisturizing Lipstick in Citron. I finished by slicking on a golden gloss add dimension and shine. CoverGIRLs Shine Blast Lip Gloss is perfect!

(courtesy of Sam Fine)