Top makeup artist Abbie Gardiner shares insights on self-care & inner loveliness

Abbie trained as a make up artist while her children were small, and built an incredible career path through sheer natural talent and her warm and vivacious personality. Believe us when we say she’s one talented lady! With work on Fashion Week, NZ Opera, music videos, top fashion magazines and wins doing make up for Global Hair Dressing Competitions throughout her career as a make up artist, Abbie has lived a lot of life, and done some fabulous travelling along the way to glamorous events in London, Monaco and more! Check out her work on Instagram at @ask.abbie.beauty – she’s incredibly talented.

She shared some of her lovely ways to take care of herself with Oh Natural.

1. Appreciate beauty in all its forms

I love the moment before I start work on someone’s face, just taking a moment to see what features I want to highlight and how I want to make this person look exceptional. I just lean back or a moment and take a good look. Every face has something that makes it unique and interesting and I love drawing that out and making people recognise it.

Appreciating beauty of spirit and the beauty of the world is all part of this too – recognising how incredibly lucky we are to be alive right now on this amazing planet.

2. Practice self-love

To me, self love means that you adore yourself, from the inside out.

Maybe not every day, but even on a bad day, you should be able to look at yourself in the mirror and think “you’re doing alright girl, good on you!”

I practice positive self-talk and take care of my body with yoga and weights. And I enjoy a lot of healthy and delicious food. Enjoying yourself is really important in life!

3. Precious friends are priceless

When I am with my favourite group of friends, talking and enjoying ourselves, I feel truly beautiful. These are people who know who I really am and love me. It’s wonderful.

4. Build up your inner beauty

True beauty is a person with confidence, a sense of happiness and love for one’s self. Be brave and kind and you’ll be well on the way to your best most beautiful self.

5. Stay grateful

Every morning I am excited that every day is a fresh start! Reinvention is possible every single day.

We loved Abbie’s work for the Oh Natural beauty shoot

We were so glad to have such a gorgeous person transforming our beauty shoot models and loved watching Abbie’s special talent for making everyone look absolutely incredible without muting their own unique looks.

Abbie also gave us some tips on multi-use makeup products, and on tints, saying “It’s one of the most youthful things a woman can do, to achieve a youthful colour and glowing skin.”

Her top product picks were the Inika Organic eyeliners and eyeshadows, saying the pencils are so soft and creamy, and the shadows blend beautifully; and the foundations which made the women look natural, dewy and luminous without photoshop. Abbie said she “was really impressed with all the makeup, it felt really good going on”.

You can see the looks Abbie created for the beauty shoot on our blog, and see which products she used to make each model look simply amazing!