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white plastic pump bottle beside pink tulips and gray towel
white plastic pump bottle beside pink tulips and gray towel
Camille Brodard ~ Kmile Feminine Creative Designer/Unsplash
Style > Beauty

5 Essential Makeup Products for Halloween…That Won’t Break the Bank

Emily Janikowski
Madeline Myers
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Akron chapter.

Picture this: The University of Akron, Halloween night, 2019; you are throwing together your last-minute costume on a college-student budget. Perhaps you’re whipping out the sunglasses for three blind mice, a button-down and socks for a timeless Risky Business, a leather jacket for Sandy or wings for an angel. No matter what costume, you need a bold makeup look to tie your whole look together. Never fear: here are my five favorite makeup products that double as Halloween looks on a budget.

NYX Professional Makeup Liquid Suede Cream Lipstick

This lipstick may only be $7 at Ulta, but it packs quite a punch in 24 shades. I own quite a few of these lipsticks, and the color pay off is great! I also don’t have to reapply every hour as they last quite a while. My favorite shade for Halloween is Foul Mouth, pictured above. 

NYX Professional Makeup Face and Body Glitter

Also available at Ulta for only $5, these little pots of joy last FOREVER. I purchased mine freshman year, and there is plenty left. The glitter, when adhered with the glitter primer, sticks really well to the skin and can be used to create a lot of different bold and flashy looks. Great on eyelids to make eyeshadow pop or on the cheekbones for an extreme highlight.

Colourpop Super Shock Shadow

Creamy and bold, these pots of pigmented eyeshadow, much like the NYX Glitter, delivers for cheap. I love sweeping the gold shade over eyeshadow for a reflective look worthy of a Devil or an Angel. 

 

Wet N Wild Color Icon Rainbow Highlighter

This is my absolute favorite makeup for Pride festivals and can be easily repurposed for Halloween. The purple, blue and green shades would be perfect for a mermaid or alien, and the red, orange and yellow can spice up any costume with a pop of an expected color. This highlighter is hard to build, so I recommend wetting the brush or even your finger to make sure this color sticks. Word of advice: add each color separately to build a gorgeous rainbow on the cheekbones, brow bones and inner corner.

NYX Professional Makeup Matte Liquid Liner

I love NYX liquid liners and for the price of $7 it is easy to see why. These eyeliners are comfortable, smudge-proof and easy to apply. They last basically forever. If I forget to take my makeup off after a long night, my eyeliner is still staring back at me in the mirror the next morning. Basically, any Halloween outfit is not complete without eyeliner from witch to zombie, so this will help many any costume a success. 

Emily Janikowski, otherwise known as Em, can be found usually lurking in the depths of the Polsky building as a writing tutor, and when she isn't there, she is curled up in bed binge watching Law & Order SVU. Her passion lies in changing the world, and she hopes to accomplish this through majoring in social work.
Madeline Myers is a 2020 graduate of the University of Akron. She has a B.A. English with a minor in Creative Writing. At Her Campus, Madeline enjoys writing movie and TV reviews. Her personal essay “Living Room Saloon” is published in the 2019 issue of The Ashbelt. Madeline grew up in Zanesville, Ohio. She loves quoting comedians, reading James Baldwin, and sipping on grape soda. She fears a future run by robots but looks forward to the day when her stories are read by those outside of her immediate family.