But just as how you can use makeup to fake a summer flush, you can easily adorn yourself with a splatter of faux freckles or embellish the spots you already have. Here, makeup artists explain how to create fake freckles and, better yet, make them look 100% natural: For a freckle pen, you can never go wrong with the Freck OG by Freck Beauty; if you’d prefer a multipurpose tool, we especially love this Brow Goals Pencil by PYT Beauty and this Joey Healy Luxe Brow Powder. You can dot wherever you please, but Irwin recommends sticking to the nose and top of the cheeks for the most natural finish. “That’s where the sun hits and causes them naturally,” she explains. Start small, then build up the pigment if you choose. Those are the basic rules—now, let’s have fun with it! There’s no shortage of freckle techniques to try, whether you’re gunning for a soft splatter of freckles or defined beauty marks. Find our tutorials below: If that sounds way too unpredictable for your makeup routine, “you can take a pencil and make a little constellation of freckles,” Irwin adds. You can try to blur out the surrounding area with a loose setting powder (a classic beauty editor trick), or you can simply embrace the texture and turn it into a beauty mark. Just make sure to mask any redness with concealer first, so you have some sort of coverage before strategically dotting on the freckle makeup. Find your shade: Freckles are naturally much lighter than you think (whereas beauty marks tend to be richer in pigment), so make sure you start with a lighter shade and build up to your desired finish. Start slow: On that note: “It’s always easier to add more [pigment] than to take away,” Irwin advises. It’s sound advice for most makeup ventures, fake freckles very much included. Don’t aim for perfection: “A common mistake I see is concentrating too hard on perfection,” says Greenberg. A splatter of sun-kissed spots should appear breezy and effortless, so don’t feel like you must use sheer precision to paint the pigment. Unlike, say, a sharp cat-eye, faux freckles actually look better with some asymmetry.
