Video: How to Cover Tattoos

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About the Expert

Chantal Moore

Chantal Moore is a celebrity makeup artist.

Transcript

Hi, I'm celebrity makeup artist, Chantal Moore, and today I'm going to show you how to cover tattoos. Jessica has a feather on the outside of her wrist here, and I'm going to show you how to really naturally blend that out. It's really common here in Hollywood for a lot of models and actresses to have their own tattoos so when they work or they have to appear on camera, it's our job as makeup artists to make sure that these disappear. So, I'm going to show you how to really easily do that. So to show you how to cover this I'm going to use Dermablend Leg and Body Cover in toast. I am applying this initially with a brush and I'm just tapping it onto her tattoo area. This is a full coverage tattoo cover so it's thick, it's richly pigmented and it dries rather quickly so you want to work fast and you want to blend and again we're just tapping. I'm using this brush and I'm just tapping the pigment onto the color and you're going to need to blend so you'll get your fingers in there or anything that you need to really blend this out and you're going to want to find the right color that works for you, the right color that will blend out your skin tone but the color of the ink underneath as well. So this is a process, there's some trial and error involved, don't be afraid. So I'm gently layering the product onto the tattoo and I'm really looking at this. You really want to have a painter's eye because you really want to keep going over it. It's going to dry and you just want to keep layering. You want to make sure that you blend the edges and you want to really make sure that your coverages seem less. So blending is the most important thing that you can do at this point, just keep blending the edges out, applying more color when you need to. It's going to dry like I mentioned and so you just want to keep blending and tapping the color. I personally feel that the best tools that you can use at home for tattoo cover is a combination of a small synthetic concealer brush such as what I'm been using with your fingers. You'll always want to get your fingers in there to blend. And that's all you need, a small brush, synthetic about his shape, depending on the area of coverage of course. If you have a much larger area of tattoo cover, you can use a bigger brush but you'll always have a smaller brush and your finger to just blend and make sure that that whole area gets blended out. So I've pretty much finished with Jessica's tattoo cover on the outside of her wrist here and as you can see this has really done the trick, it's almost completely indecipherable and I've just gone ahead and blended this whole area out. Depending on the colors of the tattoo that will be, you know, tones of anything that's cooler or warmer. You'll need to blend that in. You can see the finish of this is pretty miraculous. It seals to the skin so it has in effect given you almost a second skin and that's what you need for tattoo coverage. The touch is literally, I'm touching her skin. This is going to stay put and I haven't even finished it off with a light dusting of powder and that's how you'll hold that coverage work over the tattoo. Your final step in tattoo covering, at the very end you want to give a very light dusting of powder right over that coverage so I'm going to just tap a little of this powder off into the palm of my hand just to lighten the load and then I'm just going to lightly tap, buff and blend. And this is going to set the concealing work and it's going to make sure that any last bits of concealer are just set into the skin. It gives a light powder finish. The texture is just like skin and this is going to hold all of that concealer work in place. This finish will be water resistant and it will be very very rub proof meaning that once it's set with powder you're pretty safe to go ahead and get dressed, change clothes. Again you want to be very careful not to obviously rub the area but this should do the trick and this should keep you covered all day. I'm makeup artist, Chantal Moore, and that's how you cover a tattoo.