What’s In My Travel Makeup Bag

A few weeks ago you may recall my post about what I packed in my travel toiletry bag for our Pittsburgh trip last month. Today I’m bringing you my second travel-themed “what’s in my bag” post with everything that I keep in my travel makeup bag!!

This is JUST the makeup that I brought with me for traveling – all of my skin care, makeup wipes, and other liquid stuff like that was in my toiletry bag 🙂 First I’ll start with the bag itself. This is the Sephora “Vacationer” travel makeup bag:

I actually first saw this recommended in a video by Kathleen Lights, and I loved the look of it so I decided to get it for myself.

I was super pleased with my purchase!! It’s a beautiful bag and very well-made, with a really nice quilted pattern on the outside. It has a nice carrying handle on the top and the zipper is also very sturdy, with a cute little tassel on it:

Here’s what the inside looks like:

As you can see – it’s much larger on the inside than one would think!! I can fit everything I need in this bag with room to spare, including all my brushes and tools. It has a ton of little organizing pockets and pouches inside:

It’s hard to tell in this photo, but the main compartment has 4 distinct divided sections as well as some elastics sewn into the the “lid” for organizing stuff up there too.

I’ll start with that top pouch:

Wow this is a horrible photo I’m sorry lol but in that top pouch I put all my base and “face” items. Here’s everything I was able to fit in the top part:

As you can see – it’s a lot! The pouches and the bag itself are all deeper than they look from the outside and even as I was packing stuff in there I was shocked at how I could keep putting items in haha. Anyway…in here we have:

• Primer: I only brought one primer with me, my favorite from the drugstore – NYX Angel Veil!
• Foundation: Urban Decay Naked Skin. I’ve raved about this enough, I don’t think I need to tell you again how much I love it haha. I also brought along a Make Up For Ever foundation, the Ultra HD Foundation Stick in R230 (it’s the 4th thing in the middle row), but I didn’t end up using it on the trip. I think that’s the only thing I didn’t use that I brought so I had mostly necessities!
• Concealer: For concealer I brought my Tarte Shape Tape. I don’t know if I’ve talked about this on the blog yet – I got it pretty recently and I love it. The shade I use is Fair Beige.
• Powder: I brought 2 powders – on the top row NYX HD Finishing Powder, my favorite for setting my face, and on the bottom we have the Kat Von D Lock-It Blotting Powder for touch ups. I’ve written about both before and I’m particularly obsessed with the KVD powder lately, I take it with me everywhere.
• Bronzer: My new favorite contour product, NYX HD Blush in Taupe – it’s on the bottom right in this pic.
• Blush: I only brought one blush, right in the middle there – Tarte Amazonian Clay in Exposed. It’s one of my old favorites and looks good with literally everything!
• Highlighter: Just one highlighter also! My favorite, the Hourglass Ambient Strobe Lighting Powder. The one I have is Iridescent Strobe Light. I love this stuff but the mirrored compact sure is horrible to take photos of haha!
• Setting spray: I had a travel size Urban Decay All-Nighter from one of my Sephora Play boxes a while ago and it came in handy here! Even when I finish up the spray inside I plan to keep the bottle so I can refill it with other setting sprays for travel in the future.

In the top part I also put in my blending sponges inside a ziploc bag. I brought 2 with me – the original Beauty Blender and the EcoTools Total Perfecting Blender. The only reason I brought two is because my pink BB was a bit dirty and I wanted to have a clean one too haha. And that’s everything in the first pouch!

In the middle of the bag is a little mesh pocket:

The middle part actually has a little tag that says “touch ups” –

I’m not really sure what they expect you to keep in there that’s for touch ups haha but I use it as a brush pouch!! It’s the perfect size for all the brushes I wanted to bring with me. Speaking of which…

I didn’t wanna bring my entire brush collection with me but it sure looks like I did, doesn’t it?? I mentioned a lot of these in my post about washing my brushes but I still have yet to do a full post on them…maybe soon!! From left to right:

• Sephora Pro Angled Liner Brush #22
• all the black/purple handled ones are from this Amazon set
• the wooden handle is an Elf Blending Brush no longer sold, here’s a similar one that’s also good
• Elf Eyeshadow C Brush
• Elf Beautifully Precise Eyeshadow Brush
• MAC Tapered Blending Brush #224
• Sonia Kashuk Precision Pencil Brush #3
• Elf Eyeshadow Brush
• Bare Minerals Full Flawless Face Brush
• an old version of the Sonia Kashuk Domed Blusher Brush #29
• Sonia Kashuk Domed Multi-Purpose
• Elf Blush Brush
• and some Revlon tweezers!

I was able to fit ALL of those brushes into the center pocket and I had pretty much every tool I could possibly need!

Moving on to the bottom of the bag. In here I kept all my eye products.

As you can see there’s also a tiny pocket on the very bottom part of the bag. I’ll cover everything in there next. In the bigger-ish bottom pouch I put all the eyeshadows that I brought with me.

Not too much, I don’t think!!! I only brought one big palette, one small one, and 3 single eyeshadows which I think is a perfectly sensible amount. I did end up using all of these too so there was no wasted space!

• On top is obviously my all time fav, the Kat Von D Shade & Light Eye Palette – I was so surprised and happy that the palette fit into my travel makeup bag and it was perfect for travel!! I could have taken just this palette and been fine, as it has everything I need for several looks. I just wanted to bring some color with me too 🙂
• The first single shadow I brought with is a Make Up For Ever Artist Shadow – it’s a single I got from a Sephora box a while ago. The color is I-544 “pink granite”. It’s a really pretty shimmery purple/pink and goes well with some of the other colors I brought with me!
• The second single shadow is a Bare Minerals Glimpse Eyeshadow in the shade Cupcake. It’s a really pretty light sparkly pink – you can see I was going for some pink/purple options here haha
• Not an eyeshadow, but the brown pot pictured there was the only brow product I brought with – the Anastasia Beverly Hill Dipbrow Pomade in the shade Blonde!
• The last single shadow I brought was also by Make Up For Ever, the Star Lit Powder in the shade Ivory. I bought this to test out with my wedding makeup and it is STUNNING, so sparkly and beautiful – I definitely want to try out some other colors.
• And finally, the mini palette there at the bottom is also by Kat Von D (I really need some more versatility in my brands here clearly lol), it’s a Shade & Light Quad in the color Plum! I also bought this to test out some wedding makeup looks and it’s surprisingly great for everyday as well.

And then there’s the final little pocket:

This one is another tiny little mesh-y one. I put smaller items in there so it was a bit more organized!!

Just a few things here:

• I brought 2 eyeliners: one pencil and one liquid. The pencil is Buxom Hold the Line in shade Call Me – it’s just a plain black pencil haha. Then the liquid is my beloved Kat Von D Tattoo Liner in Trooper <3 <3 all time fav, I’ll never stop using this!
• I also brought 2 mascaras, both by Covergirl: the LashBlast Volume (orange) and the Clump Crusher (green)!
• And finally, one eyeshadow primer – a travel size of the Urban Decay Primer Potion.

That’s everything I had in the main pouch of the bag – just one more section to go!

The top “lid” part of the bag has a little flap that says brushes…but clearly I did not put my brushes there haha. I had more than would fit in the little elastic part so I decided to use it for my lip products instead. I only took a few lip products with me – this is the category I usually go way overboard on so I tried to limit myself to just a few options lol

Just a few choices here and a few different formulas! You might recognize these from my everyday makeup post a while ago…I pretty much just pulled from my favorites haha

• one bullet lipstick – MAC Matte Lipstick in Velvet Teddy
• a few liquid lipsticks – The Balm Meet Matte Hughes in Charming and Kat Von D Everlasting Liquid Lipstick in Ludwig and Lovesick – Lovesick is a mini one from the holiday set last year!
• and one lip liner, MAC Lip Pencil in Boldly Bare

Also, I didn’t use this part for anything – but on the back section of the bag there’s also a piece of elastic sewn in where you could put lip products or other smaller skinny items. I think it would be great if you had a lot of lip products that didn’t fit up top!

And that’s everything in my travel makeup bag! I honestly can’t believe how much I was able to fit in this bag…it looks super small from the outside but it was able to fit everything I needed. And everything inside is under 3oz so no TSA trouble here 🙂

I hope you enjoyed this post! Be sure to check out my other “what’s in my bag” style posts from the past if you liked it 🙂 thanks for reading as always!!

<3 Kaela