When it comes to beauty, look not to the Kardashians or the next up-and-coming beauty blogger, but instead consult the beauty bag of your favourite breakfast news journalist.
These women battle ungodly wake up times and still manage to look picture perfect every morning.
And where does one wrangle a way to get this information from a brekkie presenter? Well, luckily for us, Natalia Cooper of The Today Show has divulged the 10-15 minute routine that gets her camera ready while most of us are still sleeping.
Sharing her super speedy makeup routine with 9Honey, the 34-year-old says the world is her makeup chair when she’s reporting on location for work.
“Anyone who picks up my handbag says that it weighs a tonne. I’m practically Mary Poppins. Inside you’ll find every makeup item required to get TV ready,” she says… proving she’s a woman after our own hearts.
“Most mornings you’ll find me doing my makeup in the dark, perhaps in the passenger seat of a car or in the street or it might be under the fluorescent light of a motel room bathroom.”
She sticks to a tried and tested routine which looks like a light base, a generous sweeps of bronzer, a peach-toned smokey eye and a one-step glossy lip.
While some steps of her speedy routine are pretty standard, here are the key beauty takeaways we’ll be incorporating into our own routines:
1. Layer the base for maximum impact.
Natalia layers her base with a mattifying primer on her t-zone and a glowing primer on the high points of her face, like her cheekbones and forehead, to get the best of both worlds.
When it comes to her long-lasting base of choice, she goes for the Smashbox, Studio Skin 15 Hour Wear Hydrating Foundation ($50).
“I find for TV it’s nice to be matte – with a little bit of shimmer, but mainly matte,” she says.
2 Be strategic with your tones.
For eyeshadow Natalia says she likes peachy-bronzey tones to help her look and feel fresh.
“I find that looks nice in the morning, it makes you look really fresh when you don’t feel fresh, and you actually feel tired,” she states.
The journalist is also a big fan of bronzer and applies generous sweeps around her cheeks, chin, the sides of her nose and around her temples, and recommends a Bobbi Brown, Pot Rouge in what looks like Pink Peach ($52) as a blush.
3. The one step trick to eliminate 'tired eyes'
If there's one product that will fake sleep after a late night, apparently it's a nude-tone eye pencil applied to the inner rim of the eye.
"[It'll] make them look fresh when you're a little bit tired," she says.
The Rimmel Exaggerate Automatic Waterproof Eye Definer Pencil in In the Nude ($12.95) is a great purse-friendly option.
4. She's quite minimalist with her equipment.
Natalia has clearly got her products down to an essential edit, and it's the same for her brushes.
Notably, she doesn't use a foundation brush and just uses her fingers.
"I just use my fingers to put it on. I find that gives you really good application and it's really easy. It means you have to carry less things in your handbag," she says.
Miraculously, she also just uses one brush for her eyeshadow... because she can.
5. This is her favourite lip gloss.
You can't get it anymore, but Natalia calls the now discontinued M.A.C. Cosmetics Mineralize Glass in Cheerful her go-to - she even wore it at her wedding - but a gloss in an orangey peach shade will look similar.
She puts this on her lips that have been lined with a nude liner "a touch darker than you actual lip".
And that's Natalia's entire routine done and dusted in the time it takes you to make toast.
You can head to 9Honey to see her full routine.
What's your favourite, time-saving makeup hack? Tell us in a comment below?