My little girl, Molly, is very much a girly-girl. She loves everything pretty and sparkly. One of her aunts always lets her play with her makeup and put sparkles on her face. It has been really fun for Molly, especially since she rarely sees her own mother put any makeup on at all.

When we were thinking of what to get Molly for Christmas, one of my first ideas was play makeup. Of course she would love it. The problem is that she isn’t even two years old yet, and has NO concept of where makeup should and should not go. (see below)

(Yes, she almost always has CRAZY hair! That is a whole separate issue in itself.)

Since the thought of letting this little girl loose with anything brightly colored to smear on her face seemed a little messy to me, I knew I had to come up with a mess-free makeup for her to play with. One of my cousins shared this idea with me, and I loved it so much that I wanted to share it with you.

Pretend makeup… Replace the powder in your makeup with fingernail polish. Once the fingernail polish dries, Molly can pretend to smear it all over her face, and she’ll feel like she’s using real makeup, without the mess.

If I ever put makeup on, I might have some old makeup containers. But since I can’t even remember the last time I even wore makeup, I had to go to the dollar store and buy some. I also got some brushes, mirrors, and chapstick for her to play with. And of course, fingernail polish to replace the makeup in the containers.

I broke out all of the makeup.

And just poured in the fingernail polish. Pretty simple.

I knew that once I had all of the fingernail polish in the makeup containers, I would have to put them out of sight for a while to dry. So I put them on a foil-lined baking sheet so I could move the makeup without spilling it.

We only had one mishap when Molly fell and landed in the filled makup containers. I’m pretty sure this is NEVER going to come off of her hands.

(Yes, she knows what she is getting for Christmas, and even tried to help me with it.)

Here is the finished product.

You can see below, where some of the fingernail polish spilled on the edges when Molly fell into it.

Next, I am going to sew a bag to hold all of the play makeup, brushes, sponges, combs, and mirrors. Just like Aunt Shanna has.