Phaedra Parks Became a Beauty Pro After Growing Up with Sensitive Skin: 'Everything Gave Me Hives' (Exclusive)

Parks partnered with IT Cosmetics for its Keep It Real social campaign and talked all things beauty with PEOPLE

Real Housewives of Atlanta star Phaedra Parks considers herself an amateur makeup artist and a "hack girl."

She's a bit of an expert with skincare ingredients and likes to know everything about everything that's going on her face — and she had to learn the hard way, she says.

"I've always had very sensitive skin," she tells PEOPLE exclusively. "As a child, I was allergic to everything — everything gave me hives. I was like the face of Benadryl as a child; anything that touched me, I was allergic to, it seemed like. That made me very aware of harsh chemicals and made me really start researching the best things for sensitive skin."

It was through all this skin-loving research that she eventually found IT Cosmetics and partnered with the brand for its latest Keep It Real social campaign.

Related: Phaedra Parks Says She Wants to Bring Real Housewives of Atlanta 'Back to Its Heyday' (Exclusive)

Parks, 50, is quick to admit that she cares a lot about her skin, and one of her favorite things about IT Cosmetics is that it has skincare baked right into the formula of the makeup. As a glam girl who spends a lot of time on TV — and a lot of time wearing makeup — she loves a product that does double duty.

"I've got wonderful skin under my makeup," she says of the skin she cares deeply for every single day. "But makeup is here to enhance that. I'm a product girl and I love bright skin. I think makeup should not be used to disguise you, but just make you more perfected."

In the new campaign, which hilariously puts Parks up against a "dupe" of herself in the form of "Maedra Marks" to show that the original is always the best, Parks uses the brand's CC+ Cream Foundation.

"When I think about base products, I want my skin to look like skin, and CC+ Cream definitely gives that skin look," she says. "Some are too thick, but this is very pliable. You can blend it, you can mix it with your cream blushes. I feel like I'm an amateur makeup artist because I do my makeup, and I need products that make my face look flawless."

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Parks also approves of the shade range of the IT Cosmetics product as a "brown girl" — it comes in more than 20 shades — because she says she didn't play with makeup when she was growing up because of the lack of shades. When she was a teenager, the Traitors star says she simply couldn't get her hands on very many brands that carried products to match her skin tone.

"People really didn't start delving into more skin tones until more recent years," she says of her experiences shopping for makeup. "As a young girl, makeup really wasn't made for people with rich, warm skin tones. It was more my mom's very fair skin. On me, I looked like I was getting ready to get embalmed because it was just too cool, too blue, and it made me look like I was on White Chicks."

Related: Phaedra Parks Says She Hopes Kim Zolciak Returns to The Real Housewives of Atlanta Next: ‘She Is TV Gold’ (Exclusive)

Now that she has more options, Parks is committed to getting glam every single day, and that includes a full face of makeup and washing it all back off and doing a complete skincare routine with cleanser and serums each day.

She's staying away from any dupes, though, and using all the real things, including a very real, completely all-natural product right from her kitchen as her favorite "hack" in her routine.

"I love coconut oil. You can cook with it, but you can also put it on your face and remove all your makeup and moisturize with it," she says of her little tip. "So I always tell people there are dupes, but then there are things that are in your kitchen cabinet that you can use for a little bit of everything."

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Read the original article on People.