RSS10 WRONG WAYS TO USE SHIMMER IN MAKEUP
January 18, 2008
Shimmer in products is one of the top 3 beauty mistakes that women make. It’s not entirely our fault, since over half of what’s out there has a shimmer in it. It sure looks nicer in the container that the flat matte choice does. Once it’s on your face, it can make your worst feature the focal point of your face. It looks terrible under fluorescent (office) or natural (outside) lighting.
Sparkles and color
After age 35, you can certainly use shiny stuff to your advantage but you have to be very careful about placement. Applying sparkle to any area will bring it out, so if the skin on some areas of your face is not as tight as it once was, applying shine to it will only serve to emphasize it.
The basis of your makeup products should be matte or satin. The idea is to bring out bone structure, to define features so they’re a little more noticeable, and to look a little more awake and energized. To achieve this, you need believable colors, blended softly so that they diffuse into your skin and your facial contours.
What to avoid in your everyday makeup essentials
1. If it‘s an eye or lip product called shimmer, frost, or pearl, leave it behind. No gold or silver either. Satin finish is as sparkly as we need to get .You can add the shimmer stuff later, by putting it only in certain places. These days, it’s hard to find products that aren’t shiny and part of this exercise is to force your eye to notice matte colors.
Shiny eyeshadow and frosted lipstick will only draw attention to every line and crease in your eyelids or around your mouth. Sparkle along with strong color is particularly unattractive. One of my least favorite looks is brownish-grey frosted lipstick. On whom does this look good?
One eyeshadow tradition that I’d like to see done away with is the ‘pale shiny eyeshadow just under the eyebrow’ look. A light color does go here, but the idea that it should be shiny ‘to lift the eye’ is old-fashioned. It’s an 80’s leftover. It looks hard and obvious. Use a pale matte eyeshadow or the light concealer.
2. If you mix shimmer into your foundation, you will look metallic. A face that is entirely iridescent is too artificial. If the shine continues onto the skin of the neck, chest, and arms, as a summer evening look, it can work but remember that applying shine to imperfect skin only accentuates the defect. This look is too contrived for women of our age.
There are concealers and foundations these days made with ‘light reflective particles to blur minor flaws’, or some such promise. If the shimmer particles are incredibly fine, it can leave the area looking moist rather than glittery, but you need to be very cautious about which product you buy and whether this look is good on you. It is usually made for a 20 yr old face.
3. Sparkly blush means a sparkly circle on your cheek. It’s weird and distracting. In some products, there is only a small amount of shimmer and it’s fine so you can get away with it, but again, be discriminating about what you buy.
4. Bronzer – same comments as Blush, but now it’s on your whole face. In daylight, it can make you look a bit like a robot.
5. Face powder – same comments as for Bronzer. Most pressed powders are nicely matte. Some loose powders have sparkle. Be careful.
Sparkly face powder
6. Eyeliner is a more strongly pigmented product. Add some sparkle to it, and now it looks metallic. There is an association between metallic and hard. You also draw attention to the areas where your skin shows signs of age first.
Using a liner pencil with a little shimmer and going over it with a matte shadow to make the line soft can work, but liner is one of the few products left that you can easily find in a matte version so save yourself some work and just buy a matte pencil from the start.
7. Avoid shimmer down the center line of the face. On forehead, nose, chin, and just beside the nose, shimmer just looks like oily skin. It can be good down the bridge of the nose to make it look straighter, but too much shine or getting it too near the tip of the nose looks like you need to blot. Use a light concealer instead, the same one you use under your eyes, down the bridge of the nose.
8. On the outside half of the eye, color should be matte. This allows the inner corner of the eye to look a little shinier by contrast, and that does look nice on all of us. It imparts a definite youthfulness.
9. Never allow a glistening product near the area under the eye, on the whole crescent under the eye. It will put the accent where you least need it. If you use a cream shimmer on your cheeks, do not allow it to extend above the cheekbone or anywhere that the skin creases.
10. Use cream shimmer only. Powders are harder to control and if there’s a wayward fleck of glitter that gets away, it’s the only thing people will see all day.
Loose shimmer powder
The follow-up to this article will appear soon and will be linked here when it does. It is entitled 5 MAKEUP SHIMMER DO’S. Who knew it was so complicated?
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