RSSArchive for April 2009
Composition Of A Color Analysis
April 30, 2009
Hollywood makes you look older, fatter, or sicker by using your wrong colors. Are you doing that to yourself?
The 3 groups that need this most are:
- Teens for the incredible confidence building and power to resist peer and media pressure. By 15 years old, they’ve settled into their color scheme. Colors may deepen but season is unlikely to change. It helps guide them in buying makeup, keeps them away from deep hair mistakes, and allows to feel that they are unique and special.
- Women over 40. This is a time when we need help with our looks and we can use an emotional confidence boost. Once you know your season and can make choices with confidence, you have a new power. You see yourself sharp and in focus on the outside, like the real you just stepped out of the haze you used to live in.
- Men, men, men.
It goes like this
So, here’s what happens when you come to my house for a Color Analysis. Plan on 3 hours. If we get too tired and can’t get it the first day, you may have to come back at no extra cost. Want to stay for hair and makeup? I hope so. Matching women to makeup is what I live for. Count on another hour.
We’ll go into the color studio. Maybe it should be called “color cell” because the only speck of color will be your face. You won’t wear any makeup and neither will I. Our hair and clothes will be covered. We’ll make no assumptions about season from hair or eye color that we can’t prove with the drapes.
Bear with me, I’m about to digress. I’m reading a most fabulous book entitled How Doctors Think by Jerome Groopman, MD. If you work in any medicine-related field, as a nurse, as a veterinarian, as a psychiatrist, anything, you MUST READ this book. It describes the mental pitfalls in our human thinking patterns that lead us into mistakes in diagnosis and treatment.
Dr. Groopman explains a common situation he calls “diagnosis momentum”, in which you become convinced of something and set about proving it to yourself, ignoring evidence to the contrary. Color analysis is so much like medicine, it’s bizarre. It’s a search based on a process of elimination along a logic tree. As an analyst, it’s too easy to get trapped in a spiral of “season momentum”. You make a decision about a season too soon, feel committed to it, and lose your impartial perspective.
When I enter an examination room to see a puppy with diarrhea, and the last 3 pups I saw had diarrhea because of worms, I might be inclined to rush the process and decide this must be the same thing. I’d miss the fact that this one ate a remote control and a bikini and a used condom and half the old rug that was stored in the shed. So we begin by believing you could be any of the 12 seasons with equal odds.
In the beginning, the process seems to be focused on finding and highlighting your every flaw. You’ll feel like we keep harping on wrinkles or red noses or acne scars or a long face. That’s because wrong color seems to uncover your worst feature and point to it relentlessly. My son warned his father when it was Dad’s turn that “Mommy be’s rude to you”.
Along the way, we’ll discover the absolute worst that color can make you look and the absolute best. Those will be our reference points. We’ll try some things. We’ll be unsure, we’ll go back to the beginning and start all over again. Maybe you’ll be easy and obvious and fast but you probably won’t. You’ll want to leave. You’ll wonder why you’re paying good money to someone to dwell on your faults so repetitively, flaws you didn’t even know you had.
The commentary will begin to shift as we find the colors that make your face look beautifully defined instead of doughy. Your eyes will be clearer and your teeth whiter. You’ll start hearing the word “younger” being used. Once you’re over 40, male or female, that seems to be a pivot point.
We’ll think about what the colors that make you look fabulous have in common. That process of elimination will guide us to your season.
This is not subjective. Very real things will happen that you will see with your own eyes on your own face.
We’ll know we’re done when your skin is calm, you are neither wearing the color and nor is it wearing you. Your eye color will seem 10 times stronger.
If you’re a Winter, your eyes will dance and snap as only Winter eyes can. Repeat that with earrings that move and sparkle.
Autumn’s eyes glow like the embers they were intended to be. Glowing warm makeup repeats the effect.
Spring’s eyes are happy and bright. The color is remarkable in its liveliness and clarity. We’ll look at makeup colors that are clear and lit from within. That is the special radiance of Spring.
Summer eyes appear to have the endless depth of water and sky. The color, often blue, goes on and on. Like Winter, the complexion can often be deceivingly yellow till the right colors clear it. Because the coloring is so delicate, it’s imperative for Summer to get the hair color right. The entire look should flow from color to color, like a June garden.
Every season has a distinctive melody. Your personal color scheme, your eye pattern, your character, they already hear it. Stick to the tune in your decoration and the people around you will be in awe of your personal choreography. Internally, you’ll begin to feel an alignment with who you came here to be.
We’ll talk about your best makeup.
Hair is a piece of clothing you never take off. It can’t clash with your own color scheme or it detracts from the power of the final picture. So, we’ll look at your most perfect hair color.
I’ll give you your swatch booklet because it contains all your clothes/makeup/hair colors. Shopping will be fun and sure and foolproof.
And we’ll be done.
I apologize about the driveway. I just really want to work out of my house.
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So, here’s what happens when you come to my house for a Color Analysis. Plan on 3 hours. If we get too tired and can’t get it the first day, you may have to come back at no extra cost. Want to stay for hair and makeup? I hope so. Matching women to makeup is what I live for. Count on another hour.
Read moreWomen As Clients
April 27, 2009
The way the guys move you from the information delivery to the buy decision is by scaring you. Or at least making you uncomfortable about something you don’t know or don’t have that they’ve persuaded you that you need. Or they bulldoze you with their experience and self-confidence, neither of which necessarily translates to ability.
Women are somehow convinced that there are these really smart white guys in business offices out there who know the future. Actually, the really smart white guys are the ones who f.cked the whole thing up so royally. They were doing 1 + 1 = -4, or 5, or 3,000,000. or something. Didn’t the woman who noticed get herself fired for her brains? Maybe it’s just as well the whole thing crashed when it did. Unsustainable flow dynamics are doomed. It’s a wonder it didn’t take more of us with it.
You know what’s going to happen. You know the guy thing – if it’s his idea, it’s a great idea. Otherwise, it sucks out loud. Then the idea migrates around the back of his head, crawls in the trap door, and he bleats it out his own mouth. In a year, he’ll say it was his idea. In 10 years, the men will say they knew it was coming all along and tried to tell the rest of us but we wouldn’t listen.
Women want to think that guys get money. It’s so much easier to transfer all the financial diagnostics and authorities to them. Men have dominated money for so long that women are used to it. If something goes wrong, women don’t have to take any blame, which they abhor anyway. So it all works out for everyone.
If you, as a woman, speak to women clients in language they understand, they think you know nothing. Talk over their heads and they think you’re a genius. I see this in medicine all the time. The guy either rambles off a pile of jargon or as much as says “Leave it to me, little lady. I’ll take care of everything” and the women are sold. They gaze up at the doctor, (the doctor expects no less), they haven’t a foggy what the guy is talking about, but who cares? He’s taking care of it. He said he was, it must be so. I can do that too but my conscience doesn’t feel good.
Whether in medicine or in stock predictions, there exists a high degree of day-to-day uncertainty in the simplest, most seemingly mundane decisions. Women express this with more honesty. Clients don’t want to hear it, or they misinterpret it. They hear “it could be this or it could be that” as vague and lacking in knowledge, when it is quite the contrary. Thoughtful uncertainty is reality. The idea that Symptom Y + Symptom Z = Disease X is false. It will lead to shortcuts in thinking that will cause regret.
The fact is that there are no really smart people anywhere who know more than you do. You get it, or easily could, if it were explained in a language you speak. Every industry has created some secret little language to describe secret operations they carry out in rooms decorated to look important. You are not dumber than anyone and nobody is any smarter than you. Never let anyone think for you, even if it seems easier. Your decision-making ability might be less informed but given the facts, it is not less astute, especially where the future is concerned. Nobody has a clue about that.
So how does a woman sell to women in a way she feels is ethical?
You don’t want to be so good at selling that you’re bringing in people who aren’t ready to buy or people who aren’t ready for you.
If you over-empower women with information, they figure they don’t need you.
Putting yourself on sale doesn’t work for women or men. They expect cheap work for cheap money. Undervalue yourself and you’re screwed.
Do you take on male behaviors? Certainly, releasing disempowering female behaviors is essential. The one single thing the guys have over us is self-esteem. There’s something to be said for believing you’re special and that nothing is ever your fault. After all, we are what we say we are.
Do you publicize your exclusivity? Do you make yourself a little unavailable? Actually, I think that does work. The best way to get noticed is to walk the other way. Those who follow really want you.
Take a moment to contemplate, if you will, the difference between rejection and selection.
-->Women want to think that guys get money. It’s so much easier to transfer all the financial diagnostics and authorities to them. Men have dominated money for so long that women are used to it. If something goes wrong, women don’t have to take any blame, which they abhor anyway. So it all works out for everyone.
Read more100 Best Wellness Blogs For Women
April 24, 2009
Sifting through the many good blogs to find the great ones requires more time than many of us have. We often find them by accident.
Take some time to browse through this list. There are some real gems here that you’ll visit often.
Makeup Model : Soft Summer
April 21, 2009
Edit June 23/10 – Just a note to be sure everyone knows that this Makeup Model series of articles was posted before I became a Color Analyst. The articles have been very popular, so I leave them up, but the makeup recommendations are not necessarily those I’d make today. For anyone interested in more accurate Season and color advice, do look at 12blueprints.com or join the 12 Blueprints Fan Club on Facebook.
Soft Summer and Soft Autumn can be similar. You could be Jennifer Aniston or Amanda Bynes, respectively (or, these women give the impression of these Seasons). In the wrong colors, you can look blah. Hair is neither light or dark. Skin is neither either. You can get lost in medium-ness. Getting your colors right is what takes you from medium everything to fabulosity.
These two seasons hold hands to straddle a neutral line very closely. Both have some warmth, but the Autumn season has more. Many Soft Summer women color their brown hair to look warmer when they would look better in a more neutral brown or cooler brown.
If Cool Summer, coolest of all, has enough blue to be look best in lilac-pink,
and Light Summer is so fair that cotton-candy-pink is most appealing,
you’re the next level of warmth.
You are still defined by what is predominantly Summer, so coolness, lightness (but that’s also deepening now), and muted haziness. It’s that color so many companies create in a blush and call it Desert Rose.
Lipstick: Bobbi Brown Italian Rose ; Laura Mercier Gilded Garden collection Hibiscus (English Rose might work too but appears brown enough to be more Soft Autumn), swatched here by the wonderful karlasugar that I’ve introduced before. This woman is saving us time and money, and teaching about color by comparison.
Blush: Dior English Rose ; NARS Deep Throat.
Eyeliner: MAC Technakohl Earthline ; EsteeLauder Automatic Eye Pencil Duo Walnut.
Eyeshadow: Dior Flirty Brown; MAC Malt, Quarry, Copperplate; Just looking for Suede Brown here. Get an idea of the shades from karlasugar’s most amazing MAC eyeshadow swatch post. Vote for her with the Best Blog About Stuff button on her site.
Eye hilite : MAC Vapor, which you can see at MAC’s eyeshadow page or at karlasugar (last box in the MAC eyeshadow article).
-->Soft Summer and Soft Autumn hold hands to straddle a neutral line very closely. Both have some warmth, but the Autumn season has more.
Read moreColor Draping Challenge
April 18, 2009
If you’re a Winter, you can no more wear Spring’s makeup or hair than you can wear her clothes. You look drained to a not very gorgeous greeny-beige-grey shade. You would instinctively not wear the yellow-green – what am I saying? I wore Autumn’s Chartreuse which is close enough.
Since we did my colors, back in Demo : Online Color Analysis, Lora has kept a suspicion that I wasn’t Warm Autumn. She kept coming back to it and always wondered if I could be deeper than she thought, at least a Deep Autumn, if not even darker. When we did me, I provided her with a bare minimum of photos. We’ve learned a lot since. The photos needed would BEGIN as follows:
- outdoors on an overcast day with 10AM-12 PM light; a sunny day will overexpose everything and wash colors out; end of day light has too many yellow wavelengths
- your best and worst colors
- no makeup in any picture
- 1 shot of your hair down, the rest with it covered
- wearing black
- as neutral a background as possible
- wearing the exclusive colors of the 2 seasons you think you might be – or be prepared for the analyst to have trouble deciding, and request certain colors be worn and more photos taken
I’m not certain if Lora has fine-tuned the system any more since then or what her photo requests are today. She may ask for completely different photographic criteria. I have no doubt that she’d agree that the more pictures you send, the more likely you’ll be analyzed correctly. We’re talking more than 10 pictures.
Controlling the lighting is certainly the hardest part. If you can’t afford to see an analyst, or there’s none nearby, you can definitely get excellent guidance online. You’ll still be better off and more educated about what looks good on you.
One other pitfall is to take direction from hair color. If the hair and clothes match in any way (complementary, analogous, monochromatic), there’s a tendency for the eye to match the clothes to the hair and conclude that the color works.
With my Color Analysis trainer, once I was placed in a neutral gray room, wearing a gray cap and gown, and color draped for 3 hours, we still couldn’t decide. Lora’s very intuitive about color and her suspicions were right on. I’m very much on the border of Deep Autumn and Deep Winter. We tried again on the second day, fresh set of eyes, and Deep Winter won out. My skin is quite yellow and seems to support some warmth. But it was in the Winter colors that sharpened the edges of my face and cleared the yellow overtone away.
I felt no opposition to any of this. It was just so obvious.
Get rid of the orange in the hair? No problem. I could see that it clashed. I was adjusting well, even though I really thought I knew my colors before. My trainer said she had her season wrong for years and took 2 years to accept that she was another season. I felt so pleased that I got in sync so quickly.
And then she put the makeup on me. Cool red-pink blush. Neutral-cool lips of a similar color. Gray eyes. Cool ivory foundation. I got all weird. A wall went up. I thought I looked like a clown, felt completely insecure. I lost all objectivity whatsoever. My family telling me I looked completely different, younger. HA! My trainer’s husband, telling me he thought I looked better without makeup than with the makeup I had arrived in on the first day. How could it be so? All the respect I have for my trainer. Out the window. I could NOT accept it. The more I stared, the worse I thought I looked. Me who thought she was so objective and open-minded.
I’ve gotten over it. It took me several hours and a lot of reassurance. It was illuminating to have gone far enough with the analysis to experience that level of resistance. It’s good to have felt the inner struggle that must be overcome. It can be a big adjustment.
When you come to see me and can’t agree to what the drapes tell us, I won’t worry that I’ve made a mistake. I’ll stand there calmly, smiling as my wonderful trainer did, and watch you coming to grips with the door you just allowed yourself to open on Your Deeper Self, your hand pulling on the doorknob and your feet braced against the frame like I was.
You’ll be like Jodie Foster in the very funny scene from Nim’s Island where she’s fighting with herself, trying to leave her safe home and face the unknown. (The trailer only shows a tiny part of that scene. It gets better.)
There is nothing better than a new way of looking at something you thought you knew. Like you, for instance.
-->If you’re a Winter, you can no more wear Spring’s makeup or hair than you can wear her clothes. You look drained to a not very gorgeous greeny-beige-grey shade. You would instinctively not wear the yellow-green – what am I saying? I wore Autumn’s Chartreuse which is close enough.
Read moreMidlife Re-Invention (There Is No Crisis)
April 12, 2009
I’m a doctor who wants to own a makeup and color company. I’m a sucker for every transition success story ever told.
More Canada April 2009 is about Joyful Re-invention (click on the magazine cover pic to see a list of contents). It was about finding ways to make change a happy thing. One brilliant woman left her job in Vancouver, moved to Paris to give guided tours to women tourists of the city she loved. Everyone tried to talk her out of it, of course. She’s swamped, of course. These business ideas are no-brainers. Every city needs this. The whole province of PEI needs it.
Also a good piece on why women tend to be very successful in our second careers, risk-averse that we are (or maybe because of it). And a good article on how the cost of buying mangoes and avocadoes in Canada in December will become out of reach as the cost of transportation and efforts to reduce emissions skyrocket, meaning we need to think of ways to cook rhubarb and beets. The Canadian Model Search Winners seem to be beautiful women in shoes that don’t feel good.
Welcome the midlife change
We all feel a ground tremor right about now. It could be the best thing that’s ever happened. It prevents the next 40 from being just more of the last 40. Some impatience and craziness is natural. It’s the energy for the change. The fact that we can even HAVE a re-invention, let alone a crisis, is a step forward. We have the possibility to live differently.
Maybe the crisis is pointing you in a bad direction, making you do things you know you shouldn’t. Yes, we all have a right to be happy, but sometimes these actions aren’t going to get you anywhere better. It may look better but listen to your gut telling you it’s going to be a pit of snakes. Listen if all your friends tell you it’s a pit of snakes. If you think you’re coming unhinged, get some solid counseling. If nothing anyone says registers anymore, speak to someone other than well-meaning friends.
The truth about the bad
Having an affair is the cliché of this lifestage. We have all seen romance give way to practicality, to a business relationship. How could it be anything else with 2 jobs, 3 loans, 3 kids, 4 parents, not enough sleep, and a body that hurts more than it used to? The idea of keeping love alive is fine but that doesn’t mean it exists just the way it did 20 years or even 2 years ago.
Nobody has a better marriage, healthier bank account, or smarter children. They may look like they do. If they say they do, they’re lying. They’re expending a lot of energy and cash to maintain the façade. They probably look at you and think of all the things you have that they don’t. Everyone with children, of almost any age, is walking on the edge for 20 years. Unmarried people can’t possibly get it. They’re just exercising the reckless courage of the non-combattant.
Have sensible expectations and remember that nothing stays the same. Romance will be lost from a marriage in the years with young kids. The exhaustion is nauseating. Thursday Date Night becomes Thursday Fight Night. It’s temporary. Just get through the day.
Remember that you’re not doing this alone. Your feelings may be so strong that you think no else has them. It is normal and common to despise your spouse and visualize his death. It is normal and common to dream of having an apartment of your own where nobody bugs you. It is normal and common to believe that you’d be happy to never ever have sex again. Nobody is willing to come out and say it but as soon as someone does, everyone has a story. It is also temporary. Wait it out.
Reframe the picture
Aging is the best thing that’s ever happened to me – but I recognize not everyone feels that way. I’m tired a lot, in Doctor’s offices every 3 months, have lines on my face and age spots, and I could care less. The thing I look forward to most on Friday night is getting into my bed at 8. If all that stuff is the admission ticket to where I’m going, I’ll pay it twice.
You can choose to dwell on the many wonders of youth, but to say it was ALL good would be untrue. The older folks like to remind us that “things were better 50 years ago”. Pffft. Who would go back there, especially as a woman? To a 50 year old, a 25 year old is still a kid, with all the limitations of kids.
If your age causes you to suspect that you’re less than you once were, others will feel the same way. Will you create the very thing you fear? Will you attract what you least want? In thinking about aging as something uninvited, in trying always to evade it, you will bring the negatives closer. Don’t dwell on what you don’t want for too long because next thing you know, you’ll be living it.
The hurricane in your head
Believe in the power that’s there. Feel it physically. Let yourself change and the past not be enough. You are setting yourself free of it. That ship has sunk. Swim away. Swim towards that sunny island.
Could we learn to just be proud to be given the chance to get old? It is denied to so many. The privilege of seeing one’s children grow to adulthood should never be taken for granted. At one time, I thought my obstacles were mountains. If I could but see them clearly, I thought I could dismantle them. Today, I see that there are no mountains. There never were. The landscape is warm and abundant and the fabric is unbelievably rich.
-->I’m a doctor who wants to own a makeup and color company. I’m a sucker for every transition success story ever told.
More Canada April 2009 is about joyful re-invention. Great articles abound.
When You Know You’re Rich
April 9, 2009
For her 15th birthday, my daughter wanted to sponsor a child with World Vision. This would be the same child whose favorite activity is watching Ice Road Truckers with her father.
Having more than enough
Barira is a 10 year old girl from Niger who sits on our fridge and looks out. It’s somehow ironic that she adorns the food repository. Her father farms as does my husband so she connected with all of us. He can’t feed his family in a good year and nor can Canadian farmers, but of course the scale is completely different. We know that.
We wanted to send a birthday gift. It had to be flat for mailing and not extravagant. My daughter wanted a musical singing birthday card, which I feared would scare the pants off the child. We find ourselves at the Dollar Store trying to find something not too extravagant.
We are TOO rich to find a gift for this little girl. Everything seems wasteful and excessively adorned. For us it’s disposable, for her unimaginably frivolous. In the cheapest store there is, where we could afford anything, our wealth is still too great to find an appropriate gift. Your whole frame of reference changes when you know what “too rich” actually feels like.
Money and the Law of Attraction
I’ve been reading Jerry and Esther Hicks’s recent Money and the Law of Attraction : Learning to Attract Wealth, Health, and Happiness. The book is as good as any of the previous and doesn’t rehash the old material. There are a lot of new ideas here, presented in their most practical and possible style.
I really like this stuff because it helps me get through the day with a real undercurrent of openness and joy. People who know me are ROTFL right now. Well, I’ll have you know I really am joyful. If I look more intense than joyous, it’s because I’m part Winter.
I’ve learned to find the best things about what I do, even the things I like less (except producing meals day after day). I’ve learned that we all create our own reality. I don’t have to feel bad for others who aren’t getting what they want because they can make different choices anytime they want to. What’s happening to them isn’t happening to me because I didn’t make their choices. I know nobody can block me or even slow me down from getting what I want because nobody controls the Universe – as a result, I am never irritated by the behavior of others. That’s quite a cathartic milestone right there.
How others have failed me is never important, only how I’ve failed me. There is never a need to get involved in the actions of others, only in my reaction to them. I do have control of my character, every aspect of it. Everything I’ve sent out there, good and bad, is on a trajectory aimed at my face. Energy stays equal so what goes out comes back in kind.
In this clip from the Abraham-Hicks site’s video clips, watch the 11th clip from the top on the right side. The video title is the same as the book, an excerpt from the DVD. Listen to how she (Abraham) answers the question at the end.
When does the creating start?
Though I thank Jerry and Esther for modeling such a powerful and easy way to learn calmness and happiness, I’ve run up against a question I can’t answer. This is it : I can’t think of anything I’ve manifested or attracted. However my life changed, it changed because I stuck my claws out there and made a few attempts to drag something in and finally got a hook that stuck. It never just came with “ease” (and by ease, I do not mean absence of effort; more like, you just looked up one day and there it was, like it had been there all along).
It didn’t come with struggle or worry either. I love doing it. I love the ride and my river moves fast because there’s a lot I want. I’m reading the money book to attract more of money to stay in the raft. Money is an energy (infinite) not a resource (finite). It’s flowing in the streets, kind of like guns. Just because you don’t have one doesn’t mean there’s a shortage of them. How many guns I have doesn’t affect how many you can have.
I live wealth like it’s happened. I look at my house, I see a castle. I used to worry that I wouldn’t be able to afford to educate my kids, but a friend said “Who do you know that didn’t go to University because they couldn’t afford it?”. I stopped worrying.
I quite get what they mean by Leading Edge. My toes are touching the line. I’m not impatient. Our needs are more than met and that’s the only story I tell. I’ve found that thing in life that I would do even if I weren’t paid. We CAN make things just by thinking about them, I’m convinced of it.
The question is not how to get more money, though to realize my dream will take more than I have. It’s how to have it appear by thought, not action. Nothing is getting created that I didn’t build. No doors are presenting themselves, closed or open, that I didn’t go out and ferret out. How will I manifest money if I can’t manifest anything else?
Was the manifestation that I chose these actions and not those actions? You could say that I manifested everything I live. Yes, right thinking brings right actions. There is just no feeling of letting it happen. I made it happen. And, anyone who has manifested money can measure it by the ways of our physical world. I have yet to manifest a cent.
Realizing a downstream dream
My Easter will be spent becoming a Color Analyst. If women could see themselves as their most effective, beautiful, powerful best, I’d be happy. That’s the vision I have of them when I meet them. That’s what I want to help them do – and learn to resist the marketing onslaught that makes us think age is more ugly, more abnormal, and more weak than youth. Aging, or more precisely “anti-aging”, is a marketing phenomenon and nothing else.
My speaking tour will be called You : Gorgeous And Fearless. Everything will turn out fine, but when does the manifesting/creating begin???
So, Abraham, from a purely intellectual perspective, what are we supposed to think next? The bank account is going down but I can ignore it with ease. I could sell the piano on eBay but that feels upstream so I won’t do it. Will it have to reach a crisis before I manifest something? Does the room have to be completely empty before the new furniture can fit? I don’t mind waiting but you might take the line “as early as tomorrow” out of your teachings.
Is this like dieting? You can start tomorrow but you won’t look different for a month. Until the new eating kicks in, you will look like your old eating patterns. In the same sense, until the new thinking starts to shift the Universe, life is still bringing you the rewards of your old thinking ways.
Keep your day job. And your fat pants.
-->Though I thank Jerry and Esther for modeling such a powerful and easy way to learn happiness, I’ve run up against a question I can’t answer. This is it : I can’t think of anything I’ve manifested or attracted. However my life changed, it changed because I stuck my claws out there and made a few attempts to drag something in and finally got a hook that stuck.
Read moreMakeup Model : Deep Autumn
April 6, 2009
Edit June 23/10 – Just a note to be sure everyone knows that this Makeup Model series of articles was posted before I became a Color Analyst. The articles have been very popular, so I leave them up, but the makeup recommendations are not necessarily those I’d make today. For anyone interested in more accurate Season and color advice, do look at 12blueprints.com or join the 12 Blueprints Fan Club on Facebook.
If Autumn is the season of sunset colors, this group is scorched earth and ripe fruit. Deep Autumn makes those colors so warm that they glow, making them seem almost metallic, like copper and bronze and gold. By making use of the right colors, this season can look astounding. Winter does look vivid, but it’s cool drama where this is hot and exciting.
I’m not fond of dark lips or very colorful lips. Colors that already appear in the face are what work in makeup . They have to be comfortable and believable, especially on women who wear little or no makeup. For Deep Autumn, the colors already in the body’s color design are quite deep. Pale washed out lips just flatten the whole affect. A natural mouth on Julia Roberts would be the only thing you would see on Heather Locklear.
I’m also not big on frost on any mature face – but sometimes shimmer is your friend. Autumn needs intensity in makeup to match intensity in coloring. If you don’t use “color intensity” then use “finish intensity” with metallic lipsticks. Nobody has brown lips but a bronzed orange lip color will work well on this season, and go nicely with the allover toasted luminous warmth. Where Spring is sunlit and bright, Autumn is has a brown gleam that metallic meshes with well.
Lora at Pretty Your World writes the best site online to figure out your own colors. Not everyone will be able to do it, only because some people are complicated. If it were easy, why would there be color analysts? At PYW, you’ll see that this season is the Autumn/Winter hybrid. Some Deep Autumns can pull off “warm black” quite well because of that.
Color Ideas
Lips: Revlon Sheer Colorstay Bronze; MAC Honey Flower but while you’re at the MAC counter, try on Coconutty, Strength, Shag, and Touch. The makeup artists are good at choosing the best on you. So are your kids. They might not know why but they know what looks good ; Clinique Bronze Star, one of my favorites.
Find brown alone too flat? In lipstick and in blush, you’re looking for a brown-red-orange blend. Warm Autumn is looking for brown-orange. Soft Autumn is looking for brown-peach. Some Deep Autumn women have quite fair skin though the overall amount of color spice is intense. JLo wears deeper foundation than Julia Roberts but the overall depth and intensity of the color package is less, making JLo a Warm Autumn. Because we’re now moving towards Winter, we’re starting to lose the orange in favor of cooler browns and reds.
Try mixing in Mocha or Jist. Have fun looking at the choices at MAC’s beautiful (and much improved) site and notice that you can choose the finish you like in the boxes above the color checkerboard.
Blush: NARS Lovejoy, Madly, Taos. A good color swatch page is here at NARS, though the colors are stronger IRL (in real life) than on my monitor.
“The Next Best Thing To Going Shopping Yourself” and my new favorite blog is by Karlasugar. NARS themselves don’t do as good a job as she does of showing their products. The professionalism and quality of the job she did in her NARS Blush Recap is a-m-a-z-i-n-g.
MAC Mineralize Duo in Intenso might be good too, but be critical of the amount of shine.
Eyeliner: black/brown, there are many. It needs to still be obviously browner than blacker.
Eyes: Cargo Dark Neutral palette. KarlaSugar yet again, has done an outstanding job of showing the 3 Cargo Neutral palettes. For comparison and learning, this is the best you could ask for.
All Autumns should know that MAC Woodwinked eyeshadow is a perfect antique gold accent for eyes. Because it’s very shiny, you wouldn’t cover your whole eyelid, but a spot of it right above the upper lashline, over the center of the iris, followed by your usual neutrals, adds some great dimension. It also does the very cool trick of picking up the amber colors in your eye. It’s often sold out but a beauty if you can get it.
Eye hilite : MAC Shroom or Brule. Although I avoid animal-test companies, I have to say that Elizabeth Arden Sungold eyeshadow is a gorgeous hilite for Warm Autumn and Deep Autumn. It doesn’t go on too yellow or too shiny but lights up Autumn eyes and skin perfectly.
Don’t buy what you can’t try.
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If Autumn is the season of sunset colors, this group is scorched earth and ripe fruit. Deep Autumn makes those colors so warm that they glow, making them seem almost metallic, like copper and bronze and gold. By making use of the right colors, this season can look astounding. Winter does look vivid, but it’s cool drama rather than hot and exciting.
Read moreProduct Review : MAC Studio Sculpt Foundation
April 3, 2009
…officially takes over the No. 1 spot as Favorite Foundation.
… is a gel, not a cream, so it is easy to disperse a minute amount over a whole face.
… can easily build to more-than-medium coverage. Adding another layer or two over sun spots and veins can cover them nicely without needing to hunt down a suitable concealer in a different shade than you’d wear under your eyes or around your nose.
… lasts. And lasts. And lasts. It doesn’t look tired after 8 hours the way a lot of makeup can.
… makes skin look very smooth ( not even-colored, but even-surfaced with no bumps or craters). My kids noticed which is saying a lot because they’ve seen much makeup over the years.
… comes in MAC’s usual very good colors, but never settle for less than a perfect match. I wear NW 20. The colors seem a little deeper than usual if you’re used to MAC’s skin color schemes.
… is a great choice if you notice and object to the “weight” of foundation. Studio Sculpt really has none. Don’t buy Studio Fix by accident or you’ll think I’ve lost my mind.
… is a great choice if you’re thinking about trying foundation but don’t want a masky look and if concealer just seems too fussy. Use this as a fusion, only where you have shadows or discolorations. It gives you good time to blend and is light enough to get the job done with fingers.
… greatly reduces the tendency of foundation to be too heavy and so accentuate the age of the skin around the eyes. Who needs that? This is the strongest positive point for me. So many foundations look horrible on the skin under the eye, and worse if you use a concealer as well, that you can hardly put any product here. I’d almost buy it for this alone.
… dries fairly matte but not completely. Still need a little powder but fewer powder touchups.
… comes in a soft plastic gravity-fed tube which I so prefer over bottles. I wish they’d made the plastic opaque. I’d have a better feeling about the color staying true.
… really can disappear into skin if the color is right. I keep reading reviews where the woman is showing pictures of it on her hand, which is funny-peculiar till you’ve tried it yourself. What fascinates everyone is that you really can’t see where the makeup begins and ends. It absolutely looks more like skin than any foundation I’ve seen.
This foundation is good at its job, which is to even skin tone and color. If you’re not used to the effect, you’ll think all your features just disappeared. That’s because they used to stand out to you by the contrast of the shadows around them.
If you’re hoping to wear anything more than the sheerest tinted moisturizer and wear no other makeup, it’s not going to work. Your face will be too uni-color without a little lip gloss, an eyeliner, and a bit of blush or bronzer. Not complicated. Not especially time-consuming. Big looks payoff. Just need to go into it with realistic expectations. If you don’t want to wear any other makeup, just something to smooth your skin, this is not it. The coverage is too good.
Of all the good and great things that foundation does, I had yet to meet the one that I could say made skin look younger. This is the closest so far.
-->The closest that foundation has come to making skin look younger.
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A Greener Tea
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