RSSCategory: Sites To Know
Sites To Know : Inside Out Style Blog by Imogen Lamport
January 20, 2010
I don’t buy into North America’s adulation with the winners of the fame and fortune lottery, so I particularly enjoy sites and blogs written by non-North-Americans. We hero worship celebrities and in trying to look like them, we don’t like our own looks. But it’s THEM that look crazy. We’re the ones who look normal.
Read moreSites To Know : Whimfield : Modern Pre-Industrial Living
October 13, 2009
This is the story of Laura-Jane and Cameron. It begins 2 years ago in Victoria, BC. In December, they packed their possessions into trailer, sold the condo, put away the tight skirts and high heels, acquired a pair of snow boots, and headed East towards a hazy horizon on which sat an old blue PEI farmhouse listed on the MLS site.
Read moreSites to Know : 12 Blueprints
September 20, 2009
12blueprints.com is a spin-off of AGT. I split it off to provide an information/content management site for the Colour Analysis business. It’s a place for people to learn more about Seasonal Colour Analysis and to book appointments or communicate with me.
Read moreSqueeze by Tracy Effinger
August 18, 2009
She’s gorgeous, she’s powerful, and obviously doesn’t buy into the Barbie body mentality that fitness people are probably pressured with, especially if they work with celebrities.
How fascinating would it be to have lunch with this woman. Her mind thinks way beyond the surface of things. Finding the connections between seemingly separate elements is one of the great talents of female brains. It always sends a spark in me when I see it.
Makeup Model : Warm Autumn
March 4, 2009
This is me. How much time do you have?
Can a Season share makeup?
My good friend and sister-in-law, Holly is a Warm Autumn, just as I am. Over the years, I’ve noticed that we can wear exactly the same makeup colors even though her hair and eyes are not the same color as mine.
I started looking at women and have decided this holds true for all women within the same season in the 12 Season scheme. (What is a 12 Season scheme? Read more in Sites To Know : Pretty Your World). The overall color palette and degree of contrast are similar enough to produce makeup palettes customized to your coloring.
If you’re a Light Spring, the makeup that suits you will suit all Light Springs. There may be some that are deeper or lighter than you, so the makeup may look a little different but overall, you will look great in the same shades.
Can you have intensity and light lips?
I don’t like dark lips on anybody. Just a personal thing. They make us look older no matter how perfectly shaped the lips are.
But Warm Autumn needs intensity in makeup to balance strong golden undertones in the skin and the rich clothing colors that suit us so well. I continue to make the mistake of wearing lip colors that are too coral, trying to get a light lip but with color.
Brown alone can look flat and dead… but Autumn does better with brown than anybody. Shimmer is the only way I know to get some intensity and add life to brown, without adding darkness or orange-ness. Brown and toasty/metallic work naturally to become gold and copper and bronze and everything in between. This is what Autumn is all about.
I make the mistake of too much orange in blush too. Candy colors don’t work on this season’s makeup. They have to be natural (meaning warmth added to brown). The strength of this coloring (actually the large amount of warmth in the skin) can cope with metallics in small doses better than the more delicately colored seasons.
Think about Julianne Moore. Her skin isn’t dark but there is enough golden-beige in it that the whole color picture is fairly intense. Dressing her in watered down colors wouldn’t have nearly the kick that deeper warmer colors would have.
You’d put a shimmery copper on her and have it disappear into the face long before it would on Gwyneth Paltrow. Why? Because that is already one of the colors nature put in her overall color design. The sign of a great color for you is that it just gets absorbed into the coloring your face already has. With that kind of color, you can load it on and look real. You can color a little outside your natural lip line and look believable instead of dorky.
Here’s your makeup
Lips: MAC Honey Flower (too brown, dark, and orange alone on me) mixed with MAC Ramblin Rose (more warm coral) or MAC Jubilee (more neutral). MAC Plastique is a fabulous peachy brown metallic, too light on its own though (light and frosty is the formula for ash-colored lips, so it has to be mixed). With those 4 MAC lipsticks, you can create many many good shades. If you like more red color, start mixing in MAC Mocha.
From L, all MAC, Plastique, Jubilee, HoneyFlower, Ramblin Rose.
All this mixing, what a pain, ay? No, no, no ! This is how you learn to customize your colors and how a mixture of 2 colors always always always looks better than a single color alone. Just load a Quo Retractable Lip Brush with your color(s) of the day when you’re doing your AM makeup and you’re set. You can get enough on the brush for 3-4 touchups. Lipstick applied with a brush looks better and lasts way longer, no doubt about it.
Blush: Dior Sunkissed Cinnamon. The price of this stuff is deadly but I like the sheerness and softness of the color. It might look a little pink on you, depending on your skin, more true to its brown-pink name. My skin turns pink to peach, brown to peach, and peach to orange.
Since the color is soft, you can’t see the edges of the blush. What does that mean? Go see the movie Confessions of a Shopaholic and see if you can pick out where Isla Fisher’s blush begins and ends. Also, as a soft color, it looks fresher and younger than a darker or browner color.
The photo is linked to the product at StrawberryNET, which holy cow, if you don’t know it, is worth a look around for the freebies, discounts, sales, selection, and that’s before we talk about Free Shipping Worldwide.
If you like more noticeable color, look at Dior SugarNSpice.
Eyeliner: Dark Brown; there’s thousands of them.
Eyes: MAC Brule, Cork, Soba.
This is a palette of those same colors on a white background. They look dark on the white. I just threw in the gloss for fun. It’s a Chanel Glossimer, color name long worn off.
Fight with Photoshop though I do, every single day, this is the closest I could digitally match the lip colors (Honey Flower is not here). They’re close but not exact.
Look at what happens to those exact same colors on the golden beige skin of a Warm Autumn. Only the background layer’s color has been changed. Suddenly, they’re much closer to what they look like when a Warm Autumn puts them on her face.
Try this out next time you’re shopping and let me know. Convince me I’m wrong.
-->My good friend and sister-in-law, Holly is a Warm Autumn, just as I am. Over the years, I’ve noticed that we can wear exactly the same makeup colors even though her hair and eyes are not the same color as mine.
I started looking at women and have decided this holds true for all women within the same season in the 12 Season scheme.
If you’re a Light Spring, the makeup that suits you will suit all Light Springs. There may be some that are deeper or lighter than you, so the makeup may look a little different but overall, you will look great in the same shades.
Demo : Online Color Analysis
February 20, 2009
No personal appearance tool can compete with getting your colors right every time.
You can have any amount of style and the best genetics in existence. If you don’t get your colors right, you will NEVER EVER be your best you. Not in appearance and not psychologically. When a woman has the right colors on, she carries herself completely differently, whether she knows it or not. Her demeanor snaps into place. It takes a whole lot more to rock her and the message comes through loud and clear.
It is in entirely within your power and budget to NEVER make a wrong clothing, makeup, or hair color choice again. To ALWAYS wear the most gorgeous colors on you when shopping for evening clothes.
The color systems are no less true for men. Power dressing will never be possible till you get your colors right. Men spend serious money on their suits and expect to wear them for years. A Winter man in a pea green shirt or a dusty grey suit – that mistake cost him in impression and in cash. None of this is lost on the other men in the workplace though they may not be able to articulate the hesitation. You either look sharp or you look dull. And if this is a good gift for a woman, it is such a good gift for a man, it hurts. They would NEVER take the time to figure this out and following it has to be easy, but they’re the ones who want to make the power impressions foremost.
You met Lora Alexander back in Sites To Know : Pretty Your World.
This is the age of the internet, the most accessible teaching tool there has ever been.
Watch Lora do an analysis of me. I filled out the questionnaire on her site . I sent her the pictures you see below, and a few others so she could choose the most useful.
First some general notes from Lora that apply to all Color Analyses:
1. All photos will help me get a general idea of your coloring…depth, intensity, etc. The more photos the better. Even if some are not in the greatest light, or you are wearing a hair color that you later changed, all pictures will help me analyze your coloring. The critical ones are the plain-faced photos (no makeup) in sunlight, and the close-up of your eyes. It is also helpful to send in some photos of you in a color you think suits you, or in several colors.
2. The plain-faced pictures will help me see any obvious undertones in your skin as well as any freckles. The sun reveals the “true” coloring of the skin. Any other light could alter colors dramatically.
3. The very first thing I look for is an obvious sign of one of the six dominant characteristics: Deep, Light, Warm, Cool, Soft or Clear. “Deeps” usually are the easiest to spot. “Soft” is the most difficult, because they can also be a “Light” and it gets more difficult to analyze.
An example of an obvious “Warm” celebrity is Clay Aiken. The first thing you notice (if he hadn’t died his hair a brown color) is his red hair and freckles. Danny Bonaduce ( remember Danny on The Partridge Family?) is another obvious Warm. So the first step for me is looking for that OBVIOUS dominant characteristic. If I don’t see one, and that happens more times than not, then I will automatically eliminate the seasons that they OBVIOUSLY are NOT.
Using Jennifer Aniston for an example, I can eliminate Deep, Light (she’s ‘light’, but not Gwyneth Paltrow “light”). Neither Warm or Cool are blatant characteristics on her. I don’t see a Cameron Diaz-like “Clear”-ness to her either so that leaves “Soft”.
I will then look for photos of her in the traditional “Soft Autumn” or “Soft Summer” colors and see which flatter her most. Along the way if I see her in a color that just makes her come alive…and that color is almost entirely exclusive to a certain season like Black is for Winters, and I’ve already eliminated Winter as a possible season for her initially, it’s back to the drawing board.
4. Regarding freckles : unless someone has been protected from the sun their whole life, they will probably have some sort of freckle or age spot on them. If you are a Warm Spring or Autumn, they will be more pronounced than others since they have less melanin to protect them; and they will be the traditional brown freckles, as Lindsay Lohan had in “The Parent Trap”. So looking for freckles tells me about how the skin reacts to sun. The color of the freckles gives me more information but generally speaking, the freckles are lower down the list of things I look at.
5. Last, the eyes will be the determining factor in most cases. This can be very important.
6. If I’m really undecided about a person, I will ask if they have a photo of them when they were little. Right around 4-7 years old is a time when your coloring is as perfect as any in showing the world your true colors.
Christine
In Christine’s case, eye color was the telling factor in whether she was a “Warm” or a “Deep” Autumn.
She definitely has warmth in her skin, so Warm is her predominant color characteristic. She could be an Autumn (Soft, Warm, or Deep Autumn) or a Spring (Warm type).
If her eyes were a deep dark brown, that could signify a “Deep Autumn”. However, the intensity level was much lighter.
If they were a very light color, that could signify a “Warm Spring” or “Soft Autumn”. But hers are more of a medium intensity, moving Warm Spring and Soft Autumn lower on the list. Yellow flecks in the eye almost always signifies an Autumn.
For a moment, I thought she could be a Soft Autumn, but one photo showing her wearing a pinkish-coral top seemed too “weak” of a color for her, which again signifies that her warm coloring needed stronger (but not too strong) coloring.
So I made my determination that she was indeed a “Warm Autumn”.
Christine’s picture at age 11 helped me determine her intensity level as well. Her hair was not a light blonde, which would have been an indicator that she might be a light or soft season. The picture helps determine the intensity level of the coloring.
To read 2 other great examples of how Lora does her Color Analyses, follow this link to her Q&A page http://www.prettyyourworld.com/Questions-and-answers.html . These are far more challenging analyses, on Hillary Clinton and Britney Spears.
Wanting a sense of your own colors starts like any change : by WANTING. There is nothing else you need to do. Eventually, you create a strategy that works for YOU. So, what can you do today? Can you send a few pics of you in an e-mail ?
Climb up to the next level of you.
-->No personal appearance tool can compete with getting your colors right every time. This is the age of the internet, the most accessible teaching tool there has ever been.
Watch Lora do an analysis of me. I filled out the questionnaire on her site . I sent her the pictures you see below, and a few others so she could choose the most useful. There are more ways to do this than by draping scarves.
How To Have Too Much Fun On An Exercise Bike
February 14, 2009
Exercise machines always have great appeal for me because they’re different from how I usually work out. They involve so much repetition of movement that it makes a difference in the strength and appearance of those muscles quite quickly.
Exercise bikes can cost about $100 on sale, are small and easy to move around, and really tone your legs fast. Most importantly, they’re easy on the knees and great for the thighs and rear view.
The repetition has a downside, which is the incredible boredom that sets in. How can you make the time more interesting and have a little fun?
Here are the ways I use to distract myself, make time pass, and get more out of the exercise.
Hey, the usual disclaimer right? Don’t drive holding coffee that’s too hot. Don’t do it if your body hates it. Don’t do what you’re not ready for.
1. Incorporate some core work by raising your arms above your head and waving them gently from left to right in a 1 foot- wide arc without letting your pelvis rock. Do it holding a 1-3lb weight and you’ll get it. It challenges the muscles along the side of the abdomen. You’re forced to vacuum-seal your abs against your pelvis to stabilize your body when the weights are off to the side.
Mehdi writes the great strength- training blog, Strong Lifts. He covers a great range of topics from inspiration and nutrition to specific moves for certain muscle groups. There is no hype here. This is a serious but approachable site, geared to injury prevention.
In this excellent article called How To Perform PushUps Correctly , Mehdi describes stabilizing your abs as hardening the muscle as if you were going to take a punch. That can work really well. I also like the visualization of the vacuum seal. Have you ever watched the ads for those plastic storage bags where all the air is sucked out of them and they crinkle down against the stuff inside till it’s tight? That is the image I use, of my abdominal wall sucking in and crinkling down.
2. Raise your arms and practice the feeling of lengthening by pulling up longer out of the hips and waist. The shoulder blades stay in the same place as when your arms are down. As your rib cage lifts up and away from your hips, the sides of your body get longer. Feel how unloading your pelvis takes the weight off your low back and lets your legs move more freely because they don’t have to support the same load.
3. Imagine a weight from your tailbone, dropping to the floor. This is an exercise used when riding a horse in an English saddle. It helps draw the stomach in towards the spine and anchors the pelvis while encouraging a neutral, flexible spine. The spine stays strong but relaxed and can be responsive to the spine of the animal beneath you.
4. Adjust the tension on the flywheel to be very high and stand up on your pedals. Your pelvis does not rock side-to-side. Think of your pelvis as a bucket you grow up out of. Your legs extend long to the ground. Cycle as fast as you can while holding the pelvis stable. You may find, as I did, that it will not be very fast at all.
5. Turn your toes in with the arch of foot on the pedal, weight on the inside of the ball of the foot. Turn your toes out with the heel on the pedal. Do each for 1 whole song. You’ll feel the inner thighs when the toes face in and outer thighs when the toes point outwards.
6. Put your hands on the sides of your butt cheeks and feel the tightening in your glutes (butt) . Activate your gluteal muscles and keep them switched on. Picture a sponge squeezing the fat out like water.
7. Pretend you’re running uphill and pushing the ground away behind you, but here you’re pushing the pedal behind you and pulling it upward at the same time. So the pedal is coming up because you’re pulling on it, not because the other pedal is being pushed down. It’s a feeling of making a distinct circle with the pedal instead of an up-down repetition. Feel your hamstrings tighten up in a hurry.
8. Push your arms together hard in front of you. Try it pushing your hands together above your head, like a church steeple. The more you pull in your abs, the more pressure you can exert between your hands.
9. Increase the tension to rest. Instead of dropping the tension when you need a break, raise it but pedal as slowly as you like (but no stopping!) . When you release the tension to your usual workout level, it will feel much easier.
10. Alternate 15 seconds fast and slow. You won’t lose yourself in this workout because you’re always counting time, but it’s easy to work harder than usual because you get lots of rest periods. Even if you just do it for a song or two, you’ll burn more calories with the sprint intervals and the time goes fast. Practicing explosive speed and power is good.
Do each move for 1 song and you’ve sailed through 30 minutes on a bike. You’ll have worked in some core, cardio, and strength.
Remember to make sensible decisions that reflect your fitness level. Start slowly and work up. If you can’t hold the middle strong, you’ve done too much. Remember to keep the fundament in place: heart leading and open, stomach sucked it till it pulls the butt under a little.
Hey, cupcake, get up! The workout’s not over till the 10 minutes of abs are.
-->Exercise machines always have great appeal for me because they’re different from how I usually work out. They involve so much repetition of movement that it makes a difference in the strength and appearance of those muscles quite quickly.
The repetition has a downside, which is the incredible boredom that sets in. How can you make the time more interesting and have a little fun?
Sites To Know : Pretty Your World
January 9, 2009
I’ve been waiting a year and a half to find Pretty Your World. I read the entire thing in 3 hours. There are other color sites out there but few hold a candle to this one because it is so much more a teaching site than a marketing site. In most cases, the marketing is only thinly veiled by an attempt to teach, but PYW is about teaching and it does so outstandingly well.
The most important image tool
You may know how much importance I place on getting your colors right to look good. The terribly overdone choice of black for evening. The ubiquitous blonde highlights. The supposedly safe charcoal gray or navy suit. They just don’t work on everyone. Ellen DeGeneres in black, Nicole Kidman in washed out blonde hair, even celebs get it wrong.
We all notice it, not just people who like color. The dress you complimented someone on but really thought didn’t look special at all. The friend who spent a fortune on a new coat and she really looks pale and washed out, but you felt you had to say something nice. The warm brown hair on women with no warmth in their skin, so the hair takes over the face.
I really like Color Me Beautiful’s first book because it was my introduction the 4 color season way to analyze people’s colors. It made the whole thing simple enough to understand. It is unbeatable as a place to begin but there were still people I couldn’t fit into the scheme. I get most confused by celebs with hair dyed the color of corn or Springs with brown hair (like Julie Andrews in The Sound Of Music, who seems most often thought of as Spring). Or why some women that I’m certain are Autumns look so good in black. I’m hopeless with women of color. Ask and it shall be answered. Along came Pretty Your World.
Lora Alexander
Lora Alexander is an esthetician, a makeup artist, and a Certified Image Consultant. Color and Art are her primary interests, with close second loves of makeup, color analysis, and beauty psychology.
The 12 Season System
The system is based on a more complete 12 Season color analysis, which Lora believes to be the ONLY accurate system there is, and I absolutely agree. The 4 seasons we know are broken down to each have 3 sub-categories. You don’t begin by finding your season. Rather, you find yourself in the 6 descriptions of Deep, Clear, Light, Soft, Cool, and Warm. Secondly, you identify yourself among the 2 choices of Warm or Cool. Combining the first 6 and the last 2 gives you the 12 combinations. So you could be Deep Winter, Cool Winter, or Clear Winter. The breakdown is found on the Analyze Yourself page.
There are plenty of examples, using celebrities. There are excellent but not overly detailed explanations. The system is broken down in various ways, in a stepwise process, to help you find your place. There are links using Eye Color and Hair Color to help guide your choice. It is unbelievable to me that Lora began this site only 2 months ago. She’s already created THE best teaching site about personal color analysis on the internet.
A walk through PYW
I was completely amazed to see how much Lora and I have in common – like our love of Kevyn Aucoin, our belief in Paula Begoun’s work, our over-40 vintage, our season (Autumn), the fact that we colorcast people within a few minutes of meeting them (though I’m not nearly as good at it as she is), our thriftyness (but we are not cheap!) and our passion for finding beauty advice that works in the REAL world.
She doesn’t pull any punches. We are in perfect agreement when she states, in The Truth About Beauty , that the cosmetics industry lies to us day in and day out and we still can’t give them money fast enough.
Though it may be not be fair, she is also right that we are judged immediately by others and most of it is on appearance. We are not judged on whether or not we’re Gwyneth Paltrow look-alikes. We are judged on the use we’ve made of what we have. Following the “Even someone naturally beautiful…” link on that page will take you to the famous Dove billboard ad and how much artifice the beauty industry is based on. Empower yourself. Learn which products work. Learn your colors.
I love Celebrity Style because it shows celebs in their various hair color tryouts.
Just for fun, but fun it is, there are 4 pages of celebs without makeup. Would we look twice at any of those faces in the mall or pushing a grocery cart? We would not. Their 5’10”, 110 lb bodies, maybe.
How to most improve your looks
I totally get that not everyone wants the bother of makeup. Most women probably don’t. But, listen. Makeup is EASY once you know your season. Your makeup colors ARE your clothing colors. It’s all right there. Even your hair colors are in your palettes!
What I don’t understand is why a woman would not take the time to know her colors just to make good clothing choices. It totally transforms how you look. Why spend $200 or $100 or $10 on something that not only doesn’t flatter your looks, but actually detracts?
You might prefer a certain style of dress or cut of jacket and nobody could argue with your taste. But only 1 of the 3 Springs will ever look gorgeous in black. A Summer never will. You might as well paint a drab grayish foundation color on your face, darken the shadows under your eyes, and get it over with.
I know Autumn women reading this will be saying “I like ballet pink and I’m g.d. well going to wear it.” Do what you gotta do. Hopefully the pink thing doesn’t cost a lot. You will never look rich, vibrant, and powerful in pink. Wear it but not to a meeting. Or an argument. Or a 10 year reunion.
Experiment with success
Many women have some sense of what colors suit them but there’s still a lot of confusion out there. The whole topic seems intimidating. They might have a sense of their general category or some good safe basics. To find a collection of 50!! colors that would be great on YOU – now that’s a gift. You could be more adventuresome, get away from safe, and look amazing.
Where do you start? How do you find your colors when you go shopping? Well, you start here. Like everything else, you get help when you need it, even if it costs money. You send in your picture. You buy the swatch book. You take it shopping. The swatch kit on Lora’s site, and all the extras that come with it, looks fantastic.
Remember the articles on Gift Ideas 1 – 5, back in December? Well, no gift, and I mean NO gift, NONE, could come close to buying a woman her color swatches. Gift certificates are available but the surprise and gratitude of giving a woman her own colors would be worth it.
The palettes themselves aren’t at PYW – or anywhere on the internet. Lora recommends looking at the book Color Me Beautiful’s Looking Your Best for good explanations and 28-color layouts of each of the 12 Seasons, with verbal descriptions of the full 48colors for each season at the end. (The Click to LOOK doesn’t work, it’s just coming from Amazon.)
I bought this book and it’s pretty good. The best thing about it is that it explains the 12 Season system quite well, particularly how a season can crossover and borrow colors from another season. This expands your palette but in a controlled way that is understandable. There is still the hair/clothing/style advice but it’s outdated (the first version was published in 1991). Most disappointing to me was that the 28 colors are hard to see. They look like they’re painted on concrete, grainy and rough. The swatches in the original book were better. Still worth it for the explanation of the 12 Seasons if you’re into it, though.
Have your colors done!
Still don’t believe your color analysis can be done on the internet? In a future post (once I know the date, I’ll post it in the Upcoming link on the front page of this site), Lora will do an in depth color analysis using pictures of me with makeup, without makeup, close-ups of my eyes, and pictures of my hair color when I was young. I’m off to her site to fill out the questionnaire.
Take a serious look at what you get for $89.95 on that same page.
-->I’ve been waiting a year and a half to find Pretty Your World. I read the entire thing in 3 hours. There are other color sites out there but few hold a candle to this one because it is so much more a teaching site than a marketing site. In most cases, the marketing is only thinly veiled by an attempt to teach, but PYW is about teaching and it does so outstandingly well.
Read moreBotox for Christmas
December 7, 2008
More women I know want this than anything else. Would they really do it? Or are there still too many unknowns… like how do you know a good doctor when you see one, where do they inject exactly, and is it REALLY safe? A thousand questions. Now you can find answers.
Photo by EverJean
In Gift Ideas For The Real World 4 (items 9&10), I told you about this fantastic website called Skin Tour. How excellent to have found an authority site on anti-aging treatments for skin that we can count on.
To tell the truth
Skin Tour is the website of Seattle dermatologist, Dr. Brandith Irwin. It is dedicated to providing consumers with the facts about anti-aging skin products that work, be they cream or injection. I’m always looking for that. This field is desperate for some reality.
We need voices that will plough through all the rubbish and gimmicks and tell us what’s true. Skin Tour is full of informative articles that whittle the topic down to what you need to know. Specific products are shown but the anti-aging focus is more about cosmetic and enhancing procedures like Botox, peels, fillers, and the various types of lasers.
Under Resources >> Menopause and Your Skin, there is the most clear, concise article on what the options are for improving the skin – and there are loads of options !!. Love the comment about the greater confidence and self-acceptance that we finally have found. Yes, we have.
A learning site
I have an impression that the opinion of dermatologists is that every one of us (with normally aging skin) should be using RetinA or Renova afer age 35 or so. I’m not certain if that’s correct but Dr. Irwin seems to support the belief. I haven’t cared enough yet to see a Derm to get some. I was thrilled (not too strong a word) to find Skin Medica Retinol Complex.
Terrific products are recommended, many that I’d never seen before. There are moisturizers, sunscreens (look at them when you go to the site; most interesting), antioxidants, both costly and affordable options. Look at the very neat Booster Packs while you’re there. Cute gifts, matched to a person’s activities.
Video treatments
Dr. Irwin has totally demystifyied Botox/Restlylane injections for me. I get this now. Watch the video blogs. See the questions that were asked, how comfortably the doctor could adapt to the face of each woman to produce a natural look, and how relaxed the patients are. What I can see for sure is that you need someone who can handle a needle.
After all, a needle is a knife. This is far and away my biggest fear. How do you know how smooth a doctor will be as an injector? It takes huge left brain- knowledge and right brain- artistry to be that proficient at using a needle and syringe. It’s really a form of surgery. Conservative taste and a great eye for the end result as part of the entire face go a long way too. These procedures are as much art form as science.
If you’ve been thinking of finding a dermatologist but aren’t sure what to look for in technique or bedside manner, this woman sets a high standard.
Recovery
I wish there were more After pictures on the site. I know exactly what the before issues are. I see them in the mirror every day. What I’d love to understand is what it looks like after. My inkling about Botox is the wooden look. Restylane? I haven’t a clue what that can do when it’s done well, though I can well imagine what done poorly looks like (lopsided and bumpy). It worries me greatly.
I also wish there were some idea given of how the recovery looks. Am I wrong or does Restylane appear to have serious bruising potential? I’m sure it’s covered in depth in the consultation and each woman is different, but I’d like to see the average reaction.
Note the AntiAging Tour
Definitely do take The AntiAging Tour. Scroll down and key in your areas of interest. Mouse over the dots that come up on the face and your options appear in a table on the screen. What smooth and effective use of the internet this is.
To teach and provide information consumers can depend on is the best of what this medium can do. The 13 year old sitting in front of me looking at street level satellite pictures of Paris and finding the pizza place nearest to the Eiffel Tower is illustrating the same thing in a whole different way.
You and I can’t tell what’s in a skin cream by the feel of it. We sure don’t know Restylane from Juvederm from the many new options flooding the market. The next 20 years will be crowded with this stuff, which I personally am quite pleased about.
Photo by Julianne.hide
Feel better
What impresses me most is the Doctor’s desire to just send something good out into the world. Though commission is made on the sale of products, it probably just pays for the site. The time and work seems to be a labor of love and a sincere desire to help people. Since every single molecule of good energy (and bad energy) you send out there boomerangs back to you, I would say there’s some good stuff coming her way.
So yeah. Pretty soon, the face on both sides of my nose will cave in enough and the lines will be so deep that I’ll be glad to have this option. I can almost imagine having these injections with no more worry than getting a hair color. In good hands, it looks like there’s little to fear, especially if you start with temporary treatments.
PS: The purchasing is redirected to Skin Care Rx. Let me tell you, they’re worth a look. Based in Utah, you’ll find an amazing list of hard-to-find brands. If you buy, do link to it from inside Skin Tour. We want to support that site. It’s going to help us a lot over the next 30 years.
I couldn’t link to Skin Care Rx directly or through Skin Tour. I don’t know if it’s a Mac thing because the 3 Windows XP IE7 systems I tried were fine. Oh, the stress! I finally had to place the order by phone. They have terrific tech support at Skin Care Rx and they helped me find a bypass way into the site with the Mac. Let me know if you have any issues.
-->
More women I know want this than anything else. Would they really do it? Or are there still too many unknowns… like how do you know a good doctor when you see one, where do they inject exactly, and is it REALLY safe? A thousand questions. Now you can find answers.
Read moreThe IUD Saga Continues
November 21, 2008
I was trying not to think about it so I wouldn’t get a pimple. One of the girls at work described the pain as “like labor”, something I was sure I’d never have to live through again. She said I’d be having a lot of hot baths.
For anyone new to the story, I began a period back in September that hasn’t stopped yet. Apparently, it’s common in early menopause. If you care to read the gory details, they’re in The Pill Or Mirena and What’s A Mirena IUD?
I chose the IUD. The appointment to insert it was November 18. I went in there reeking of Rose Oil. The mean secretary was very friendly, surely meaning she felt sorry for what I was about to go through.
I was prepared for a 5 day convalescence. I stocked 2 magazines (InStyle and Oprah). I have the 5 movies (The Devil Wears Prada because I am the only person left in North America that hasn’t seen it, Little Miss Sunshine, Juno, The Queen, and Death At A Funeral).
Sites To Know : FTC Who Cares
Nicole sent me a link to this excellent FTC site dedicated to filtering medical information for consumers, very much a Site To Know. In an ocean of information so overwhelming that you can’t decide how much applies to you, I look for good data that does the legwork in finding dependable outlinks for me. I looked up MRT and really think the IUD is the right first choice. I followed the link at the bottom to the National Institute on Aging (never knew about it before) which got me to more good info on MRT .
Though the intention is to keep the site updated, the purpose though is to provide a “short list” of the best and most reliable sources of information. How welcome is that, given that Googling these topics gets you hacking through a jungle of material that’s questionable at best.
Insertion
Ideally, you’re having your period when the device is placed so that the cervix is relaxed. Well, I wasn’t. I was on those pills!! I asked twice and they said “Stay on them”. Actually, in a step I’m sure physicians love, I self-medicated myself down to ½ pill a day. I crack them in half with my teeth because the pill isn’t scored. Those horrible little things were fogging up my head and becoming my enemy. I figure this isn’t utter quackery. It’s being faithful to the normal gradual physiologic drop in hormones before a period.
I feel a little embarrassed about this fuss and worry now. Doing a stomach crunch (1) hurts way more than the IUD placement. BUT this adds yet another item to the growing list of why it is better to be loose and floppy!! After 3 vaginal deliveries, the last one 11 years ago, my cervix is permanently relaxed. I felt nothing when the rod went in. When the bars of the little T were opened, it felt like a large gas bubble for about 4 seconds, and that was that. This must be what I am inside:
I was expecting to be grinding my teeth, clutching the table, and trying not to scream. He told me I could scream if I wanted to, he was used to it, and blood too, and besides I was the last appointment of the day, so “whatever turns your crank”. He puts in 1 of these a week and he’s seen it all. This is the kind of doctor I love. If he’s not excited, you definitely do not need to be.
Go back to your regular life
Anyhow, I drove myself home and told my husband to stay at work. He told me to enjoy my Rosemary Wine, which is the closest he can come to understanding Rose Oil. I have a friend called Brigitte, pronounced “brig -EETA”. The closest he can come to her name is “briquette”. He NEVER says her name when they meet.
Watching the movie later, as Anne Hathaway walks past the Sephora store in NYC and I’m almost sobbing with envy, I do have a little tightening in my lower abdomen and have to sit up straight. I treated myself to hot chocolate made with real cocoa.
I haven’t felt anything since. I hope my boss doesn’t read this because I’ve booked 3 days off. I do not believe for one second that my friend at work didn’t have the pain she claims, or the other women as well. It’s just that at 48, I’m a walking, talking testament to the many benefits of flaccidity and mushiness.
Onced it’s inserted, you can go home and exercise if you like. You can have vigorous sex, but it’s suggested to wait a few days for the strings to soften, more for his sake than yours. I stay on pills for a day or two till the IUD starts secreting its own tiny little dose of progesterone, and then stop.
Wait and see (and pray)
We’ll wait and see what happens in the longer term. One-third of women have no periods. Most have very light periods, with possible spotting only for the first 3 months. Since this is menopause, periods may come every 6 weeks or with some irregularity. It seems there’s no need to worry unless the bleeding is excessive.
Karen sent me a fabulous prayer that she says often : “Fulfill every purpose for which You allowed this situation.”
Incredible. If more prayers were like that, I’d be more of a praying person. It focuses inwardly, instead of imploring someone to give you something. Please understand that I’ve done my share of pleading. I’ve beseeched. Sometimes, you’re really scared and can’t see any other option. It is all you have left. I have been there.
But I’m not there today and I am thankful in the extreme. I hope the little object does its job without incident. I cannot feel it. I marvel that it’s really in there, like when you did your first pregnancy test the day you missed your period and it came back positive.
If it doesn’t work, I know there are other choices. Many. Today, I’m reading Oprah, doing a mask, bleaching my teeth, wondering why my dog is chewing himself so much, and wading in Rose Oil. Tomorrow, I’m exercising, baking, meeting a friend for coffee, and pretending I live my ideal life which that of almost-a-hermit.
A choice that I might have run from, or not considered until forced upon me, has turned out to be (I hope) a blessing.
-->The appointment to insert the IUD was November 18. I went in there reeking of Rose Oil. The mean secretary was very friendly, surely meaning she felt sorry for what I was about to go through.
I was prepared for a 5 day convalescence. I was prepared for pain worse than labor.
In fact, it went very well. I hope the little thing does its job.
Just goes to show that all fear gets you is pimples. And that we are given challenges for reasons only to be found in overcoming them. And that yet another benefit of aging surfaces here: it’s a whole lot easier to be mushy inside than tight.
Get daily makeup and colour updates. Join the 12 Blueprints Fan Club on Facebook! A Click on the box will take you there.
-
A Greener Tea
Web Maintenence by Rick Beckman
