Fabulously Cheeky

Don’t you love it, when you wake up in the morning and look in the mirror, and the area under your eyes seems to have sagged a quarter inch over night! Sigh!

If you have gotten up early enough, you can lie down with slices of cucumber or wet chamomile bags on top of your eyelids, but if you don’t have the luxury of just lying around all day, there are still a few things you can do.

Puffy lower eyelids are caused by lack of circulation, which leads to lack of fluid drainage. So, when you put your eye moisturizer on below the eyes, dry tapping it in with your fingertips, instead of rubbing it. Not only is tapping better for the skin because it won’t stretch it out any more, but it will also create more circulation in the area and help the fluid drain.

If there is still some bagginess left after your little tapping massage, here is another trick that will help: Try putting a lighter concealer right under the bags. Remember, when light hits the face from above, it creates a light shadow below the bags. So, if you lighten this area up a bit, the shadow can become almost invisible and nobody will notice the bags.

Also, avoid making a harsh line under your eyes if you have puffy bags, as this will just draw more attention to your problem areas. It is better to line the top lashes and only put mascara on the top. This draws the attention upward instead.

Also, make sure you use blush on the apples of the cheeks. Nothing lights up a face as much as a fresh color of blush, subtly applied, of course. Top it off with some glossy natural lip tint and you’ll look as fresh as a rose. Enjoy your day!

Tags: Makeup Tips, under eye bags

The other day, a friend of mine dropped by for a cup of tea. As we were sipping the tea, and chatting about this and that, she all of a sudden said: “You used to be blonde – how come you have eyebrows?” I said: “Eyebrows???” So she explained that when her hair started turning white, her eyebrows basically disappeared, leaving her face a bit bare. “Well,” I said, “I had to make sure my eyebrows matched my new red hair.” “But how?” she asked. “I’ll show you,” I said, “let’s go to the bathroom.”

We went to the bathroom and I showed her my secret – a very small tube of eyebrow tint from a company called Refectocil. “This is what I use,” I said, “do you want to try it? It only takes 5 minutes to do.” “Yes, oh yes!!!!” she answered, so we instantly got to work.

We put about 1/2 inch of cream into a tiny shot glass and mixed it with 3 drops of hydrogen peroxide. It has to be mixed until it changes color slightly and turns creamy, and then we applied the cream to our eyebrows with a small concealer brush. It looks scary rust colored when you put it on, but it doesn’t leave any red on the eyebrows after coloring.

We waited for 5 minutes, and then wiped it off with dry cotton. After wiping the color off with a dry wipe, we used moistened cotton to clean everything off properly, and voila – eyebrows! My friend looked in the mirror and started jumping up and down with excitement. It made such a difference, she couldn’t believe it!

Eyebrows are like frames around a picture – a face just doesn’t look the same without it. And, using an eye pencil usually doesn’t look very natural at all.

I can highly recommend Refectocil – the color we both used is called Light Brown, which is the perfect color for anyone with blondish hair. It has a warning on the tube that it can make you blind, so don’t get it in your eyes. But, it works in 5 minutes, and it lasts for over a month. Super easy solution, and nobody will know you are actually tinting your brows, because the result is so natural!

So, if you feel like your face needs a little bit of definition, this is a super easy solution! Just treat the cream with respect so you don’t hurt your eyes.

Tags: eyebrow tint

So, I tried a new eyemakeup from Maybelline called Eye Studio. I have always liked the idea of cream shadows because they blend in and look much more fresh and exciting than dry, boring powder shadow, but the problem with cream shadow is that it always creases and disappears before the end of the day. I had vowed not to waste my money again, so I don’t know how I ended up with this one, anyway. It was probably the irresistably pretty packaging…

Anyway, the one I bought has one whitish shadow, one pretty pink, and another browny tan. (I can’t remember the name of this color combo, since the name is on the little tag that you pick off when you open it – very dum).

The cream is easy to put on. Just run your finger over it lightly and smear over your eyelid. Super simple.

I like to use all 3 colors. If you have normal, basic eyes, put the pink on the eyelid, the brown on the browbone/crease, and the white as a highlighter. Protruding or prominent eyes must shift the colors to brown on the eyelid, pink on the browbone/crease and white under the brow. Deep set or hooded eyes need the colors in opposite order: White on the inner corner, pink on the outer half, brown on the browbone (but not the crease) and white under the brow.

The reason why the colors have to be switched around like this for different eye shapes is simple. Dark colors recedes, light colors bring forward. So this is why, protruding or prominent eyes should have dark color applied, while deep set or hooded eyes need light colors on the lids. Do it the other way around, and the effect is quite scary!

I have a friend with very deep set eyes, who loves using brown on her lids. The result is halloweeny – a pale face with dark, sunken eyes. Not flattering at all. Light color on the lid and dark on the brow bone, would balance her features and bring her eyes back “out of her skull” again.

Anyway, this cream shadow is slightly shimmery and super pretty. It definitely makes your eyes pop, and best of all, it doesn’t cake or end up in every crack before the day is over.

Top it off with a bit of eye liner pencil on the top lashes, and lots of mascara. My favorite mascara is still Maybelline’s Falsies – there is nothing quite like it! It gives your lashes so much volume that they actually look false when you are done, without any clumping. The waterproof Falsies stays on all day, even with sweating and exercising, and comes off easily at night, at least if you use my natural mascara remover, which is super easy to use.

Just rub some into the lashes, wait a minute, then wipe with moistened cotton. If some mascara remains, rub in some more and wipe with another piece of cotton, and leave any remains of the mascara remover on the skin. It conditions your eyelids, eye lashes and under eye area nicely overnight!

Tags: cream shadow

Today is New Year’s Eve, the last day of the old year! Are you going out today? Would you like to look fabulous but don’t know how? Here is a youtube video that will show you exactly how to apply makeup to mature skin! Enjoy, and happy new year!

Tags: evening makeup, mature skin

How can you tell what your skin tone is? First, look in the mirror. Do you have naturally rosy cheeks? If so, your skin tone is pink based. Yellow or blue undertone is harder to tell. If the veins on your arm are green, you have yellow undertone. If they are blue, you have blue undertone. If you can’t tell if they are green or blue, just look in your closet to see what colors you gravitate towards. If you have mostly cool colors, you are most likely cool, and if you have mostly warm colors, you are most likely warm.

For some reason, we usually gravitate towards the same types of clothing colors as our skin tone. While this often creates a harmonious look, it does nothing to balance out the underlying skin tone. In the summer, when we have a little bit of a fresh skin color, it doesn’t really matter, but in the winter when the skin turns scary pale, and the sunlight against the snow is extremely harsh, we may need to balance out the underlying skin tone a bit.

Foundation is the easiest bit. It should have the same undertone as your skin – so warm to neutral foundation for warm skin, and cool to neutral for cool skin or pink skin. This is because foundation is only meant to even out your skin tone, and not to give you more color. Extra color should be added with blush and lipstick. But, how do your choose the right color?

If you pick a lipstick or liptint with the same undertone as your skin tone, it will look ok, but it won’t “boost” your skintone or balance your undertone. To do that, we have to use the color wheel and pick a color on the opposite side of the wheel. I’ll give you some examples.

One of my friends has very cool coloring. She has pale skin, almost white hair and loves to wear navy blue and icy pink lipstick with frosting. While this looks quite lovely, it magnifies her coolness and makes her look a bit like the snow queen. If we look at the other side of the color wheel, the opposite of blue is orange. What this means is that if you add a little bit of color with orange undertone, it will balance cool skin nicely. One day, I got her to try some peachy pink liptint instead of her icy cool pink, and it warmed up her whole face and gave her a very healthy glow. So, it doesn’t take much to make a difference.

Another cool colored friend of mine with golden blonde hair, loves to wear baby blue clothes, and a bright bluish red lipstick. This makes her look very cold and rigid, since the bluish red lipstick narrows her lips because the color is quite dark. A much better lip color for her would have been a more muted brick red, which would balance the blueness of her skin. I also saw her wearing an orange fleece one day, that someone had given her as a gift, and she looked gorgeous. She could also warm up her hair color with a slight tint of strawberry blonde, and it would really warm up her skin.

Personally, I have yellow based skin that looks very pale and sickly in the winter. Even though I feel attracted to yellow, mustard, olive and orange, it doesn’t really make me feel less pale in the winter. It looks harmonious, but not great. Brown, rust, brick and black looks much better on me, since it contains less yellow. But, if we look at the color chart, the opposite of yellow is purple, and since I am very pale and need a bit of warmth to my skin, a reddish purple would be more flattering than a bluish purple.

This explains why I look better in plum, brick and brown liptints, than in pink, coral or red. Pink is too blue for my skintone, and makes me look even more pale. Coral or bright red brings out the yellow in my skin more, while plum, balances out the yellow nicely and makes me look healthy despite being really pale. This also explains why I had to get rid of my golden blonde hair. It looked ok when I was younger, but when I hit menopause, the golden hair and the yellow based skin were magnifying a general “yellowness” that didn’t flatter in any way. It wasn’t until I changed it to a medium brown with strong red undertones, that it gave my pale skin a boost of warmness that I needed.

When it comes to eyemakeup, I tried the orange range that is supposed to be so very great for blue eyes, and I looked like I hadn’t slept for a week. It wasn’t until I switched to rich neutral browns, plums and burgundies that my blue eyes really “popped” – probably because it balanced the sickly looking yellow undertone of the skin. So, don’t pick eyemakeup based on your eyecolor – pick it based on your skintone instead. Balance out your skintone, and your eyes will “pop”!

What this means is orangey warm eyemakeup for blue skintone, purply eyemakeup for yellow skintone and blue/gray makeup for ruddy/pink skin. Try it, and you’ll be surprised how well it works!

Pink skin looks lovely and fresh on a young girl, but the older we get, the more the pinkness turns into ruddiness instead. If we look at the color chart, the opposite of red is green. Therefore, clothing in blues and greens will balance ruddy skin nicely (better to avoid pinks and berries!). People with pink/red skin actually look good in eyemakeup shades of gray/blue/green because it cools down the redness in their skin. Blush color should be icy cool pink with no orange in it, and lip color should also be icy cool in some kind of pink or berry color. Stay away from corals, browns and warm pinks or bright reds.

There is actually one more skintone, olive, which is basically yellowbased skin with a tan. It has a bit of an olive (green) tinge to it. As we already know, the opposite of green is red, so if you have olive skin, you can easily wear bright red, especially if it has a slight bluish undertone. People with olive skin can even get away with wearing bright red lipstick in the daytime without looking overdone! Eyemakeup colors should be brown, gold and olive, since they already have a tan and don’t need to boost their color. Blush can be plum, brown or quite red and still look good.
This should give you a good idea how to look really gorgeous for Christmas!

Tags: Makeup, skintone

Oh, the joys of becoming a crone! As everything starts to loosen up, the skin on the eyelids also starts to sag. My mother used to say that gravity works on everything except your nose. Sad, but true…

If you don’t feel like having your eyelids cut and lifted, which by the way, could leave you with eyelids that don’t close properly, but they don’t tell you that, a much less extreme solution is to simply use eye makeup to “fix” the problem temporarily.

Brown eye makeup is a mature woman’s best friend. The shade of brown has to match your skin tone. The best color of brown is just a little bit darker than you skin color, so it doesn’t look harsh. If you have cool skin tone, a taupe, pinkish or silvery brown is nice. If your skin tone is warm, pick a warmer brown, like a hazelnut brown or orangy brown.

On eyes that are not deep set, apply the brown lightly all over the lid and all the way up to the crease and beyond. Make sure that the droopy part of the eyelid gets a nice coating, too. This is because dark colors make things recede and look less prominent. Just make sure you pick a brown that is matte, since glitter and frosting has the opposite effect. Then, use a light, peachy or cream highlighter under the outer edge of the brow to “lift” the eyes, and put a touch on your inner corner as well, to give yourself a bright eyed look.

For deepset eyes, brown eyeshadow on the lid really doesn’t work. Since the eyes are already receded, they need to be brought forward instead. Therefore, deep set eyes should always have light shadow on the lid, inner corner and under the brow. You can even pick a shadow with a bit of shimmer if you wish. And, don’t mark the crease with a darker color, since you don’t need to accentuate your already existing crease. Just take the light shade all the way up to your brow bone, where your brown shadow starts. Use a matte brown to help recede your prominent brow bone.

Then line your eyes lightly with a soft pencil, smudge it a bit to soften the look, put a touch of brown under the outer corner, and then top it off with tons of mascara. Voila – sagging eyelids be gone!

Please visit my website for green cosmetics
or click on this link to check out my natural waterproof mascara remover. It works like a dream!

Tags: sagging eyelids

Talking about red lipstick, I actually found a really good tutorial with makeup tips on youtube about red lipstick for different ages. Check it out! This lady really knows her stuff!

Please visit my website for Green Cosmetics and cool translucent lip tints for ages 50 and up.

Tags: Makeup Tips, red lipstick

One of the things we bought in our Halloween spree the other day was a very scary, very bright, red lipstick that I normally wouldn’t even consider, since my natural coloring is muted, and this lipstick is way bright. But, you can’t wear beautiful muted colors when you are a gothic vampire witch with a dramatic black and red dress.

One of the problems with really red lipstick is the fact that the colors tend to bleed up toward the nose. While that is not a bad look for Halloween, I would rather not have it! This bleeding of color has to do with synthetic colors in the lipstick. As far as I know, synthetic colors are water soluble, and under the nose, because there is water in the air we breathe, there is always going to be some kind of moisture there that will make these kinds of colors bleed.

Natural earth pigments, like the ones I put in the lip tints that I make, are oil soluble, and therefore, they won’t bleed at all. But synthetic colors bleed, whether you have actual lines above your lips, or not.

The solution to this annoying problem is not too difficult. Many people love to dab on lots of powder to prevent the bleeding, but this is way too fake and obvious in daylight. Another solution is to just rub in a bit of very rich cream above your lip to prevent the bleeding, something with shea butter or cocoa butter works very well.

The other problem with red lipstick is the tacky fact that it often ends up on your teeth. Again, this is a great Halloween look, but if it happens when it isn’t Halloween, you’re in trouble. Red lipstick on your teeth totally ruins your beautifully made up look and makes you look tacky and trashy.

Again, the solution is simple. After you put the red lipstick on, stick your finger in your mouth, close your lips around the finger and pull the finger out. You’ll see red lipstick on the finger, as it cleans away all the stuff that would otherwise end up on your teeth, and voila, red lipstick with style!!! (and white teeth…)

Please visit my website for Green Cosmetics

Tags: Makeup Tips, red lip stick

I have a book about makeovers for women over 50 that talks about how to line the eyes without making it look too harsh. The author insists that you should use a liner pencil UNDER the top lash line.

I wondered why he put it under the top lashline instead of above, and just ignored his advice and kept putting the line above my lashes instead. However, one day, I decided to try it, since I had noticed that the eyes look a bit too made up sometimes, especially if it is bright sunlight outside.

So, I put a soft, smudged line under my lower eye lashes, and then tried to line the bottom of the upper lash line. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. All you have to do is put your head back a bit, open your eyes, and not blink. Since I use contact lenses, not blinking was easy. If you have a problem with blinking, you might have to hold the lid up a bit.

Anyway, by putting the head back a bit, you can actuallly see the underside of your lash line. Just use a pencil and start lining where the lashes begin. After you are done, you’ll be surprised how nicely defined your eyes look, even though the line that you drew is basically invisible so nobody will know it is there.

If you want to define a bit more, you can draw another line on top of the upper lashline as well. Then top it off with Maybelline’s Falsies Mascara and you are good to go!

You might want to try it! The effect is quite cool!

Tags: eye liner, Makeup Tips, mascara