Find your skin tone.
Everyone, regardless of their ethnic background and the colour of their skin, has one of two skin undertones. You will fit into either the warm skin toned family or the cool skin toned family.
Warm toned skin has a yellowish look and a golden caste to it.
Cool toned skin has a blue look and a pink caste to it.
When you are buying make-up you can avoid costly mistakes is you know your skin tone.
There is a simple test you can do to establish your skin tone.
Place a silver bracelet on one of your wrists and put a gold bracelet on the other. Compare the two. Disregard any personal preference you may have to gold or silver and study the effect the metal has against your skin.
Answer honestly which looks best?
If it is the silver bracelet then you are cool toned.
If the gold bracelet looks better then your skin is warm toned.
What comes next?
Colouring in! We tend to fall into a make-up routine and stick with it. Many of us have applied our make-up the same way since we were teenagers – cleanse, tone and nourish (on a good day!), slap on a layer of foundation, swipe on a bit of blusher, swish a few strokes of deep black mascara onto the eyelashes, maybe draw a nice thick line of eyeliner, dab on some lipstick and hey presto, you’re good to go!
Well, no, you are not good to go!
We haven’t actually finished with primer yet, there are three other primers available to help us to get gorgeous.
Eye shadow primer has the texture of velvet. It is flesh coloured and covers all those little veins, blotches or redness on the eyelids. A dab of eye shadow primer on the upper eyelid smoothes and fills fine lines, creating a neutral base for eye shadow to glide over and stay in place all day. Camouflage cream works similarly if you don’t have a designated eye shadow primer immediately available.
Mascara primer is a must-have product to help thicken the eyelashes. Essentially it is a clear, conditioning undercoat applied prior to mascara. Every little bit of help counts when it comes to thickening the eyelashes!
Lip primers tend to dehydrate the lips, so I discourage their use. An alternative is a little camouflage cream pressed around your lip line prior to applying lipstick or gloss. Set this with a light coverage of translucent powder.
The eyes have ‘It’
We’ve all seen glossy advertisements featuring young poodle-haired models with thick feathery eyelashes weighed down with white mascara rimmed with creative slicks of shimmering crystals and we think ‘Wow!’
And it is wow. But it’s not wow for us!
Pared down eye make-up works best for those of us in our summer years; make-up is most flattering and youthful when it’s present but not overpowering.
The newer look is soft, subtle, luminous and pretty.
So, sadly, the time has come to jettison those wild colours you’ve hoarded in the depths of the cosmetics drawer in the hope that they’ll come back into fashion! Anything purple, emerald and sapphire or metallic has to go, (along with the hot pinks!).
The golden rules of eye make-up
- If you wore it the first time around; you’re too old to wear it the second time around. (This applies to fashion as well!).
- Don’t match your make-up to your clothing. Ever. The progressive way is to tone your make-up to complement your clothing. Matchy-matchy makes you look oldie-oldie.
- If you are in doubt about eye shadow colours go neutral or light.
- Make yourself a promise that no glittery, sparkly, pearly, frosted, candy coloured or glassy looking eye shadow will ever touch your eyelids again. As gorgeous as they are, these finishes do not enhance or flatter eyes that are looking at the summer of their life.
- A little sheen is fantastic. Light bounces off the soft-focus pigments in the product and provides a touch of dewy freshness.
- Apply a dab of eye primer to cover tiny veins, blotches, redness or discoloration and to even out the skin tone on the eyelids before smoothing over the eye shadow.
- Powder eye shadow is the current product. Outmoded creamy eye shadow settles into the eye creases, slips off the eyelids and does not provide the same longevity that powder eye shadow provides.
There are some things worth noting about powder eye shadows:
- They are not all the same. Loose powder shadow such as mineral eye shadow can be difficult to control as it has a tendency to scatter and flick all over the place when it is applied with a brush. It behaves better when applied with a foam-tipped applicator.
- A pan of compacted matte textured powder shadow applied with an eye shadow brush or a foam-tipped applicator is a better choice than loose powder shadow.
- Powder shadow that is too matte will give your eyes a dry, chalky, lifeless look. Use power eye shadow containing a little sheen (sometimes known as ‘silk’).
- Three stripes of eye shadow swept horizontally across the eyelid looks old-fashioned. We left the rainbow behind in the eighties.
- Matching your eye shadow with your eye colour is out-dated and not particularly successful because the colour of the iris plays a very small part in the overall face and hair colour scheme.
- Using blusher as eye shadow makes the eyes look squinty and bloodshot. Blusher formulas contain too much red pigment to make a successful transition to eye shadow.
- A streak of stark white shimmery eye shadow swooping across the bone beneath eyebrow is very dated, very drag queen.
Shadowing your gorgeous eyes:
Smooth on silky eye primer to camouflage imperfections on the eyelids and prevent eye shadow from sliding off.
Blend two neutral coloured eye shadows onto the eyelid. Use colours that complement each other, your skin tone, eye colour and your hair colour. Many cosmetic houses offer multi-coloured eye shadow pallets that have been carefully harmonized and colour blended to perfection by professional colourists.
Use a broad soft eye shadow brush or a good quality foam-tipped eye shadow applicator to cover the eyelids entirely from the roots of the eyelashes to the bottom of the eye brows with pale neutral coloured matte eye shadow. Both warm and cool skin tones benefit from neutral coloured eye shadow containing a little warmth. Beige, taupe, pale peach, ivory or vanilla are useful neutral colour names. The colour should be close to the skin colour on the eyelids. Translucent and opalescent whites look ghostly and do not cover imperfections.
Apply a second, darker shade to the crease of your eyelids from the inner corner to the outer corner with an eye shadow brush. The darker colour gives depth and definition, and contours your eyes.
Smudge the edges of the second colour (the darker contour shade) to blend subtle shadows into the base colour with a designated eye shadow contouring brush or the edges of an eye shadow foam applicator.
A Quick Brown Word
Most women prefer to wear neutral-looking eye make-up. Brown shades look good on everyone regardless of their eye colour and skin tone. There are more brown-toned, brown based eye shadows on the market than any other colour. There will be one to enhance your eyes!
Brown eye shadow is useful to contour the eyelid creases over a base coat of light pink-toned eye shadow.
If your eyes are green or hazel apply contour shades in brown-khaki, brown-gold or bronze-green to complement but not match your eye colour.
If you have blue eyes nearly all the browns will enhance your eyes. Try beige-pink eye base shadow and contour with one of the lighter browns such as taupe or medium brown-grey.
If you have brown eyes try the darker brown eye shadow pallets such as charcoal, chocolate and red-brown (mahogany) for a smoky look. Gold and tan shadows are great natural-looking contour colours, beige is always a great base colour.
Eye Liner
I so remember my first bottle of eyeliner. It came with a brush attached to the inside of the lid. The idea was to paint the shiny black liquid in a thick line close to the upper eyelashes where it was supposed to gleam all day and peel off in one long strip at night. By lunchtime most days it had flaked; and by the evening when I caught the bus home my artful creation had disintegrated to a few shreds dangling in my eyelashes!
I persevered in the name of fashion until the family cat ended my Hollywood aspirations with a leap through the bathroom window that sent the eyeliner crashing to the floor. Probably not a bad thing!
Today’s most flattering eyeliner is a pencil in a soft, beautiful colour with a melting texture that glides across the eyelids. The edges are then gently smudged into the base eye shadow already in place to give a subtle natural look.
The goal is to draw a thin line as close as possible to the eyelashes so it appears you aren’t wearing any eyeliner and your lash line is naturally dark and lush. Jet black pencils look severe on mature eyes; softer colours such as black-violet, black-gold, deep brown or smudge-black are more flattering alternatives.
The trick is to have a steady hand, a sharp pencil and a magnifying mirror. If the pencil is blunt and too rounded the resulting line will be thick and dated. You don’t need me to remind you why the magnifying mirror is a necessity!
When you’ve drawn a thin line, smudge the edges into your base coat of eye shadow with a smudging brush, a cotton tip or the edge of a foam tip eye shadow applicator for a soft and natural look.
How to draw the line
An eyeliner pencil that can be sharpened with a pencil sharpener will always provide a good pointy tip to work with, as opposed to an automatic wind-up eyeliner pencil that winds the product out of a tube, but never seems sharp enough. Make-up pencil sharpeners are available; they’re useful to sharpen lip liner pencils and eyebrow pencils too of course!
Start in the middle of the upper lid and draw tiny soft strokes as close to the eyelash roots as possible to create a fine line from the middle of your eyelid to the outer corner. If you find your little short strokes waver all over the place, draw tiny dots close together. Some make-up artists recommend drawing the line from the outer corner inwards but this is difficult to do yourself.
Go back to the middle where you began and use just a few fine strokes to extend the line in the other direction, towards the inner edge of the iris. It is best to stop there, if you go all the way to the inside corner you’ll make your eye look smaller.
Here’s a trick for eyelids that are starting to look droopy:
Go to the middle of your eyelid and draw another fine line above the one you’ve already drawn close to your lashes, from the middle to the outer corner. This creates an optical illusion making the eyes look lifted. The idea is to keep the emphasis and colour close to the iris and not focus attention on the eyelid.
If the under-eye can stand the attention (that is if you do not have puffiness, dark circles or bags beneath your eyes) draw a very fine line in among the lashes from the inner iris to the outer corner. There’s no law that says you have to use the same colour you used on your upper lids. Have a go with a brighter, lighter or totally different coloured pencil and see how you like the result.
A hint of colour will make your eyes pop:
If your eyes are green or hazel try forest green, minted green, black-violet, black- gold or chocolate eyeliner pencil.
Blue eyes look great with charcoal, navy, dark purple or dark brown eyeliner pencils or kohl.
Brown eyes are enhanced by smudge black, chocolate brown, eggplant and navy eyeliner pencils.
Always smudge and blend your eyeliners.
A pearly white, ivory, beige or icy pink coloured pencil used on the inside rim of the lower lashes will ‘open up the eyes’.
None of the following are a good look:
- A full circle of eyeliner around the eyes – too heavy.
- Extended cats-eye tails – unless you are Paris Hilton.
- Dark pencil lining the inside rim of the lower lashes visually closes the eyes and makes them look smaller. So eighties! Use a translucent white pencil on the lower rim to open the eyes up.
- More make-up applied below the eyes than applied above them.
- Bleary eyes and red eyes – along with our teeth and nails, the whites of our eyes lose their brightness and can appear cream or ivory as we age. The tiny red veins within the whites of the eyes can ‘pop’, giving a red-eyed appearance. Use eye drops to regain youthful sparkle.
Luxurious Lashes
Picking your way through the myriad of mascaras on the market to find the one for you is daunting to say the least.
Amazing mascaras claiming to add volume, length, fatness, curl or texture to your natural eyelashes are available at every price point plus the choice of colours is overwhelming!
Well, forget the colours. Cobalt blue, aquamarine, magenta and violet mascaras look fantastic on the stage, on teenage girls, and in the Mardi-Gras. Leave them there!
The ideal mascara colour for most women in their summer years is black because it subtly defines the eyes and looks natural (have you ever seen anyone with naturally green eyelashes? I don’t think so!).
If black is really not your thing, deep navy helps the whites of your eyes appear whiter and brighter.
If you are fair and black mascara is a little too harsh for your colouring try dark brown mascara.
We want our mascara to give our eyelashes length and volume. We’re after a sultry frame of long thick eye lashes to flatter us, to make us look youthful and to make us look awake! What we don’t want is a sad fringe of dated brittle-fibred clumps.
So, to get gorgeous eyelashes make your choices and follow the directions!
Make-up artists advocate curling the eyelashes prior to applying mascara. Curled lashes open up the eyes. Mini eyelash curlers are manageable by everyone.
It is a very bad idea to heat eyelash curlers with a hair dryer; it’s dangerous to have hot metal so close to the eye area.
Curl your eyelashes before you apply primer or mascara, eyelashes are prone to breaking if mascara is applied first and then an eyelash curler is used. Can you afford to lose even one eyelash?
Mascara primer is an essential thickener for thin and skimpy eyelashes. There are many brands on the market, look for one containing a built-in lash-hair conditioner designed to prepare the lashes for mascara to follow.
Primer thickens and lengthens the eyelashes and provides a smooth base for mascara to glide over. Unlike the rest of the body, we want the eyelashes to appear fat, so mascara primer is one of the few must-haves in this book!
Have you hung onto a faithful old tube of mascara that has seen better days but can’t let it go because you just know there is still some mascara left inside?
Do you run the tube under the hot tap or soak it in a cup of boiling water for a few moments to loosen the mascara clinging to the insides?
Did you know that a well maintained tube of mascara has an average life of about four months before it starts to ‘go off’?
One of the reasons mascara clings to the inside of the tube is that the formula has thickened and become sticky from being pumped. We all do it, move the wand in and out of the tube in an attempt to rid the brush of excess product or to pick up more mascara on the brush. But pumping also introduces air into the tube, dries out the product inside and makes it lumpy and clumpy. Stop pumping!
Begin mascara application strokes at the base (roots) of your eye lashes. Many of us have slipped into the habit of applying mascara from half way up our lashes, or just to the tips of our eyelashes.
Fully cover every single lash from the base to the tip.
Wiggle the brush around the base of the eyelashes and gradually draw it to the tips to visually open up the eyes. Apply as many coats as you like although usually just a couple are enough. Application to the upper eyelashes is more manageable if you tilt your head back slightly and look along your nose into the mirror.
It is just as important to apply mascara to the bottom lashes as it is to apply mascara to the top lashes to complete a full frame for the eyes.
Application to the bottom lashes is easier when you tilt your head down and look up into the mirror. The late Princess of Wales perfected this head down, eyes up, beguiling look that’s ideal for bottom lash mascara application.
If mascara smudges from the eyelashes onto the eye area, allow it to dry and then tip-sponge the smudge away with a cotton bud or an eye shadow foam applicator dipped in a little skin toner.
Water resistant mascara is much easier to remove with cleansing creams or make-up remover pads than Waterproof mascara which is exactly that - water proof. Use oil-based eye make-up remover to remove Waterproof mascara.
Cosmetic houses constantly reinvent mascara with fat brushes and thin brushes, long wands and short wands, and formulas to volumize, lengthen, separate, curl, thicken or fatten your eyelashes. Look for those magic words – “thicken” or “fatten” when you are buying mascara!
Eyelash Tinting
Is spiky mascara not the look for you? Perhaps you prefer a silky, natural look but feel your eyelash colour is too light? The remedy may well be to have them tinted!
Many beauticians and hairdressers provide eyelash tinting services at a reasonable cost.
Do-it-yourself eyelash tinting kits are available from mass retailers, but tinting formulas can irritate the eyes so it really is a treatment best left to the professionals who know what they are doing.
Faking It
False eyelashes are fabulous! They are fabulous for filling in gaps where the natural eyelashes have fallen out, fabulous to ramp up the ante from au naturel to outrageously glamorous; and fabulous to bring sexy drama to the eyes!
Contrary to popular perception, false eyelashes are not the domain of the young and the beautiful! There is no reason why mature women shouldn’t wear them.
Eyelashes with names like “Von Teese, Marilyn and Miss Flirty” are designed for everybody! There are some false eyelashes such as the heavy, sultry, ultra thick lashes with diamonds and jewels along the lash line that are like coloured mascara and best left in the Mardi-Gras.
Individual fake lashes look youthful. They come in clusters of about ten lashes or on a strip that you can trim to your own requirements.
Individual lashes are easy to apply. All you do is take a cluster from the pack with tweezers and dip the end into a tiny blob of eyelash grip then glue it in among your own eyelashes. If you’re concerned the individual lashes can be detected as fake, just trim them to the length of your own lashes and no one will be any the wiser.
Add a few clusters to the outer corner of your eyes, about five clusters per eye are generally enough. Brush mascara over to meld the fake lashes with your own lashes.
Fake eyelashes are easily removed. Moisten the base with glue remover and simply peel them off at the end of the night and put them back into the box they came in and then remove your eye make-up as usual. Most faux eyelashes can be re-used around ten times before they become too tatty to wear.
That's it for today! We're going to discuss Luscious Lips next time , covering all aspects of lip care from your most flattering lipstick colour to how to apply lip liner. Talking about 'how to apply', there is the lowdown on how to apply make-up to look up-to-date, and a section on wow eyebrows, plus all the retail details for make-up. Until then, kisses, Dawn!
