Hi everyone. Apologies for the extended posting delay. Some unexpected obligations have come up, and I’m working on sequencing and scheduling my various activities to make everything fit.
For the moment, allow me to close the loop on the Sheer Black Smoky Eye series that I initiated a couple of weeks ago. I opened the series with the basic ‘face’–a smoky eye nude cheeks and a nude lip. I thought it would be fun to take a look at the same basic face, changing only the lip shade–nothing else.
This week’s Beauty Reflects Podcast includes a bit of background on recent looks, along with a discussion of recent feedback and the way your feedback is influencing my thinking about future looks.
We seem to be living in kind of a golden age for makeup artists, don’t we? Of course there have been extraordinary makeup artists around for decades, but I feel really privileged to live in an era when so much of their expertise is available through online videos, Instagram, and an enormous amount of high-quality beauty journalism all over the web.
Hi everyone. I’ve returned from my work-related travels of the past week, so I thought I’d share a (very mini) travelogue and give you a quick update on the content I have planned for the week. Continue reading
As the days get brighter, my yearning for cheery bright colors gets stronger. I really enjoyed wearing a white-based blue eyeshadow in a recent, sixties-inspired look. Now let’s see how a pair of fluoro pinks–pinks with a hefty dose of white–turned out on my face!
I’ve been looking at the white-based makeup in my collection lately, thinking about how to take advantage of its best properties while steering clear of its pitfalls. The neatest thing about white-based makeup? It really stands out against the skin! The worst thing about white-based makeup? Well…it really stands out against the skin.
Hello from the road! I’m traveling for work this week, but I couldn’t miss showing you how I wore this teal-green and petal-pink look for St. Patrick’s Day!
Ahhh, how the hint of warmth in the air and the brightening light are putting me in the mood for spring! Earlier in the week, I was digging around in my photos of blooms and blossoms, searching for natural inspiration a lá Alice Lane. I settled on soft teal-blues and greens for the eyes, paired with petal pinks for lips and cheeks.
How lovely it is to frolic outdoors in balmy, 50-degree Fahrenheit weather! After a long, dark, and snowy winter, anything above freezing feels like summer. I want to break out beach chairs and Mai Tais.
In keeping with this spirit of early-spring friskiness, let’s see how this purple smoky eye touched with platinum and paired with creamy orange tones turned out on my face!
After spending some time with bright citrus colors, I wanted to explore another side of orange–the creamier, peachier side of a zesty shade. I realized, though, that as soon as I dialed back the intensity of orange to a softer, peachier tone, it became more of a backdrop or frame for other elements of the look. So, although a Creamsicle-soft orange lip and cheek was the starting point of this look–the touchstone that determined my other choices–in the end, it’s really the eye makeup that’s the center of attention in the final look.
I love vintage-inspired looks using modern products. Makeup technology seems to have advanced by leaps and bounds in recent years; it’s so much fun to see nineties naturals, eighties brights, seventies glow, sixties mod, fifties polish–all taking shape using sheer, blendable makeup textures that melt into the skin.
As the temperature zooms up to….well, to around 20 degrees Fahrenheit today…I find myself consumed by thoughts of spring. As the days get longer and the brighter light runs right up against my winter pallor, I’m hungrier than ever for softer, brighter, citrus-y shades.
As I raise my umbrella to fend off the freezing rain, it’s a little hard to believe that spring is almost upon us. But the days are getting longer, and the light is getting brighter–and that’s when my yearning for sweet pops of moisturizing color gets too strong to ignore!
March 1 is the first day of meteorological spring in my neck of the woods, to which I can only say: Yay!
As the daylight grows brighter, I feel a hunger for citrus–juicy citrus fruit to eat and juicy citrus shades to wear in my makeup. This week, I thought I would explore a couple of citrusy shades with you, starting with that very flattering and easy-to-wear citrus shade: pink grapefruit.
As a girl who wears glasses, I often go with bright lip shades in the evening, rather than focusing on the eyes. But for this look, inspired by Alice Lane’s conviction that what looks good in nature will look good in makeup, I thought I’d try something different.
Beauty Reflects 