Permanently Beautiful

Twilight

With Eclipse, the latest edition of the Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga, opening in theaters across the country, Twi-hards are rushing to mimic Bella Swan’s gorgeous look of pensive, brooding innocence. But Bella’s pale face and sensuous features have captured a following well beyond the dark, midnight circles of vampire fans. Kristen Stewart, Bella’s real life alter ego, is a fair-skinned natural beauty worthy of emulation.

Twilight makeup artists capitalized on Kristen’s natural beauty, using neutral shades so the actress would look like she wasn’t wearing makeup on screen. As anyone who has attempted to go sans makeup knows, there’s a big difference between no makeup and artfully applied makeup that only looks like you’re not wearing any cosmetics. It’s the difference you get when you wear permanent cosmetics. Permanent makeup artistically defines and enhances your natural features beautifully. Without apply a drop of makeup, you look like you just left the salon.

What tricks do makeup artists use to create Kristen’s natural on-screen look? Keep shine at bay with a blotting pressed powder in a light shade. Prep eyelids with neutral primer, then apply three neutral eye shadow shades to create depth, using very slightly different neutrals on the lid, crease and under the brow. Line with dark brown eyeliner and finish with a coat of black mascara. Highlight cheekbones with barely colored powdered blush and lips with creamy-finished brownish plum lipstick. All that’s left to do is practice your smoldering gaze.

Wedding Day Makeup

Every woman wants to look her most beautiful on her wedding day. When you walk down the aisle, you want to take your sweetheart’s breath away. Most brides want their wedding makeup to be little different from their everyday look, a little more WOW! They just aren’t sure what that looks like.

Wedding makeup artists offer this advice for choosing a perfect wedding day look:

• To determine your style, page through wedding and fashion magazines and look at the models’ faces. Tear out pictures you’re attracted to. Decide what specifically you like about these makeup examples. Is the chaste nude lips or dangerously long eyelashes? 
• Pull the different makeup elements into an overall look with your dress and hair. What image do you want to portray on your wedding day? Sexy, casual, flirty, princess? Choose lip and eye makeup colors that enhance the way you want to feel.
• Make sure your foundation shade matches your face and neck. If you plan to use a spray tan or bronzer, practice before your big day and adjust your foundation color to match.
• Stick with natural shades on your nails to keep the focus on your face and dress. Nails that match your wedding colors are fine for bridesmaids but a distraction on the bride.

Permanent makeup is the best way to ensure that your makeup is perfectly beautiful and beautifully perfect on your wedding day and everyday.

Working women who have struggled for decades to crash through the glass ceiling may be annoyed to find that hard work, long hours and superior business acumen may not be enough to propel them up the corporate ladder. A new research study by finance professors at Duke University found that facial traits play an important role in whether you move up the corporate ladder and can affect your chances of occupying that sweet corner office reserved for the company CEO. The only good news about the Duke study, titled “A Corporate Beauty Contest,” is that beauty parameters seem to apply equally to men and women. Males who lacked certain facial features were as unlikely as their female counterparts to rise in the corporate ranks.

The Duke study asked 2,000 people to rate the facial traits of corporate CEOs, non-CEOs and small business owners. Researchers found that CEOs judged to look competent earned better salaries and held loftier positions even when their companies did not perform as well as others.

Executives with strong jaw lines, small, piecing eyes and low, commanding eyebrows were judged to be competent executive and rose highest in the corporate hierarchy. Less competent executives were baby-faced with large, round eyes, high eyebrows and small chins. Although judged to be less competent, they were seen as warmer, more likable and more trustworthy.

Artistically applied permanent makeup can improve facial characteristics and camouflage facial defects to give you a more commanding appearance and enhance your climb up the corporate ladder.

Plastic surgeon Dr. Drew Ordon and OB/GYN Dr. Lisa Masterson emphasized that permanent makeup is much more than a medical procedure or cosmetic tattoo — it is also an art form. To achieve beautiful results, permanent makeup must be applied by a permanent makeup practitioner who is an accomplished artist in addition to being highly skilled. The doctors’ advice:

1. Choose a permanent makeup expert who is well experienced in the procedure you want to have done.

2. Choose a permanent makeup artist who has demonstrated exceptional artistic ability in her work.

The face is the canvas on which the permanent makeup artist creates her art. Nationally recognized permanent makeup expert Melany Whitney combines world-class technical expertise with impressive artistic talent. Below are before and after photos of one of Melany’s patients. This woman exhibited many of the same issues as the woman who received permanent makeup on The Doctors. Very fair, her eyebrows and lashes were nearly invisible. Pale lips the same shade as her skin tone gave her a sallow appearance. The difference after Melany’s artful application of permanent makeup is nothing less than stunning!  

On NBC’s The Doctors yesterday, permanent makeup took center stage as the doctors discussed the benefits permanent makeup offers many women. As obstetrician/gynecologist Dr. Lisa Masterson and plastic surgeon and reconstructive surgery expert Dr. Drew Ordon pointed out, permanent makeup offers time-saving advantages for busy women from soccer moms to corporate executives who want to look their best but don’t have time to spend on makeup. Permanent makeup also meets the beauty and grooming needs of women who are allergic to makeup; people who suffer small motor impairment caused by arthritis, disease or aging and find it difficult to apply makeup; and women with vision problems who cannot see well enough to apply makeup.

The audience observed permanent cosmetic procedures being performed on 35-year-old mom and pilot Trish. Extremely fair, Trish had very light eyebrows with some small gaps in the hair growth and nearly invisible eyelashes. With facial skin, lips and eye lids nearly the same tone, Trish’s face lacked color and definition, leaving her looking sallow and washed-out without makeup. Using permanent cosmetics, Trish’s eyebrows were darkened and the gaps filled with hair-like brush strokes. Permanent eyeliner was added to bring out Trish’s eyes and add definition to her lashes. Permanent lip color in a shade somewhat darker than her skin tone was applied to define her lips. The transformation was stunning. Trish went from mousy to vibrant right before the audience’s eyes!

Next time: Permanent makeup advice from The Doctors

Your eyebrows frame your face. They are the portals to your eyes, pulling people into their limpid depths. Eyebrows come in all shapes and sizes. Today, lush, naturally-shaped eyebrows are fashionable, but in times past barely there, pencil thin brows have been in vogue. Today, we prefer eyebrows that follow a gently-sloping natual contour, but past fashions have included straight-lined beetle brows, exotic slanted brows and high-peaked, overly-arched eyebrows. Unfortunately, eyebrows perpetually plucked and trained to narrow or highly-stylized shapes may balk and refuse to regrow when we wish to adopt the natural look popular today.

Other forces can also impact the way our eyebrows grow and look. Many women have little understanding of natural eyebrow shape and over-pluck their eyebrows. In time, plucked hairs may refuse to grow back, leaving eyebrows that start a bit too far from the nose, arch too thinly above the eye or end too soon in an abrupt taper. Many men and women pull and tug at their eyebrows and eyelashes when they’re nervous. In it’s most severe form, Trichotillomania sufferers from may pluck their eyebrows and eyelashes bald. Age, too, affects hair growth and may leave eyebrows thin and patchy looking.

Inadequate eyebrows are a problem for both men and women, but, fortunately, it is a problem solved by permanent makeup and permanent makeup for men. Permanent eyebrows can correct eyebrow flaws, hide eyebrow scars, fill in thin or irregularly-shaped eyebrows and create the illusion of natural, healthy, well-formed brows.

Drew Barrymore

Have you seen the new commercials for Cover Girl Outlast Lipstain starring the always darling, inimitable Drew Barrymore? Highlighting Drew’s sunny smile, Cover Girl’s latest lip cover looks fresh and carefree, the perfect choice for easy, breezy summer wear. Light and pretty, the new lip stains introduced by Cover Girl, Revlon, Sephora, Candy and others brush your lips with light-weight color that lasts all day. An interesting new lip color product, lip stains feel less heavy on the lip and less “cakey” than traditional lipsticks, yet they provide a more penetrating lip cover than sheer lip glosses. Actually, what they seem to mimic most is permanent lip color.

Women who wear permanent lip color never have to worry about their lipstick being fresh, leaving those unsightly lipstick rings on glasses or smudging some hunky guy’s shirt collar with telltale lipstick smears. Artistically applied permanent cosmetics are used to saturate lips with permanent color that won’t wear off! Permanent lip color is the ultimate long-lasting lip stain, making your lips look fresh and kissably lush 24 hours a day.

Permanent lip color can be applied with or without lip liner. You can choose a shade that enhances your natural lip color or bring in your signature lipstick shade for matching. When applying permanent makeup to lips, nationally known permanent makeup artist Melany Whitney can repair lip line flaws, add fullness to thin lips and add symmetry to problem lips. Permanent makeup gives you lips that are always beautiful.

Summer Makeup

Sizzling hot summer days are just around the corner. Keeping your makeup extra-light and easy will banish sweaty rivulets and keep you looking fresh and cool while you enjoy summer’s many outdoor activities. The trick to keeping makeup light is to choose multi-use beauty products. Keep these cosmetics in your summer makeup bag:

• Tinted moisturizers with added sun screen provide light, all-over cosmetic coverage that hydrates skin, nourishes it with antioxidants and blocks skin-damaging UV rays.
• Deeply pigmented cream stains in pinks, roses or bronzes give a sexy pucker to lips, a rosy glow to cheeks and act as a long-lasting eye shadow when applied to eyelids.
• To camouflage dark under-eye circles and the occasional annoying blemish, choose sheer, creamy concealers that brush on with a sponge applicator. These super light-weight concealers make great primers under eye makeup too and will give your shadow longer staying power.
• Tame humid hair frizzies with a protective hair gloss serum made to protect hair from the heat of dryers, curlers and irons. These products hydrate hair and will give your tresses extra shine.

Of course, for the ultimate light-weight, no-fuss, always-perfect, sweat-proof makeup, permanent makeup is the best choice. Just moisturize and you’re ready to go! When you wear artistically applied permanent makeup, you can move through hot summer days with confidence knowing you always look your best.

The nice weather has brought out waves of pink-shirted walkers and runners bobbing their way through American towns. They wind through city streets in their pink shirts to support women who are fighting breast cancer and to raise money for local cancer hospitals and the American Cancer Society. Nearly everyone in America has shared a family member’s battle with cancer or has supported a friend who is fighting against this insidious disease. Every year, breast cancer strikes 1in 8 women and a number of men. An estimated 192,370 new cases of invasive breast cancer were reported among American women in 2009, in addition to 62,280 new cases of non-invasive breast cancer. Among U.S. men, 1,990 new cases of invasive breast cancer were reported.

When breast cancer necessitates the removal of a breast, the decision can be traumatic, affecting a woman’s core view of herself. Our breasts are part of what define us as women. Losing a breast to mastectomy makes many breast cancer survivors feel less feminine and less confident about their appearance. Long experience working with breast cancer survivors led paramedical cosmetic tattoo expert Melany Whitney to develop a realistic three-dimensional nipple and areola restoration technique that helps women regain their feeling of femininity after a mastectomy. Click here to find out more.