Permanently Beautiful

The desire to improve their appearance is what leads most women to choose permanent makeup. Imperfections, scarring, convenience and aging are the four primary reasons women choose to undergo permanent makeup procedures. Watch the video and hear two women tell their stories. 

Imperfections. Nature is an imperfect creator. Most of us have a small facial flaw that eats away at our self-confidence. We may feel that our eyebrows are too sparse or our lips too thin. We may have been over-zealous tweezers and long for the full, beautifully-shaped brows of our youth. Permanent makeup can fill in and arch sparse brows. It can make thin lips appear fuller and make overly full lips more proportional. In the hands of a skilled permanent makeup artist, permanent cosmetics can perfect what nature created.

Scarring. Expertly matching cosmetic pigments to natural skin coloring, an expert permanent makeup artist can camouflage facial scars and make them disappear. Unlike makeup, permanent cosmetics will not wear off or wash off. Your scar will remain hidden.

Age. As we age, our skin becomes sallow and the youthful pink of our lips fades. Permanent makeup can restore youthful color to lips and cheeks and add definition to the eyes. And when arthritis or failing eyesight makes it difficult to apply makeup, permanent makeup is always perfectly applied.

Convenience. When you wear permanent makeup, you gain the time you spend putting on makeup, touching it up and taking it off. Cleanse, moisturize and you’re out the door, looking beautiful 24/7.

Age is called the great equalizer. The natural aging of our face and body is something we all struggle with. Some people embrace their wrinkles; others banish them with Botox or cosmetic surgery. But the search for beauty as we approach and move past middle age need not be so polarized. Permanent makeup offers some attractive choices for people at both ends of the aging/beauty argument.

You don’t have to let those first gray hairs and tiny wrinkles brand you as “old.” There are a few permanent makeup tricks you can use to fool Mother Nature. To create a more youthful appearance, focus on improving skin condition, eyes, eyebrows and cheeks.

• Skin condition. Light, airy moisturizers were wonderful when you were young, but skin becomes drier as we age. Switch to a heavier, creamy moisturizer with more plumping power.
• Eyes. Expertly-applied permanent eyeliner adds crisp definition and youthful sparkle to your eyes. 
• Eyebrows. Thick, dark, luxurious eyebrows are a sign of youth. Permanent eyebrows can restore rich color to age-faded brows and fill in thinning brows, giving you a more youthful appearance.
• Cheeks. When we’re young, our cheeks are naturally rosy. A subtle blush of permanent makeup across your cheekbones restores the rosy look of youth.

Permanent Eye Makeup

If you wear contact lenses, you know how painful it can be when a flake of mascara or a particle of eyeliner drops into your eye and becomes trapped behind your contact lens. Instantly, you’re tearing up and squinting in pain. Your eyes tear uncontrollably, a natural reaction to foreign matter that helps the eye cleanse itself. Unfortunately, all those tears start dissolving your eye makeup, making matters even worse and smearing contacts with a hazy film of makeup. It can be a struggle just to remove your contact lens so you can clear out the debris. All this from a nearly microscopic flake of makeup!

Makeup experts recommend putting on your eye makeup before you put in your contact lenses to help prevent such problems, although poor vision (the reason you wear contacts!) can make that tricky. To conceal the redness experienced by many contact lens wearers, try using a beige-colored eye pencil to line the inside rim of your eyes. Eyeliner can be applied directly over the beige pencil. Using liquid eyeliners and cream or gel eye shadows, which are less apt to flake during wear, instead of pencils and powders will also help prevent makeup from interfering with contact lenses. 

Artistically applied permanent makeup is the only foolproof eye makeup solution for contact lens wearers. With permanent eyeliner and permanent eye shadow, you never have to worry about applying eye makeup and your eyes always look naturally gorgeous.

It’s hard to believe but the ’80s are back! Big hair, football-size shoulder pads, kohl-lined eyes and ruby red lips. In the 1980s women came into their own in the workplace. Clothing fashions, hair styles and makeup reflected women’s new-found power on the job and served to augment her presence in heretofore male-dominated board rooms. Fashions were forceful and imposing and makeup had to be bold and colorful to stand out. In the 1980s women wore more makeup and eye makeup and lip colors were darker and more noticeable than they had been before. It was a look that commanded attention.

Research has shown that every 30 years fashion styles repeat themselves but with a new twist on the original. Today’s makeup styles give the brassy, look at me ’80s a  softer, more sensual appearance that exudes self-confidence and says we’ve arrived and we’re here to stay! The dark kohl-lined Goth eyes of the 1980s have been softened into far more sensuous smoky eyes. Lips are still red; but instead of the bold, brassy reds of the ’80s, lip colors are softer, warmer, earthier reds. It’s the lip liner not the bright color that calls attention to the lips today; but instead of matching liner and lipstick colors, liners are going more brown this season. And put the lip gloss away during the day. Matte-finish lip stick says I’m in charge at the office.

Permanent makeup can give you the perfectly applied lip liner that is the base for today’s powerful, sensuous red lips.

With the last chocolate bar a fading memory, it’s time to put away the Halloween grease paint and start thinking about your holiday look. Thanksgiving marks the start of holiday festivities. Dress up cocktail parties, family gatherings, office bashes, potlucks with friends, dancing ’til dawn, shopping junkets with the girls – a girl’s got to look good! So what’s hot for the holidays? Sex, smoke and shimmer!

Soft, smoky eyes get the holiday touch with a little shimmery shadow on the lid. Carefully apply then smudge a thin line of deep brown or gray eyeliner to top and bottom lashes. Stay away from black; you don’t want sepulcher eyes (Halloween is over). Add mascara, a swipe of shimmery blush to your cheeks and finish with a light lipstick or gloss. Stay away from dark lips to keep the focus on your eyes. Permanent eyeliner adds depth to your eyes. Smudge a little eyeliner on top to smoke up your eyes.

Go sexy this holiday with deep red lips. Line lips first, then use a lipstick brush to fill with your favorite show-stopping red color. Shimmer a sparkling blush along your cheek bones. For this look, keep the focus on your sexy lips by pairing with a light matte eye shadow that’s close to your skin tone and a swipe of mascara. Permanent makeup creates a perfect lip line for the sexiest lips this holiday. Create permanent lips in your favorite lipstick color or apply new shades over the ideal background for your skin tone.

Longer, darker, fuller lashes croon the commercials for lash-extending mascaras. Their siren song seems to promise that if you swipe their product on your eyelashes, men will fall at your feet! What the commercials don’t tell you is that fibers, chemicals and dyes in mascaras can cause serious eye problems in some people, particularly those who suffer skin or chemical allergies. Bits of mascara or extension fibers can flake off eyelashes and fall into the eye, creating a serious abrasion hazard for contact wearers that can damage the cornea. And mascara wands result in numerous eye injuries every year. I mean, who hasn’t poked themselves in the eye on occasion trying to apply mascara? Consider yourself lucky if you didn’t do some permanent damage. Despite the fact that Johnny Depp has signed on for Pirates of the Caribbean IV, the eye-patch look is only in at Halloween!

There is a better, safer way to call attention to your eyes. Permanent eyelash enhancement, particularly when paired with permanent eye liner, calls attention to your eyes without putting them at risk. Permanent makeup can make lashes appear thicker, lusher and fuller without eye makeup. Permanent eye makeup means your eyes look fabulous day — and night. No running eyeliner when you’re sweating at the gym, no mascara dotted cheeks when you wake up in the morning, no more embarrassing dark smudges and no need to “freshen up” as you move from office to night life — just 100% beautiful eyes 24/7!

The sensual Smoky Eyes that super model Heidi Klum shows off to such spectacular effect are the ultimate in dramatic eye makeup. Softly smudged shadows surround and feather out from the eyes, creating dramatic depth and making it seem that your eyes truly are the window to your romantic soul. It’s a look meant for romantic, candlelit dinners in exotic restaurants or red carpet nights dancing at the hottest new club. But it’s not an easy look to achieve. Start with too thick a line of eyeliner or get a little heavy-handed with the eye shadow and you have raccoon eyes, disaster unless you’re going Goth to a midnight showing of Rocky Horror.

Here’s how to create Smoky Eyes without the raccoon effect. Start with a very fine line of black eyeliner. For perfectly outlined eyes every time, consider permanent makeup eyeliner. Thicken the line slightly at the middle of the eye to create depth. Don’t use black for the eye shadow. Runway makeup artist Linda Hay creates Heidi’s smoky eyes using soft gray or chocolate shadows. Dark greens also work, but avoid blue shadows. Choose two shades of the same color, a dark and a lighter, neutral tone. Sweep the darkest shade from your lash line to the eyelid crease. Apply the lighter tone from the crease to the brow bone. With a cotton swab, stroke gray or medium-dark brown shadow under your lower lash line. Finish with three coats of black volumizing mascara on the top lashes only.

As women age, looking good may not mean looking young. Trying too hard to look young can come off as silly or just plain sad. It could be just an outfit that is too juvenile like a halter top atop a pair of Daisy Dukes on a 50 year-old. Or it could be something far worse – too much cosmetic surgery.

Think of fish lips Meg Ryan who is almost unrecognizable now at age 47 compared to sexy-at-63 Helen Mirren who clearly has not had a facelift.

And under no circumstances, should any woman consider cosmetic surgery DIY territory. We recently read a sad tale of a 54 year-old woman who suffered complications from trying to perform cosmetic surgery on herself.

The 54-year-old woman declined to give her name, but told reporters that she ordered a $10 vial of liquid silicone online and injected it into her lips and cheeks a month ago.

She underwent corrective surgery to undo the red swollen results of her DIY project. But because doctors aren’t sure exactly what she injected, they said it could take multiple procedures to fix.

Her photo is so scary that it makes Meg Ryan seem like, well, Helen Mirren.

But even Helen Mirren probably gets permanent eyeliner for a little extra oomph. Permanent makeup is much more affordable than a facelift, much less risky and helps you look your best at any age – without looking fake or silly.

Hot, steamy, summer nights can make straight fine hair go limp and curly hair frizz.  What to do when it’s time to step out for a special summer evening?  Just think, what would Audrey do?

Of course, we’re referring to the one and only Audrey Hepburn. And of course, she’d wear an updo as she did in her classic film “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.”  Here’s how to get the look.

Get the look:
•    Step one: Blow hair out straight. Add body by setting it in big rollers for 10 minutes.
•    Step two: Pull hair back and twist it up into a loose twist. Clip into place. Pin up any short pieces in the back.
•    Step three: Pull out a section in the front so that it frames your face, which is what makes this style fluid. Spritz in a volume-building finishing mist for hold.

Wear it with..
•    Clip in a bow barrette to take this style from day to night.
•    Add at least one piece of glitzy jewelry
•    Complete the Audrey glam look with permanent eyeliner and permanent eyebrow makeup.  You don’t need a Hollywood makeup artist when you’ve got permanent makeup. And maybe a pair of long over-the-elbow black gloves?

Finding a humidity-proof hairdo for a summer wedding can be a challenge. Get inspired by the gorgeous red-carpet styles of stars like Becki Newton and Eva Longoria Parker and find a ‘do that will keep you looking picture perfect from the walk down the aisle through the reception send-off.

A lot of time and detail went into choosing your dress, ring, flowers, and even your hairstyle. Don’t let your makeup take a backseat. Take the time to go through magazines and pull out makeup styles that you really like, even tear out the ones you really hate.  It could be how a certain feature is played up, or that great lipstick color, or how the skin glows, or even how they used way too much eyeliner. All this is easy to say and show with pictures. It helps tremendously to show you what you like with pictures rather than endlessly describing it. This gives anyone helping you, whether it’s a make-up artist or your best friend or a salesperson at department store counter, the best way to see what you like and don’t like. Remember, two people’s ideas of pink lipstick could be completely different. There is a lot of truth in the adage that says “a picture is worth a thousand words.” It really gives a lot more information with a visual sense.

With all the variables, getting permanent makeup will relieve you of some of the nerve-wracking guesswork. Permanent eyeliner, lip liner and eyebrows can go a long way toward making the big day really picture perfect.