Permanently Beautiful

Every week we all love to hate Gossip Girl fashionista Leighton Meester. But love her or hate her, we all adore checking out her posh wardrobe and glam make-up. Lately she’s been right on trend wearing a semi-matte, deep-hued lipstick. As our girl Blair demonstrates, in order to pull off a so-bold-it-could-stop-traffic kind of color, it’s best to keep the rest of your makeup toned down so you don’t overwhelm the look.

Is a sassy lipstick look something you might want to duplicate? If so, follow these tips on how to keep such a hot color looking very cool:

• Apply lip liner in a shade similar to your lipstick. Outline, following the natural shape of your lips, and then fill in completely. By using liner as a base, your color will wear longer and bolder. It helps prevent color from bleeding, too.
• Using a lip brush, apply lipstick. Start in the center, working out as you go. Fix any harsh lines or mistakes with a Q-tip.

Or you could make it a whole lot easier and be sure your lips always look Gossip Girl good with lip liner and fill-in color added to your lips with permanent make-up. No fumbling for lip gloss and a mirror. No awkward re-application in public. No bleeding color or smears. Your lips always look luscious. The lip liner can even be tattooed on the outer edge of your lips for a fuller poutier look. XOXO.

How do celebs look so good year after year?  Take Sandra Bullock. Remember her in Speed with Keanu Reeves? That was 1994. Check her out in her current starring role as role as aggressive executive Margaret Tate in The Proposal.  She looks awesome, totally fit and gorgeous without the uber biceps look Madonna sports these days.

But according to InStyle magazine, Bullock’s trim shape has everything to do with working out. Apparently she does a lot of Pilates, kick boxing and weight training in L.A. with a trainer. When she’s at her Texas ranch, she runs or bikes.

She spent 3 to 4 days a week with a trainer to prepare her for The Proposal.  In order to look sleek and slim in tailored power suits, her trainer had her doing pylometrics along with her weight training, Pilates and boxing. Bullock says the variety keeps her workout fresh and helps her maintain motivation to stay healthy and fit, but don’t think that’s her only incentive. She knows she needs to work it in order to look good on film.  Just like you need to work out to look good in your Facebook photos or YouTube videos.  These days we’re all on film.

No time to work out?  Something’s gotta give. There’s no faking fitness. But ease your time crunch and make more time for crunches with permanent makeup. It’s faster to dash from gym to office if you can skip all that careful eyeliner, eyebrow and lip liner application.  With permanent makeup, you’re always good to go.

Here’s a list of people I never want to see in a wedding flick again: Julia Roberts, Jennifer Lopez, Kate Hudson, Matthew McConaughey, Cameron Diaz – and Anne Hathaway’s getting close.

But we’re halfway through June, so we can safely assume Hollywood has no more wedding movies up its digital sleeve. However, out here in the real world there are still plenty of June weddings to go.

If one of them is yours, congratulations. Now do yourself a favor and get some permanent makeup. You’ll be stressed out enough. Do you really need to worry about eye makeup and lipstick? With permanent makeup, that’s all taken care of.

Here are several more reasons why it’s a great idea to face your wedding day with a face made gorgeous with permanent makeup:

No makeup to drip black rivulets onto your white gown if you get teary-eyed at the altar.

Wedding photos

Wedding night. I repeat, wedding night.

Honeymoon – especially if the honeymoon involves snorkeling or otherwise plunging into large quantities of water, salty or chlorinated.

On that special wedding day, every bride wants to look her very best and be at her most beautiful, but presenting your best face can be a little daunting.  How do you make sure your wedding makeup stays on all day, looking flawless in your wedding photos, and manage to make you feel like a model, but still look like you?

Easy. Permanent makeup. Trust me, later when you’re putting together your wedding and honeymoon scrapbook and pleased with how terrific you look in all the photos, you’ll be very glad you did.<-->

If you haven’t used a product or a tool in a month, toss it, says celebrity makeup artist Mally Roncal.  Ditto for multiples of similar colors. Instead of carrying around two, three or 10 pink glosses, keep only the one you reach for most.

There are no expiration dates on makeup, but experts advise to estimate the age of a product from the date it was opened. Toss any makeup that has developed a funny smell, because that indicates bacteria, dermatologists say.

Bacteria can set in as makeup deteriorates and cause an infection. If the bacteria enters the eye, conjunctivitis, also known as pink-eye can develop.

While throwing out unused makeup may seem wasteful, ending up in the doctor’s office with an infection can be very time consuming and possibly painful. Yet a survey by the American College of Optometrists found that two-thirds of all women used eye makeup that was more than two years old.

If you want to make a fresh start, experts recommend packing these essentials:  a double-duty cheek and lip stain, black eyeliner to transition from day to night, mascara, concealer and an eyelash curler.

You can really de-clutter your make-up bag by getting yourself inked with permanent make-up.  No more need to carry around eye-liner, brow pencil, lip liner pencil and lip gloss. Talk about lightening up.  And you’ll no longer have to possibly risk car accidents by swiveling car side mirrors and rearview mirrors to the angle you need to reapply your make-up. With permanent make-up you’re always good to go.

In the 1950s and 1960s, tattoos signified rebellion against middle-class conformity, according to historian Jonathan Zimmerman. They were associated them with street gangs, motorcycle clubs, ex-cons and drunks. In 1959, the National Education Association advised schools that “potential juvenile delinquents” could be identified as “those with male kin who are tattooed.”

And it was mostly males who got inked, not females. In a culture of straight-laced Organization Men, tattoos came to embody a kind of rough-hewn, frontier-style masculinity. That’s why Philip Morris USA Inc. decided to adorn its Marlboro Man – the epitome of 1950s machismo – with a small piece of body art on his hand. “We wished to show a man who, during some moment – some loose moment – got himself tattooed,” an advertising executive explained.

Fast-forward to earlier this year, when toymaker Mattel Inc. released its Totally Stylin’ Tattoos Barbie doll. It comes with a set of tattoo stickers that can be placed anywhere on her body, plus a tattoo gun that allows children to ink the doll – or themselves.

That tells you all you need to know about the changed cultural meaning of the American tattoo. It has become just as common among women as among men. Most of all, it has gone 100 percent mainstream. If even Barbie is getting inked, and it’s totally stylin’, we can be sure that there’s nothing remotely rebellious about it.

That could be the best news of all, if you’re still debating about yourself and tattoos. If you get inked, you won’t be defying social propriety. As tattoos become more accepted, indeed, it will be unusual to find someone who doesn’t have one.

That’s why the heavily tattooed ex-rocker and reality-show star Ozzy Osbourne warned his own daughter against body ink. “To be unique, don’t get a tattoo,” Osbourne urged. “Because everybody else has got tattoos.” Of course, his daughter got one anyway.

A subtle and gorgeous way to get inked is with permanent make-up. You can flaunt it or keep it hushed as your beauty secret.

Summer’s just around the corner. And along with summer fun comes the heat and humidity that can wreak havoc with your hair. Here are a few great summer hair care ideas we culled from places like InStyle:

Frizz-Free Curls

 If you’re lucky enough to have natural curls like Beyonce, flaunt them. Avoid frizz by simply adding an anti-frizz serum to your morning hair routine. Then gently scrunches the hair while blow drying on low with a diffuser. Don’t comb it out! Let it be natural and sexy. 

Long-Lasting Braids

 Drew Barrymore and Charlize Theron recently joined the long list of stars sporting braids this season. Braids look cute straight down or pinned up. No matter how you wear them, braids will hold better and longer if you start out with wet hair, use a stronger gel than normal and spray with a little hair spray.

Straight Hair

 Celebrity hairstylists say the key to straight hair in the summer is a ceramic wet-to-dry flat iron. First, apply a protecting spray to damp hair and then use the iron. The iron helps lock in moisture and fight flyaways. Bonus tip: After using the iron, apply the spray again on dry hair to help protect against the sun’s UV rays.

 Summer beauty is no sweat with permanent make-up. It won’t melt away in the heat, dissolve into your sunscreen or disappear in the water.  With luscious lips, gorgeous eyebrows and defined eyes, you’ll be totally hot but in a good way.