Beauty Bits and Tips:  a few more beauty hints from us

The days may still be warm, but my calendar tells me that Fall is fast approaching.  One of my rites of Fall is to update my "wardrobes" of clothes and make-up for the new season.  With this in mind, I checked out some of the upcoming trends and found: 

• Shades of plums, wines, and berries abound.

• Green, part of the Spring/Summer look, has found its way onto the Fall face.

• There are touches of blue being shown.

• Gold is a theme, particularly as an accent color.

• Red lipstick is making a come back in certain looks.

• Burnt Rose blush is being shown in some lines.

To give you some examples, Paul and Joe are using both  bordeaux and green in their eye shadow collection.  Nars is showing shades of purple throughout their collection along with green eye shadow and a burnt rose blush.  Smashbox's collection is glowing with gold.  Chanel is showing a fire red lipstick and nail polish, and Dior's new eye shadow quartet puts it all together with a combination of silver, blue, green, and gold.

Getting The Look

Having checked out the various options, I went through my makeup box and picked out some colors that seemed to fit with the Fall palette.  However, I wanted some professional advice about how to get a look that was both current and would flatter me (dark hair and eyes and fair skin with yellow undertones). I was lucky enough to meet with New York City makeup artist Wendy Levitt who was up to the challenge. I told Wendy that  I would like to have two looks -- one with purple tones and one with greens. Wendy started by going through the products I had already chosen from my own collection and picked two Laura Mercier eye shadows (Chambord a plummy, purple with some shimmer and Sherazade a shimmery sage green) as the basis of each of the looks. She also picked out my Laura Mercier Nectar blush, a light peach, that she wanted to use as part of my fall eye palette rather than as a blush.  Then she went to work...

* First The Eyes

• She applied Paula Dorf's Mambo, a black/brown shadow with a gold shimmer, right into the top lashes.  (She used Paula Dorf Transformer to turn it into a liquid and the eye transformer brush to get it close to the lashes.) 

• She used Paula Dorf's Hypnotic, a light, shimmery, bronzy/brown shadow to apply on the bottom of the brow bone (right above the crease.)

• Along the crease she put Laura Mercier Chambord Shadow.

• She used the Laura Mercier Nectar blush on the bottom lid.

• As an accent, she used Paula Dorf's Fire Dance (a shimmery off white shadow) on the top of the brow bone, right under the eyebrow. 

• Throughout, Wendy was blending well.

• The choice for mascara was Bourjois' plummy colored Prune Balconnet Pump Up The Volume Mascara.  Obviously black would also do the trick. 

The result was a beautiful subtle eye.  I then asked Wendy to give me a more dramatic smoked up eye and it was simple enough.

• She dotted Sue Devitt's green toned Masai Eye Intensifier Pencil around the upper and lower lids.

• She then blended the green pencil dots with the Mambo eye glimmer (this time dry, without the Transformer, using a straight edged, natural bristle eye shadow brush).  

Amazingly, my eyes went from subtle to dramatic with a few strokes of a pencil and brush.  In order to go from purple tones to greens, I use the Laura Mercier Sherazade eye shadow instead of the Chambord in the crease of the eye.  All the other colors remain the same.

*Then,The Cheeks

Wendy picked Paula Dorf's Cheek Color Cream in Candy Apple, a soft, sheer brownish red to use on the apples of my cheeks.  (I've used this color for years.  The color is hard to describe but it's one of my favorites and I find it compliments many makeup looks, particularly the Fall/Winter ones.)

*Finally,The Lips

For my lips, Wendy lined them with Paula Dorf Antique lip pencil and then applied a combination of Paula Dorf's Lipsickles in Erte (a red) and Davinci (a shimmery champagne) along with a bit of Shimmie (glimmery copper) lip color.  Changing the way you combine these products, results in a vast array of lip colors from pale or to deep.  I found this was a great way to vary my lip shade depending upon whether I had a pale or smokey eye.  (Remember, as a rule of thumb, a subtle eye needs a more vivid lip and a more dramatic eye needs a paler lip.)

I left feeling like a new woman and I got more than one compliment on my new look.  Many thanks Wendy.

All the products mentioned above are available at Sephora.com.