I recently came across a great little product – Yves St Laurent Touche Eclat Radiant Touch – a definite must-have for any girl with a make-up bag. In fact, with it comes some of the best beauty advice I’ve heard in a long time.

• Use the Radiant Touch pen to highlight between the eyebrows and along the line of your nose. Following this beauty advice tip will allow your eyes to appear wider and more alert.

• Apply the Radiant Touch product to the hollow under your lower lip – in your chin – for a fuller lip look. Another great beauty tip for your lips – apply this product around the contours of your mouth to accentuate your beautiful mouth.

• Finally, use this product to give your face an instant burst of health and rejuvenation. The luminizing pen gives your complexion a look of freshness that can do nothing but improve your appearance.

Yves Saint Laurent Radiant Touch #1 Luminous Radiance ( Light Beige ) An exclusive radiant touch highlighter Helps refresh your makeup while brightening up skin Incredibly reduces your skin’s dullness Revives & nourishes your skin’s natural glow Leaves your makeup looking flawless & radiant Suitable for all skin types

No matter who you ask, or what type of beauty advice you are looking for, using a luminizing pen to help fill in fine lines and give your skin a fresh look is fast, easy and rewarding. I love it because it’s like an instant pick-me-up; especially when I’ve been up late the night before! Beauty reviews everywhere are sure to give this product rave reviews.

Picking colors that compliment your skin tone can seem a bit complicated. In the winter we naturally get paler and in the sun, most of us are working on our tan either naturally or with a little help from the cosmetics industry.

The colors that look best on you are going to be the ones that you pick when you are palest. According to ivillage.com,”Observe the color of your nail bed or pinch the skin under your arm (or any place the sun never shines). Does the tone tend to appear more reddish-orange, reddish-blue, pinkish-blue, peachy or yellowish? Once that’s determined, you’ll have a benchmark for your natural tone. The colors that will look most organic against your skin are the colors you find in your skin. Conversely, the colors that will create vibrancy are those that contrast.”

Or you can try this tip by essortment.com, ” Holding a piece of white paper up to your face and identifying the main color you see will help you decide into which category you fall. Still, it is easy to get confused by these terms, so to simplify the process try this simple test. Try on a white shirt and then a cream or off-white top. If you look better in the white blouse, you most likely have cool skin. If the cream top is more flattering, your skin is probably warm. Another good indicator of skin tone is which jewelry looks best on you. Silver tends to work well for cool skin while gold makes warm skin glow. Either of these methods will help you to easily identify your coloring, at which point you can begin selecting make-up colors that will look excellent on you.”

Skin tones usually fall into two categories - cool and warm. Mediterranean skin tones would be in the warm category. Individuals with Scandinavian backgrounds, for example, would fall into the cooler skin tones.

Play with these colors. You may have to go a shade darker when you tan and a shade lighter during your palest moments. As for the colors that you should use for your eye makeup, look to your eye color and apply makeup that really brings attention to your eyes.

Also make use of your eye liner, as we discussed in our last blog.

Top Tips on How to Apply Makeup

If you’re like me, somewhere in preadolescence you probably learned how to apply makeup. What most girls this age don’t learn is how to apply makeup correctly. Applying makeup is an art and it has to be done correctly or you could end up looking like a clown.

Here are some of my favorite tips on how to apply makeup.

• Focus on one feature or go natural on all features. For example, if you want to make your lips stand out then go with a bright lipstick, but keep your eyes and cheeks subtle. Not only does this keep you from looking too made up, but it also helps to really make the highlighted feature pop.
• Start out light. You can darken much easier then you can lighten. You want to always start out with the least amount of makeup and then work up to your finished look.
• One last thing to know when you apply makeup is that it is a layering process. For your skin you should start with moisturizer. You can then add concealer or foundation or both. Then you finish with a powder.
• For your lips you start with a bit of moisturizer to smooth, add some lip liner and then the lipstick or gloss. When you are learning how to apply make up it is always best to buy products that are made for the beginner. You can get brushes or even actually makeup designed to make application easier. Something like Sephora Brand Perfect Ten Brush Set ($150 Value) Perfect Ten Brush Set which gives you all the brushes you will need in one handy case. Good brushes will help you to apply makeup better and more easily.

Just follow the rules and use good products when you are beginning to apply make up so that you can look more like someone from a fashion magazine rather than the circus.

Sincerely,

Caterina - founder of stillagirl.com - a positive place for women and girls

This season’s best look is a natural look. Accomplishing a natural look is about using cosmetics sheer lines. You want a look that is not heavy and as my beauty reviews recommend you want to try to choose products that do double duty so you can wear less for that cosmetics sheer look. Try the sheer color tinted moisturizer with SPF 15 from Stila. This is a sheer moisturizer that protects and moisturizes your skin all at once.

The Stila Sheer Color Tinted Moisturizer SPF 15 is high on my list for a few reasons. First, it is going to help you ensure that your skin is protected from the sun’s harmful rays. Second, it will help you to moisturize and third, it will provide a cosmetics sheer foundation.

Anyone who is a makeup expert will tell you that having a moisturized face is very important to how your finished makeup looks. Applying foundation on dry skin will look horrible. It will cake and flake and look anything but sheer. You have to have moisturized skin so your foundation looks flawless. With this product that is what you get.

Additionally, this product gives you the ever important sun protection. Wearing a product with SPF daily will really cut down on the damage the sun does to your face. As you age you will be grateful you followed all the beauty advice to wear SPF everyday.

Products like this one address the three steps in your beauty regiment listed above. You are saving a lot of time everyday. Plus, you do not even have to worry about making sure you remembered to apply your SPF because it is right in the product.

Sincerely,

Caterina Christakos - founder of stillagirl.com - a positive place for women and girls

How to Use Complete Professional Makeup Kits

Ok girls- you know I am all about ease and simplicity in my makeup. And I get so many questions on the “how tos” of makeup application I thought it was time to give you the Cliff Notes version of how to apply makeup. Complete professional makeup kits are like striking gold for a lot of reasons. First of all, they are usually priced a lot lower than if you bought each item at its individual price. Second, it’s a great way to sample a new makeup line in smaller amounts without making the huge investment. Finally, the makeup colors are usually assorted so that they match perfectly.

Here’s a great one: Anastasia All About Brows Kit ($141 Value) Ash Blond offers everything you need to create professionally looking brows. You can’t do a great job without the right tools right? Well, this includes professional tweezers, brow powder, stencils, brush, brow gel and a highlighter pencil. All in a darn cute pink carrying case. If you’ve ever had a bad wax job and wondered why you couldn’t get great looking brows- here is your answer. The magic of complete professional makeup kits is that they include everything the professionals use, and usually include instructions on what to do with them

Another awesome offering in the complete makeup kits arena is the Bare Escentuals Get Started Kit - Dark/Deep ($181 Value) Dark. If you’ve been following my blog you know I really like the bare minerals line because of their natural skin enhancing nutrients. But I include their Get Started Kit here for one major reason. It comes with a step-by-step DVD for applying the makeup included! To me that is an amazing value. If you want professionally applied makeup, there is no better way to learn than by watching a professional do it.

I’m really big on learning as you go along. And any product that sells beauty and education has earned a spot on my site!

Sincerely,

Caterina Christakos - founder of stillagirl.com - a positive place for women and girls