Friday, December 29, 2006

a dose of asia in the makeup pouch for a lovely New Year!

Happy New Years everyone!

Almost done with 2006 and I can't wait for the new year. Fresh beginnings and an enhanced outlook, right!? (<--I know I'm being uncannily non-nyc by being so enthusiastic about the one day when the city goes nuts and everything seems a little dismal and lonely...ok, note to self, must change my own outlook...ha)

Either case, having pretty & lovely items in your everyday tote is one effortless, fun and lighthearted way to remind you of your new effort to improve how you act, feel and in effect, how you appear. More the better when the emblem comes with a great beautifying agent and a compact mirror.

Some Feel Exotic & Gorgeous finds to keep at hand as a vampy reminder of what an asian beauty you really are. take your pick!!

Keep these kimono inspired emery boards at hand for perfect fingertips at all times. Easy to tuck into any evening clutch or purse, an instant pick-me-up for dull-manis. Paul & Joe Emery Board ($5.00 each)


What more could a girl long for than to be spritzed all over with a dash of Cartier at moment's whim? Now available in 1oz bottles, the perfectly proportioned petit bottle is ideal for toting around everywhere you go. We love you Bond ⋅9 but Cartier is an eternal obsession. Delices de Cartier, (1oz; $60.00)



Appropriately named Purse Gloss, this petal-coloured shimmery lipgloss is flattering on fair skin tones. A sophisticated yet flirty pink, I love it in the shade, Beijing, which brings a healthy-looking luminosity to the face with just an easy, no mistakes swipe. Plus, gotta love the name. Cargo Purse Gloss ($16.00)



Because I think there are certain eye palette colours that just seems to work for most asian skin tones, because these two palettes capture the two colour ways that I think works unfalteringly well, and because these two ideal palettes come in the most adorable Asian-pop slick compacts, ever, I love the new Tokidoki Eye Shadow Quad from Smashbox. Tip: the darker eye shadows can be used as eye liner on top lash & edges of outer bottom lash by wetting the tip of the eye liner brush (recommended f/ before, Trish McEvoy brush #11) and the lightest colours at the inner corners of the eye for an open eyed highlighting effect.) Harajuku girls, you've got it going on~ Smashbox Tokidoki Eyeshadow Quad ($30.00 each)


Last but not least - turn every touch up into a classic "powdering room" moment with a whisk and a fluff of this gorgeous red tinted all over brush with a black lacquer bottom. Complete with a silky vintage looking drawstring pouch (also good for carrying change and a few credit cards when running to the nearby bodega or sake store), this Lola brush set is a beauty addict's essential makeup & life-touchup tool. Lola Cosmetics All Over Brush ($35)


All products available at Sephora

xox

Thursday, December 28, 2006

cheat sheet #1 - short crop with long hair!?

I always thought bambi had the look down sqwat. Let me translate, I've always been in love with the short, cropped hair paired with big doe-like eyes rimmed with dark liner and mascara look. What better way to accentuate the eyes, show off the neck and collar bone, and look demuringly trendy all at the same time?

Admittedly, Miss N.Richie as featured in the January '07 issue of Allure is not asian but tada~ Ayumi Hamazaki (J-pop star) did it way before and I've adored this look since HS, and THAT was a long time ago. But after a solid year of intense long-mane obsession within the fashion and media world, I, too, now have long hair and I'm not willing to chop it off just quite yet... I'm also still pathetically enjoying my new found skill that I've always been jealous of when the popular girl in front of my seat in middle school would skillfully secure her long hair with just a pencil/pen/piece of stick...

So today, I trotted to the Stephen Knoll New York salon on Madison Ave to get the ultimate cheater's version of the short crop. Under the talented hands of Hikaru, my beauty accomplice and hair stylist extraordinaire, I asked for a simple trim in the back, keeping the length, but with a lot of heavy layering on the top layers of the head, volumnous side swept bangs and shorter strands framing my face so that when I pulled my hair up and away, I looked like I had a short crop. The shorter layers stay out of the knot in the back, falling all around the head and in flirty layers around the face and the heavy bangs add texture to the cut, bringing the focus forward and to the eyes. Follow the eye-lining tips and poof, sexy bambi.

A few tips:

1. Add texturizing wax to the roots at the crown of the head to add movement and texture to the shorter strands. Try Stephen Knoll Solid Wax or Polish for a soft, touchable texture that keeps a natural hold all day long without any buildup.

2. Try a high-count, short bristle, pad-style brush to tweak out the shorter strands away from the pulled back hair. They only catch on to the top layers of the hair and not the longer layers on the bottom so it's much easier to create a volumnous, short bob look and keeps you from having to tie and retie hair over and over again. Try the must-have staple Mason Pearson brush in their largest size made of only boar bristle rather than nylon bristles.

3. For an evening-kitten look, pin-up the long strands in the back, pull out just enough of the shorter top layers from the back with a thin comb or a sharpened pencil to cover the pinned-up strands and tease the comb towards your head at the crown so that the shorter layers create a volumnous pouf.

Accessarize with chandelier earrings or big, single-drop earrings for a classic look and colourful resin or lucite hoops for a mod-Twiggy look. Alexis Bittar earrings.

xox

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Short & Sweet - earthy french mani's are back for S/S '07!

Short, sweet and earthy, petal-pink fingertips finished off the natural, pure looks by the hottest designers on the S/S 2007 runway.

Marni used a pale, muted, creamy pink to create the ethereal look while Chloe and Miu Miu took it one step further with a modern, twist to the classic manicure - a short french manicure!

The french manicure, first created by ORLY 30 years ago, is still the mani-of-choice when it comes to the duo work or big event appropriate look. The neutral color flatters many skin tones and the fresh, sophisticated allure of a clean white tip is any-age appropriate. The one big drawback, now solved, has been the length that was required to pull off the look - parrafin tips are just way too scary and SO not good for your nails!

Follow the below tips to get an easy salon-perfect short French Manicure of S/S '07:

1. Prep nails by pushing back cuticles and moisturizing with an intensive hand & nail formula. Go natural with Almond Oil drops to the cuticles. For a short French Mani, you need all the length & smooth fingertip skin as you can get!

2. Swipe a base coat with a bonding agent that will keep the white tips from chipping easily.

3. Put a light coat of sheer, creamy pink or beige (for asian skin, make sure the beige is a more "cappacino-latte white" than i-can't-believe-it's-not-butter yellow to flatter skin tone). Essie Sugar Daddy www.essie.com is a great base pink for short French Manis and SpaRitual's Airy Sopranos collection colours are all great by itself or with the white tip. www.sparitual.com

4. Dip a thin art brush, preferably with a 25-50 hair count, in an ultra-white nail lacquer formula and swipe across the edge of the nail. The thin brush, available at any art store, is much easier to control and allows you to create a natural looking thin white line at the tip rather than turning your entire top 1/2 of the short nails white. SpaRitual's Ultra-white French Tip already comes with an easy-to-use thin art brush for the short manicure. Moreover, the formula has a bonding agent so that the white tip doesn't come off as easily - genius!

5. Once the white tips have dried, coat the nail with another layer of the base colour OR if the initial pink was too strong, coat with a lighter beige or creme coat to reduce the tone, if it was too creamy for your skin tone, use a slightly more shaded sheer pink formula to amp up the flirty look.

6. Apply a Glossy top coat to seal in the deal and give your short nails a ethereal ingenue touch. Try ORLY Glosser for a glossy sheen that lasts.

Toss on a sheer flock or short beige shorts with a cremy sheer top, accent with a bright coloured piece of jewelry or wedges and you're good to go for spring season!

xox

Eye Lining Part 2 for Double-Lid Eyes


Around the age of 16, either the baby fat melted away from my eyes or I just became perpetually sleepy...(see previous entry on my eye-lid morphing story), both my lids folded naturally. Now, I only get the single lid after, shhh, a night of heavy drinking, yikes! (Bikram Yoga btw is the best solution to depuffing your entire body the next day.)

Once I changed gear, I faced another dilemma that many of my asian girl friends have - the liner transfering to the upper fold of the eye lid, making a second line a little above the eye! This frequenly happens with a liquid liner that has yet to dry and throughout the day with thicker pencil liners.

I was on a hunt for a product that delivered the long-lasting effect of the liquid liner AND the speedy precision of a well sharpened eye lining pencil and oh, the every so dependable Bobbi Brown & brush extraordinaire Trish McEvoy became my all-time heroines.

For day & night: Dip Trish McEvoy's infamous brush #11 which has a precision brush tip just wide enough to catch every curve of the upper lids right at the lash line, into Bobbi Brown's Long-Wear Gel Eyeliner, coating both sides of the tip and swiping off the excess clots on to tissue (I like to use the side of the pot, I'm that lazy, yes, but it works). Then hold the brush perpendicular to the lashline, and gently pulling up the lid slightly to get a precise aim, touch the edge of the brush to the edge of the lid, almost on top of the lash line, and move from the inner corners to the outer corners, dabbing the entire way, not sliding across. The product quickly dries and becomes transfer resistant so it doesn't get onto your upper lids even if you sneeze!
www.bobbibrowncosmetics.com
www.trishmcevoy.com


Extra-tip to open up small double lid eyes: Make the line thicker just above the pupil. The extra darkness makes the pupil look darker and bigger while accentuating the whiteness that surrounds it, creating a round-eyed look. Same goes for mascara on the upper lids - concentrate on getting the most length out of the middle lashes right above your pupils (and below) as well as the last two or three strands at the outer corners of your eye.

Lower lashes: Do not line the entire lower lash with dark liner unless you have huge eyes (you lucky bum!). Use a frosty creme or frosted pastel colour to line the inner corners of the lower eye lid and the darker liner used above the lid for the outer half of the lower lid. (<-- I wish I could sketch this...it sounds like a logic question doesn't it? I'll work on the visuals.)

For the lower lash inner corners, use a very powdery sheer shimmer shadow with a thin tip applicator so that it acts as a light high lighter instead of going on too obviously. Try Stila's shimmery pastel shadows in pale pinks, blues, cremes and mints or the all in one Glacier Ice palette which has all my fave accent colours to complete the basics of eye makeup! Sephora

xox

Eye Lining Tip for Single Eye Lid Girls!



You are an asian beauty addict if you can decipher the difference between a single eye lid versus a double one.

Either way, eye lining is a major challenge. I've experience both so I know...no, no, without any surgery. I spent my pre-teen years of my life with a single lid, which was just as well since I didn't know what single-lidded vs double meant anyway. Then gradually, I started to get the extra crease when I was sleepy and rubbed my eyes. Definitely my most awkward years, each morning not knowing which was to emerge and worst when the left and the right failed to agree and decided to go their own ways. (Rather embarrassing until I encountered a product that folds your lids with a safe, gentle, clear glue like formula and keeps it there for the remainder of the day.)

After countless q-tips and sticks of too-hard or too-mushy eye liner, I vouch by the below routine to make Single Lid ladies look glam and open-eyed:

For a day-time look: Use a thick textured, soft Kohl black eye-liner that would glide easily onto skin. Eye pencils usually last longer and glide on more controllably when applied directly onto clean skin rather than over oily moisturizers and powdery shadows. Pull your eye lid gently up and towards the center of the forehead to stretch the area out and draw a thin line starting from the inner corner with a sharpened point until you get to the area right where the whites of your eyes start again closer to the outer eye corner. Then, apply more pencil tip surface to the lid by tipping the eye liner at a closer angle to the face and create a thicker line that gradually goes up and away from the outer corner. To end the line, pretend the last flick of the pencil line is another eye lash, thin with a slight natural curve. This creates a more opened, fuller lashed eye look, especially paired with mascara and eye curler that is still natural yet enhanced looking. I've found that the Rimmel Soft Kohl Eye Liner in JET BLACK has the perfect texture and slight smudgeability to create a stark yet sexy, natural line that if needed, can be reapplied during the day without looking heavy. Plus, it's cheap so I never have to fret about shaving it every morning to get the thin line. Pleeeeease don't try the thick flick line at the edge of the eye - it's only meant for Geisha stories or 60's mod-cat woman outfits - perfect for Halloween, yes. www.RimmelLondon.com

For evening: Use a vampy, blackish but not quite colored eye-liner with a little shimmer or metallic glaze using the same application technique for the upper lid. Slate dark greys, anything with an asphalt sort of name, any midnight blues, dark purples with a metallic sheen or dark khaki's are great for the evening, eye liner as eye shadow look - especially since darker eye shadows are hard to wear. Also apply the same colour but in a lighter tone in the inner corner of the eye on the lower lid to accentuate the slight colour above and wala, you've eye-lined your way enough to pull off a vampy evening look without piling on the darker shadow which will make lids look heavier. I love Nars Eye Liner Pencil in Manon (Violet), Kaliste (teal) and Kitty (turquoise blue that amazingly flatters asian eyes and opens them up by accentuating the dark lashes when applied to the bottom lid). www.Sephora.com



And last tip for single lid girls? Always carry a sharpened eye liner pencil and thin-tip makeup Q-tips for quick touchups! Eye-liners make a huge difference, making you look refreshed and awake.

xox