AntiAging Makeover

Makeover Your Makeup and Look Years Younger

One of my readers sent me some anti-aging makeup tips that inspired me to update my own makeup routine.

Why don’t you come along with me?

Let’s take a reality check on our makeup and style. Come on, it’ll be fun and a makeover could help us look ten years younger.

It’s easy to get stuck in a style rut. Here are some ideas to help us do a bit of self-evaluation and if necessary, to break out.

It’s easy to get so comfortable with a look or hairstyle that we don’t notice it has gone out of style or that, as we have aged, it no longer looks "right". Aging gracefully is all about looking as young as we can without any feature being out of synch.

When one feature is "off", it may be the first thing people notice and the reaction is likely to be "Who is s/he trying to kid?!" or "Doesn’t s/he realize how ridiculous s/he looks?!" How can we tell if we might be eliciting that type of reaction?

Our friends won’t likely tell us directly, though they may subtly suggest or affirm style changes. We need to listen carefully to their feedback.

If they say, "I really like that new color (or style) on you." They may also be thinking, "Please don’t go back to the old one!"

Still photos are another way to take a more objective look at ourselves. As they used to say, "Photos don’t lie." Look objectively at some un-doctored photos taken from different angles and in different outfits and color pallets.

Anti-Aging Makeover Tips: Contouring May Be More Important Than Ever

Most women’s facial contours change as they age. If they have maintained the same weight, thinning skin and facial sag make the face appear longer. As well, the nose becomes more prominent.

If they have gained weight with the years, the face may appear rounder.

In either case, some corrective contouring may be called for. If you have a brownish blush color or a matte bronzer you are comfortable with, you can use one of them to contour.

Just make sure not to go too dark. Obvious contouring can look garish.

Use a good quality brush. I prefer the type that fits in the palm of my hand. There’s no long handle to get in the way. The large diameter of bristles is very good for blending – which is really the key to effective contouring.

Remember what they taught you in art class about dark and light? Dark makes an object appear to recede; light makes it stand out.

Contouring a Long Face

Position brush under the apple of your cheek. (You don’t want the apple to recede.)

Apply a wide "stripe" of blush from under the apple of each cheek horizontally toward the ear.

Blend carefully.

Apply blush on and under the chin. If you don’t wear bangs, apply blush across the top of your forehead.

Play up your eyes but not your mouth. If you use a lot of color on both mouth and eyes, you accentuate the distance between them.

You can use eyeliner subtly to make your face look wider. Apply soft pencil eyeliner along the lower lashes from the middle of each eye to the outer corner and a tiny bit beyond.

Then come back toward the eyelid to form a small (uptilted) triangle.

Blend.

Contouring a Round Face

Position brush under the apple of your cheek. (You don’t want the apple to recede.)

Apply a narrow "stripe" of color from under the apple of each cheek diagonally up toward the top of the ear.

Blend carefully.

Extra highlights visually elongate a round face. Put a line of white concealer on the brow bone of each eye and blend.

If you like the shape of your nose, run the white concealer right down the center and blend. If you don’t care for its shape, you don’t want to draw too much attention.

Experiment with a dot just on the tip.

This tip is not exactly contouring but is good for all shape faces. It’s a trick a friend in the theater taught me.

Put a dot of white concealer just under the inner corner of each eye and blend. Notice how the whites of your eyes sparkle?

Wasn’t this fun? Kind of like in high school when we got together and tried out different makeup techniques. Pure girly fun!

Follow-up on AntiAging Makeup Picks

I was so intrigued by many of the things my reader said about her makeup finds (and all the personal research behind them) that I tried Estee Lauder Resilience Lift Extreme foundation.

I agree with her: this stuff is great!

I really appreciated the foolproof color-matching system that Lauder teaches its representatives. Too frequently I get home with a new foundation and view it in natural light only to find it is really off.

With the price of better foundations today, that can be quite a bit of money down the drain.

I’m delighted with the perfect match I got at the Lauder counter, as well as the gift with purchase. I was tickled that my color is 2C, which stands for "2 Cool".

Sure makes it easy to remember. Now that I know my color, I can order it online.

My reader also mentioned some of the great anti-aging and camouflage ingredients in this foundation: acetyl glucosamine, hyaluronic acid, caffeine, acetyl hexapeptide-8, palmitoyl oligopeptide; palmitoyl tetrapeptide-7, hydrolyzed wheat protein. That’s a stellar list of peptides and I like the idea of putting them into a foundation.

I also tried her fave lip treatment, Neutrogena Advanced Solutions Lip Rejuvenating. As she suggested, I only use it at night.

It’s like a minty balm and you can’t put lipstick over it. I love the feel and do believe it plumps my lips. It contains palmitoyl oligopeptide to stimulate new collagen production.

I have extremely thin lips so I’m a real good test case for this one. I plan to do before and after photos as soon as I finish the tube.