Makeup Lists Discounted!

Hi, everyone!  

I'm a little sad that's summer is ending (at least for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere). In the summer, I work a little less, and I spend a lot of time with my precious kids.  

I did get the opportunity, finally, to convert most of my seasonal makeup lists to downloadable documents. And I want to celebrate that by offering you a discount, for the next 48 hours, on those makeup lists. 

Scroll to the end of the post for the promo code!

​I want to take this opportunity to review important information about seasonal palettes and makeup lists.  

Why Wear Makeup that's Matched to Your Seasonal Palette?

In addition to simplifying your clothes shopping and increasing your confidence, your seasonal palette makes it much easier for you to shop for makeup.

The range of colors in your seasonal palette is the entire extent of makeup colors that can look good on your face.  There aren't colors outside of that range that will flatter your skin.   You don't need to go outside of your palette to find lipstick, blush, eye shadow, eyeliner, bronzer, or mascara.  

​That really narrows things down!

When I was a teenager, I might have found this picture delightful. Now it just stresses me out. 

I work way too much, and I have two kids.  No way do I have the time to figure out which of these lip colors will make me look more beautiful. 

Fortunately, since I discovered my color season a decade ago, I haven't had to spend that time. 

I sincerely can't recall the last time I spent an hour in a department store or a drugstore, trying on color after color. It's been ages. 

In fact, I've had the same daily lippie for years now. I order it in bulk from eBay.  It's Cover Girl Wine to Five, if you're interested. It is, of course, a perfect match for one of my deeper pinks in my Soft Autumn palette. 

In this picture of the Soft Autumn seasonal color cards, you can see the spectrum of my Soft Autumn reds and pinks.  If a red or a pink doesn't fall in that range, it's not a lippie for me.  Easy peasy. 

Now, when I see a display of lippies in a store, I can walk right by it, or stop and peruse -- but only if I feel like it. It's fun, not a chore.  And I can zoom in immediately on the color that will work for me.

See this display? Even without swatching, I can rule out eight of these 12 colors immediately. They're clearly not in the Soft Autumn palette, and as a result they'll never, ever look right on my face. 

​Your seasonal palette contains the rainbow of colors that best flatter your skin. Match your makeup to these colors, and your makeup will flatter your skin. Bing-bang-boom.

Here's the eyelid crease contour that I've been using for years. I also order it in bulk.  It matches a brown in my Soft Autumn palette. 

​Here's the pencil I use for eyebrow filler. Again, I order it in bulk. Again, it's a match to my Soft Autumn palette. 

n.b.:  Your individual perfect colors are most likely an even smaller range within your seasonal palette.   The factors that determine your particular subset of colors are 

 1.  your individual skin tone
 2.  your Style Identity

With regard to how your individual skin tone affects your perfect subset of colors within your seasonal palette, see this blog post.

With regard to how your Style Identity affects your use of makeup, all I can say is, hold tight! I am still working on those 63 makeup guides, and I have been making a lot of progress.  You are all so patient, and I appreciate it. 
​
​(While you wait, aim for the basic principle of using the same adjectives for your face that you use for your style type. So, for example, as an Ethereal Natural, my best use of makeup is relaxed and delicate.)

Swatching

Returning for a moment to the twelve lippies I showed above:  of those twelve, these four colors might  work.

​They're the only colors I'll swatch. The rest of the colors are clearly not in the Soft Autumn palette.  

What does swatching entail? Basically, it means smearing the product on a piece of white paper, and comparing that smear to your color palette.

Swatching on your own skin is not accurate! 

Please don't rely on skin swatching as a method for matching a color to your palette.

​I explained in another post why this method is unreliable; I'll quote myself here:

 - - - - 

When you apply a red or pink to your skin, the result that the viewer sees is a color that combines that red or pink with your skin color. 

That's the effect you're going for.

The effect is a less saturated version of the pure swatch red or pink because it's blended with your skin color, and it  looks perfect on your skin. 

If you "swatch" makeup on  your skin, you're not learning what color it really is; you're learning what color it looks like mixed with  your skin color.

That's not the information you need in order to know whether a pink or red matches your actual palette colors. You need to match those reds and pinks.
 - - - - -

I hope this makes sense.  

Basically, on your skin, your reds and pinks should not match your color swatches. Honestly, if they do, that might be a problem; it means the product is sitting on top of your skin instead of blending with it. 

​Look at this example, from LollyJane, of the same lip color applied to nine different sets of lips.  

If these nine women were trying to determine whether LipSense's Bella matched their seasonal palette, how could they possibly determine that by swatching it on their own skin? See how different it looks on each of them!

The color on your face is the product color PLUS your skin color. 
That's not what you want to match. 
Match the color swatch!

Why Buy the Makeup List?

So, yes, buy your seasonal color palette, and swatch makeup (on white paper!) by comparing it to that palette.  

But if you don't want to spend the time doing that yourself, just buy my list!

Each list contains over 400 products -- some as many as 800 -- that have already been swatched to that season's palette.  So you don't have to do it. 

I have been keeping these lists for years.  It started just as a hobby, because I am a data nut. Eventually, I realized that people might want to pay for someone else to do this work, and voila! the makeup lists were born. 

Quick answers to F.A.Q.S: 

- All products on the lists are matched to Sci/Art - accurate swatchbooks. That includes both original Sci/Art swatchbooks, and those swatchbooks from companies who adopted original Sci/Art palettes in their own swatchbooks.  Other swatchbooks aren't color-accurate, and I don't use them to match cosmetics.

- The lists include both drugstore brands and high-end brands.

- The lists are generally updated twice a year. 

​- The lists include discontinued products that are still available online.

​
​The discount code is BEAUTIFUL. It's good for 20% off all 12 seasonal makeup lists, and it will work until Wednesday, August 29th. 

Enjoy, my friends!