It took me almost a week to realize it was Halloween month! You’d think the abundant retail décor would have tipped me off, but I guess I’m just that resistant to impulse shopping.

From old David Bowie to new Lady Gaga, I’m really feeling the glam vibe this Hollow’s Eve. Here are a few ideas for using makeup to create an easy glam Halloween look.

-For a toned down sophisticated glam choose vibrant lips in non-traditional tones like blue, purple, or green. My previous post on Matching Lips and Nails is a great example.

-Use the old drag queen glue stick trick to cover your eyebrows. Once it dries, create new ones in bold colors using eyeliner. Keep as-is, or combine this glam Halloween look with a super glittery or metallic lip gloss.

-Painted on glitter sunglasses are a strong glam look. Use a stencil or freehand it to create the sunglasses shape around the eyes with face paint or makeup. You can use a paint that already has glitter, or apply the glitter over a cream so that it sticks. Download a free stencil here. They’re for kids, but you can make it work… you just can’t trace time.

-Of course there’s the classic lightening bolt over/through the eye. Use a thin scrap of paper or thin bendable plastic to make the straight edges for the outline and fill in as desired.

The key to glam Halloween makeup is being free and creative with your vision. Use staples like metallics, bold colors, and glitter and you can’t go wrong. We are all born superstars.

I’m just back from a trip to visit friends in beautiful Colorado. We had a great time camping by a river and pointing out the many ‘green cross’ establishments.  My only regret is not having time to play makeup with my friend who requested a little help with the Kim Kardashian smokey makeup look.

I’m not a super huge fan of the look, but if anyone can pull it off, it’s this girl. Without those gorgeous Persian/Armenian eyes I’ll have to do my best to create a little gringa version of the Kim Kardashian makeup look on myself. I apologize for the lighting variations.

1. Prep the entire lid and under-eye with concealer or eye shadow base.

2. Fill in the brow to create a defined shape. This is necessary to frame the look so as to avoid the raccoon eye.

3. Apply false eyelashes. I’d do this first so that if you have trouble you don’t screw up the makeup. Here’s a link to a past blog on applying false eyelashes.

4. Use a cream shadow or moveable liner to sketch in a shape. Use your brow bone as a guide for how high to go. To the bone is usually a good amount of drama. Also line the inner tear line. It’s important that it’s a maliable substance because you want to be able to blend with it. I used a Benefit liner that no longer exists and definitely isn’t sanitary that I still have.

5. Go over the cream with a black powder shadow, allowing the shadow to smooth out the edges. This is the time to exaggerate the darkness up toward the top of the brow bone if your eye can handle it. Mine cannot.

6. Brush a slate, brown, purple…. you choose…. medium shadow in a downward motion over the edges of the black shadow. Ooo, look how ’smokey’.

7. Use an angled brush to apply the medium tone over the black lined under eye, blending out  and over from the lash line. For me I’m tapering the line in toward the center eye, however Kim’s can take the same thickness all the way to the center.

7. Again with a downward stroke apply a highlight shadow from the brow over the edges of the medium tone.  Also hit up the outer, lower corner of the eye and inner corner

8. Use a liquid liner to go over any areas around the eye that may need to be filled in such as along the top ridges of the false lashes.

Done. 8 steps to a Kim Kardashian makeup look.

I only did one eye because I’m pretty sure that if I stepped out in my neighborhood with this makeup I’d be offered a lot of…. business. Penis business. Here’s a daylight and inside light comparison. Play with your shape a little to make it work best for you! There are no rules. Just layers.

I had my first bride-zilla this past weekend. I can’t help wonder if I could have controlled her better. If I had played the situation differently, could I have avoided her wrath? Am I the victim or is she?

BZ basically bullied me into doing her hair after I told her I only do casual hair. The first thing she tells me at the trial is that she fired the last artist because he made her hair too flat. Interesting. Zilla-face has very thin hair that is quite long. She wants a snookie-esk bump with claw bangs, and tons of big, curled volume completed with a sparkly crown. The height of the bump is of upmost importance. Not casual and not easy. But I work it out and she’s happy enough to lay down a deposit for the big day. I’m not so crazy about the look, but it’s not my wedding. Plus she was amusing and interesting, so at this point I’m thinking alls swell.

Then there’s the phone calls. I love answering questions for my brides, but much of what she was saying was contradictory so it was frustrating. ‘I think I looked too tan in the trial. I looked Asian.’  I say that that’s no problem, an easy thing to do differently.  Next breath she says, ‘I was thinking about getting a spray tan. Would you be able to match the makeup?’ And on and on.

Wedding day The Mother is introduced to the scene. She comes storming in fuming about her hair. After that long tirade, she says she needs to fatten me up and sets a plate of cookies right smack in the middle of my workspace, actually on top of my stuff. The bride tells me that I need to eat them before we continue, or her mother will never shut up about it. Following the shortbread is screaming phone calls with the florist, whom she hangs up on several times, promising to ‘stop the check’.  She then says that as long as the photographer stays away from her she’ll be ok.

Time is short by the time we’re wrapping up. Zillina is super stoked about her makeup and pretty cool with her hair. She’d like more volume. I think about suggesting she stick her finger in the light socket, but instead set a few curls for her to release at the last minute. Then come in the savvy, stylish lesbian cousins. They say she looks like a cone head (kind of rightly so) and all mayhem breaks loose.  Clearly, this is my work, my doing, my fault. I quickly release all pins, tease the F out of it to try to get this evasive ‘volume’, and pin back a few sidepieces. It looks way better, and although the bride isn’t so sure, everyone agrees.

Despite the ‘zesty’ energy emitting from this family, there was a lesson here on being the expert. I should have provided more guidance for the hair in the beginning, trusting myself to either insist she have a professional hair stylist or lower the Snookie bump.  I should have used words like ‘elegant’ and ‘romantic’. Instead of just answering her questions, I should have offered assurances over the phone. Helped her relax a little.

Being an expert isn’t about just skills. It’s about helping and guiding your client to utilize the best of them.

Can you believe this is the shortened version?

A small column down a third of page 27 in the October issue of Psychology Today recounts a recent Harvard University cosmetics study comparing how glamorous, or heavy, makeup is perceived versus little or none.

Both men and women were shown images of models with different amounts of makeup. When only given a quarter second to glimpse the images, the subjects rated the made-up models higher in attractiveness, likability, trustworthiness, and even competence. However, when given unlimited viewing time for each image, the tables completely turned on likeability and trust.

Well duh, right? Did Harvard need to do a study when they could just watch Legally Blond or Pretty In Pink? What they need to do is a study on where tuition costs are going.

So when do frosted lips and French tips work to your advantage? Anything involving immediate return will benefit from a strong first impression. Sales is the biggest. I remember my sister maintaining perfect long red nails when she sold hospital equipment. Now that she’s a professional mom she could give a crap. Social situations involving brief first encounters are another opportunity to try out some jazzy new sparkle. Conventions, balls, bars, and horse races are fine places to powder.

Something like a psychologist, however, may benefit from more of a Bobby Brown natural look. I saw a sleep therapist for a while who would smear on this gloss that was way too cool a pink for her. It was so distracting; I contemplated bringing her an alternative as a gift. To myself.

If attractiveness is your aim, such as with performing, then more is more. Regardless of time viewed, those models in the Harvard cosmetics study with more makeup were seen as more attractive.

By the way, this issue of Psychology Today sports a ‘doodied up’ half-dressed model to accompany a headline on ending self-sabotage.

A few months ago the back of my hand started itching like a bug bite. Of course my first thought was ‘Oh no, they’ve found us! It’s happened! Bed bugs!’. The spot, however, began to grow into a strange, red coarseness I found both fascinating and horrifying. It didn’t take long for me to realize it was eczema.

Eczema refers to a broad range of skin yuckiness, mostly super dry and itchy, caused by a broad range of things from topical exposures to allergies. Mostly it’s a situation of ‘try a little this, try a little that, and let’s see what gets it to go away’.  Dermatologists will often use a steroid cream and have you try making adjustments to your diet.

My derm didn’t have any availability for a couple weeks. From a business prospective, South Florida is a great place to be a dermatologist. So in the mean time I slathered a good dose of Vitamin E oil on it. I figure that stuff’s good for pretty much everything. Within a couple hours the flesh was looking just a tad fleshier. So I kept it up and within 4 days or so it was gone. The vitamin e oil treatment cured my eczema.

This isn't my hand, but it's eczema on a hand.

Since then I’ve heard several testimonials from chronic Eczema sufferers. Yesterday evening I met a guy who experienced years of debilitating eczema on his foot. He sought out ‘specialists’ in several cities, at one point even receiving injections of his own urine! From voodoo to who-knew, he tried it all. Just home from a trip to visit her mother in Morocco, his girlfriend pulled out a water bottle filled with a hazy liquid with sediment still floating around in it. It was completely unrefined and unfiltered argan oil. She slathered his foot with the stuff and wrapped it with saran wrap.  5 days. 5 days and he was cured. He dropped all else. He was going into business.

He and the girlfriend joined together to form a web-based company called the Essence of Argan. They sell 100% Argan for many purposes, not just the use of argan oil to cure eczema. Oils mostly come mixed with what’s called ‘carrier oils’, or synthetic substances to thin it out. The popular and expensive Moroccan Oil hair product, for example, only contains about 2% argan oil. When picking any oil you should check the potency so you choose the correct one for your need.

Argan oil itself contains a high amount of vitamin e, so maybe that’s where the effectiveness to help cure eczema is. I don’t know. But it’s good shit. And if you have eczema you should dedicate a short week to trying an argan oil or straight vitamin e oil remedy.