Beauty Icons

I decided to try a little exercise to help solidify my "look" in terms of hair and makeup. I think many people would shy away from having a specific "look" because it limits creativity but I'm craving a sort of beauty "home" of sorts. Some basic steps for day looks, evening looks, professional looks, etc. So I chose 5 woman that I consider beauty icons and charted certain characteristics in their hair and makeup.

#1 Catherine Zeta Jones

# 2 Vivien Leigh

#3 Audrey Hepburn (who doesn't have her on their list?)

#4 Dita Von Teese

#5 Camilla Belle (I don't know much about her but I saw this picture when I was trying hairstyles on style.com and it stuck with me.)

Here's my chart (I had to make it small so it would fit. I hope you can read it):

So it looks like some basics for me are:

- blush with a shimmer for dewy skin

- line only the upper lid and use mascara

- peachy lipstick for day wear then go bold at night

- shoulder length hair with curls

The details are things I can play with to make it my personal style. 

Your turn! Who are your icons and how can you channel them in day to day life?

Locks of Love

So I told you guys that I'm growing my hair out for Locks of Love and I'm excited to try something new when I go short. I played around on InStyle's makeover tool and tried on celebrity hairstyles.

Put your judging hats on! Here they come:



First up is old school Jennifer Aniston. It was a classic in the mid-90's. Can it still be done with dignity?



This is actually a style once sported by Selena Gomez. She's a teeny bopper Disney star but the hair is kind of precious.



This is off of Camilla Belle who is absolutely gorgeous. That my hair will maintain that gentle, delicate curl is a long shot but a girl can dream.



This is Kerri Russell's do. I love the wavy texture of it. It's not perfectly placed but very natural looking.

So its time for you to chime in. Let me know what your favorite is.

Face Shape

I love my hair the length it is now. It's short enough that the waves aren't pulled straight but long enough to be full and wavy. It feels like mermaid hair. However, I will be sacrificing this mermaid hair to Locks of Love at the beginning of this summer once it grows out. Right now I have about 4" to go until I can cut it and still have long enough hair I'll be comfortable with. My next post will be showing possible hair styles but I thought I'd start with studying my face shape.

I'm essentially stealing this from Inside Out Style's articles here and here and just applying it myself so you should definitely check out her blog for more information.

First I took a picture with my hair pulled back off my face. It's awful but necessary:

Then I imported this photo into a program called Vectorworks, which I use for lighting design but had the tools necessary to complete the rest of this project.

First I drew a line from top to bottom at the longest part of my face and from left to right at the widest part and measured.



I found that the length of my face is 1.57 times the width. So I have a long face.

Then I tried lining up some popular face shapes against mine.



Circle: definitely not
Rectangle: getting closer
Oval: DING DING DING!

My face is a perfect oval.

Next I created a grid with the horizontal lines being marked by the length of my nose and the vertical lines down the center and either side of my face. This was to see how evenly spaced my facial features are.



Again we see that my face is very long. Average is three noses long and I clearly exceed this. Other than that, I have very large cheeks with small features. To help my eyes stand out I will probably want to keep my bangs and adding width to my hair style will help balance out my cheeks.

I will post some ideas for new haircuts soon. In the meantime, if anyone wants me to look at their face shape, I'd love to. Just let me know and I'll tell you what email to send it to.