Beauty tips: How to Find Which Colours Suit Your Eye Colour

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One of the most commonly asked questions you hear women ask with regards to eye make up is "what colours suit me". Personally I subscribe to the 'all of the colours could suit you depending on how you use them' school, but some people need to know what the complementary colour to their eyes is. 

According to colour theory the complementary colours are:

• green and red
• blue and orange
• purple and yellow.

The usual response to this information is this: 0_0. Here is a very easy way to figure out the exact complementary colours to your eye colour. Take a picture of your eye, as close as as you can -please, be sensible and don't use flash for this- and invert the colours in the picture. If you're using a photo-processing program then you probably know how to do this, but even if you don't and are using Windows, there's still an easy way to do this.

 1.Right-click on the image and select 'open with Paint'

 2.When the 'Paint' program opens your image select 'Image' on the top bar

 3.Select 'Invert Colours' and you're done!!

Here's an example of my picture

Original

Inverted colour

I have light brown eyes and in my inverted colours image I can see that my complimentary colours are turquoise to dark blue. The easiest way to emphasize the darker shades of brown in my eyes then would be to wear turquoise colours around my eyes and if I want to emphasize the lighter brown shades I should wear dark blue, whether that is eye shadow, eyeliner or even mascara. 

Are the colours you find using this method the only colours that have that effect on your eyes? Most certainly not; lip colour, other colours around the eyes and blusher can be equally effective, but this is only a beginner's method so that you can start understanding colour and the effect it can have.

I hope it helped a little bit! Good luck trying it!

Beauty Tips: Taking Care of Your Nail Polish Bottle

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How annoying is it when your nail polish dries in its bottle or when nail polish residue dries around the 'mouth' of the bottle and you can't open it no matter how you twist it?

Well, there's something that can prevent all this and it's really very easy. All you have to do is apply a little bit of vaseline on the spiral grooves of the bottle. The vaseline will prevent polish residue from sitting in the grooves and it will give it enough slip to open and close easily. Additionally, because it's very pliable it will sit in the grooves when you close the lid and prevent the volatile substances from vaporising, ie. no more nail polish smell where you keep them stored and your polish will not dry so much when you're not using it. It's going to be nice and airtight!

Caution:
Be careful not to apply it to the final groove of the bottle. You don't want any vaseline reaching the lips of the bottle because then it might get on your brush or even in the polish and ruin it. Always wipe away the excess.

With frequent opening and closure the vaseline tends to spread so every few times wipe it away and re-apply.

I have obviously applied too much here to make it apparent in the pictures. You don't actually need to apply this much!

How to: use nail guides for various styles

Greek/Ελληνικά

In my last post I mentioned using nail guides to recreate the 30s-40s half moon manicure.  I don't know if you've seen nail  guides, they are basically stickers you can use to help you with creating the perfect French manicure. I thought it'd be nice to write about them since I don't think they get enough love. They seem a bit unnecessary, but they can be a great help. 

Nail guides come in sheets like this. They are very well separated and are made of a thin plastic which means they don't rip easily, they can however stretch and lose their shape if you are too rough with them. The ones I have are classic oval shaped, but I have seen them in many other shapes, straight, toothed, wavy etc.

Before I place them on my nail, I prefer to put them on my hand to get most of the glue off. If I stick them straight on the nail, chances are they will stick on too well on and I'll ruin the mani when I try to remove them as I'll have to aply more force to take them off. Like this there's enough glue left on to stay in place and they are very easy to take off. 

 

And here is how you can use them. On the left is what I did to achieve the 30s-40s half moon manicure and on the right is how you could use them for a French manicure (sort of). You paint over them and when they are a little bit dry, you remove them carefully. Knowing when to remove them is important because is you remove them too soon the polish may dent or move and if you remove them too late, when the polish has dried completely, it will break off. I would say that a little over one minute is the right time.

I hope this helped a little! Remember that there's always a learning curve and don't give up!