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Category: Beauty & Fashion

Review: Style Me Vintage: Make-Up by Katie Reynolds

[ 3 ] February 14, 2012
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Rating: +1 (from 1 vote)

Reviewed by Wendy Fitos

Style Me Vintage: Make Up by Katie Reynolds is the second book in the Style Me Vintage series and covers makeup looks from each decade starting with the 1920’s. The book is targeted for makeup artists as well as women looking to create a look for a party, so the application techniques are very clear and concise.

Many of the looks featured in this colorful book can be easily worn today by slightly changing up the colors and refining the technique if the look needs to be professional. The Marlene Dietrich look from the 1930’s is very classic and would work great for either the office or a cocktail party. The Audrey Hepburn look from the 1960’s can be seen today in many style and fashion magazines. What is refreshing about Reynolds’ technique is that it isn’t picture perfect in terms of application, but the angles of the pictures make it easy to see each step of the application without having to try too hard.

Reynolds gives a short list of what is needed to create the look, quick tips and several pictures for an easy application. She transforms one decade to the next and makes it fun by using a picture of a model from the actual decade and then a picture of her modern day recreation.

Style Me Vintage: Make Up would be great for teen or themed parties as few materials are required to recreate the looks inside. It would also work well for a woman who is trying to give her current makeup a trendier look without having to spend a lot of time.

Rating: ★★★★☆ 

Wendy Fitos is a makeup artist and esthetician with 22 years of experience. Her goal is to educate women on how to create looks that will meet both professional and personal styles. Wendy lives in Cleveland, Ohio and enjoys reading and exercising.

Review copy was provided free of any obligation by Pavilion. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received.

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Review: Express Makeup by Rae Morris

[ 3 ] January 31, 2012
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Rating: +1 (from 1 vote)

Reviewed by Wendy Fitos

Rae Morris’ third book, Express Makeup, continues to showcase her talent and creativity in the beauty world. Morris hails from Australia where she became an “accidental” makeup artist when she had to assist on a photo shoot with supermodel Naomi Campbell.

Express Makeup is filled with simple and easy tips that can help any woman look beautiful. The first section of the book covers specific makeup products and how to use them properly, while the second section includes numerous finished looks that can be easily recreated.

Here are just a few tips that I found very helpful:

  • Highlighting

Never use white or silver greys to highlight your skin. Only use these colors for highlighting the inner corners of your eyes.

  • Achieving a Glow to the Skin

For youthful, wrinkle-free skin, you can use luminizer all over the face by adding a few drops of luminizer to your moisturizer.

  • Eyeliner (LOVE this one)

To get a dramatic liner look that looks clean and neat, apply lots of kohl pencil to the inner rim of each eye. Tape your eyelids and color in with a black eye gel. Take it along your entire top eyelash line, then pull off the tape.

Express Makeup is especially well done because it is well illustrated and not wordy. Many how-to books often involve pages of instruction and very few pictures. As a result, it can be difficult to grasp the concept of application. The colorful pictures in this particular book make applications easy, even for beginners. Morris also uses different ethnicities in her demonstrations so any woman can benefit from this book.

Rating: ★★★★☆ 

Wendy Fitos is a makeup artist and esthetician with 22 years of experience. Her goal is to educate women on how to create looks that will meet both professional and personal styles. Wendy lives in Cleveland, Ohio and enjoys reading and exercising.

Review copy was provided free of any obligation by Allen & Unwin. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received.

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Review: 101 Glam Girl Ways to an Ultra Chic Lifestyle by Dawn Del Russo

[ 4 ] May 28, 2011
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Reviewed by Poppy Johnson

101 Glam Girl Ways to an Ultra Chic Lifestyle is as indispensible as every woman’s little black dress. This book packs a punch in a palm-ful (at just over one hundred pages), and can be easily read in a few minutes. Each tip is carefully highlighted with colorful illustrations and fun sayings, which offer reminders on how to become glamorous.

I imagine that the author and illustrator had the idea to remind all women that easy glamour is well within their reach. This is true on every level, although our stressful lives certainly don’t help our cause! It is difficult to remain beautiful while also keeping up with our harried schedules. Although the tips offered in the book are deceptively simple, I did feel that they were all useful reminders on ways to enrich and refresh my spirit. To that end, the smallest positive effort can significantly increase and improve the value and quality of my otherwise impossibly busy life. And everyone can use a reminder that she is worth it, right?

101 Glam Girl Ways is a cute little book, and would make a great gift for a glam girl of any age!

Rating: 5/5

After a decade of working in several NYC law departments and teaching, Poppy decided she enjoyed writing full-time. She currently works as a freelance writing consultant, and lives with her husband and sons on the East Coast.

Review copy was provided free of any obligation by Dawn Del Russo. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received.

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My New Luxury: PMD Home Microdermabrasion

[ 4 ] May 2, 2011
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Although books and all things book related dominate this blog, every now and then I do enjoy blogging about and recommending products that I’ve had the opportunity to try. PMD, or home microdermabrasion, is one such product.

I’m as obsessed (in a good way) about skincare as I am about books. I am a staunch follower of the 3-step routine – cleanser, toner, moisturizer – and as I get older, I’m also becoming more and more aware of the difference that professional skincare services can make. Peels and microdermabrasion can work wonders, but they are also insanely expensive and can make quite a dent in anyone’s wallet.

I’ve been curious about microdermabrasion for a while, but the cost has prevented me from actually trying it. When I was asked to try home microdermabrasion, I jumped on the chance. The product claimed to give professional results right at home, and at a fraction of the cost. I was particularly interested to see its effect on skin imperfections such as dark spots.

Trying something like home microdermabrasion was nerve racking at first – I was worried about not using it correctly, irritating my skin, looking like a tomato (ala Samantha on Sex and the City after a chemical peel), etc. However, the instructional CD is priceless and gave me the confidence to dive right in! I am now four weeks into using PMD and my skin is noticeably smoother and brighter. The few dark spots I had are also starting to fade – I can’t wait to see what my skin will look like after a few months of use!

My advice: For the price of one professional treatment, you can get an excellent tool that you can use over and over again. If you love fresh looking radiant skin, give home microdermabrasion with PMD a try.

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Review: Curly Girl: The Handbook by Lorraine Massey

[ 5 ] March 25, 2011
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Reviewed by Alyssa Katanic

As a child, my big curls were brushed and bushy. When I got to junior high, my big curls became tight curls and I had to learn how to take care of them on my own. There was a lot of experimenting going on! My father was especially helpful: “You keep messing with it and it will all fall out!” Eventually, I became a cosmetologist myself, and vowed that my curly kids would have a momma who knew how to take care of their hair! A curly husband and five curly kids later, we are doing pretty well. Yet, Curly Girl by Lorraine Massey was still able to give me even more great tips and suggestions for the care and keeping of our curls.

Overall, Massey does a great job explaining why curls are the way they are, and how to take care of and love them. She even gives pointers on trimming – not reshaping – your own hair, making up a few home recipes in order to pamper your curls without blowing your budget, and dealing with “chemo curls” (curls that can show themselves when hair starts growing back after chemo). The “Curl Confessions” of Curly Girls (and guys) who struggled quite a bit before accepting their curls and going for it are great encouragers throughout the book as well.

Curly Girl is organized in such a way that you can skip to the sections that best describe your own (or your loved one’s) curl type and how to care for it. This 2nd edition also includes a DVD, which gives you an even better visual of “how to” than the book’s still pictures ~ it may even be my favorite part of the book.

I could have done without the “Curly Q’s” quiz to determine if I am a “curly girl waiting to happen” (if I wasn’t a curly I probably wouldn’t be reading the book), and without the “astrologi-curls” horoscope and many other plays on words that made the book feel a bit like a teen’s magazine. However, for those who have not yet learned to live with their curls, and for straight-haired parents of curly kids, Curly Girl is a must read! I wish it had been around for my parents!

Rating: 4/5

Alyssa is a wife and stay at home, homeschooling mother of five, with two boxers, two cats, a soft shelled turtle named after Bob the Builder, and 7 frogs (admittedly a homeschooling project gone froggy). In all her spare time, she loves to read and believes that there is no such thing as having too many books!

Review copy was provided free of any obligation by Workman Publishing. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received.

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Giveway: Curly Girl: The Handbook by Lorraine Massey

[ 67 ] February 8, 2011
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I have a treat for all curly-haired (or friends of curly-haired) women and girls (or men) out there!

3 winners will receive Curly Girl: The Handbook by an internationally celebrated curl expert Lorraine Massey, courtesy of Workman Publishing!

1 grand prize winner will also receive DevaCurl Travel Kit to go with her book!

About Curly Girl: The Handbook

Curly Girl is the unrivaled bible for everything related to the care, management, and styling of curly hair and you’ll find it in the January issues of Glamour and Cosmopolitan magazines and on NBC’s “Today Show”. This book includes a whole chapter devoted to hair care and management for curly kids and it also includes a wealth of helpful tips for busy parents on the go (fathers aren’t excluded, there’s a whole chapter for curly men as well).

An unbelievable 65% of women have curly or wavy hair, but you would never know it. That’s because so many curly- and wavy-haired women blow-dry their hair straight, hide it under hats, pull it back with rubber bands, disguise it with weaves and braids, or flatten it with anything they can find. Too many of us are at a loss about how to properly care for our hair. In Curly Girl, Lorraine Massey shows how to work with your curls instead of against them.

See if Lorraine Massey will be visiting your town on her book tour and learn how going curly can save you money!

Mandatory entry: Please comment on this post with your e-mail address.

Extra entries (please post each entry separately, i.e. 2 posts for subscribing):
- Subscribe via e-mail, follow or subscribe to the feed. You must verify the subscriptions. (1 entry each)
- Enter another current giveaway (1 entry each)
- Follow on Twitter and tweet about this giveaway (1 entry – please provide a link to the tweet)
- Follow Luxury Reading on Facebook (2 entries)

This giveaway is open to US residents. Deadline to enter is midnight on February 28, 2011.

The giveaway copies and hair kit are provided free of any obligation by Workman Publishing. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received.

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Review: Beauty Rules by Bobbi Brown

[ 6 ] January 12, 2011
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Rating: 0 (from 0 votes)

Reviewed by Wendy Fitos

Makeup Artist Bobbi Brown’s 6th book, Beauty Rules: Fabulous Looks, Beauty Essentials, and Life Lessons, begins with Brown sharing her experiences from her teens and twenties; these experiences motivated her to write the book. She remembers her awkwardness through the years and how that awkwardness helped her grow and inspired her to become a makeup artist.

Beauty Rules touches on all areas of beauty including skincare, makeup, diet and nutrition, hygiene and exercise. Although Brown’s areas of expertise are makeup and skincare, she enriches the book by bringing experts to discuss the other aspects of the book to enhance the knowledge she is sharing.

The book reaches a diverse audience as she covers looks for women of all ethnicities, which is a specialty she achieved through her makeup line several years ago. She also includes different shapes and sizes and takes on skin care conditions such as acne and how it can be covered to maintain a polished and professional image. Brown goes a step further by addressing issues young males encounter and shows them how care for themselves.

Although many of the makeup tips have been covered in her other books, Beauty Rules is a valuable tool for the age group it is targeting. As always, getting to see Brown in photos with all her famous and not so famous clients is always a treat. Through her humble yet confident writing style, she continues to show why she appears in several media sources as the go to artist for education on the best and latest trends.

Wendy Fitos is a makeup artist and esthetician with 22 years of experience. Her goal is to educate women on how to create looks that will meet both professional and personal styles. Wendy lives in Cleveland, Ohio and enjoys reading and exercising.

Review and giveaway copies were provided free of any obligation by Chronicle Books. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received.

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Review: Beautiful Skin Revealed by Dr. Paul Friedman, Dr. Joy Kunishige and Dr. Kristel Polder

[ 4 ] December 20, 2010
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Reviewed by Vera (Luxury Reading)

When I received Beautiful Skin Revealed, I was expecting a typical guide to good skin care: stick to a regular regimen, stay out of the sun, use SPF, etc. However, this book, penned by three doctors, offers a refreshingly different format that pairs difficult skin care conditions with specific cosmetic procedures.

Beautiful Skin Revealed is divided into 12 chapters that cover a single skin problem or a group of related problems. Topics covered include acne scars, birthmarks, rosacea, spider veins, stretch marks, wrinkles, and so on. Each chapter features a real-life case of one of Dr. Friedman’s patients who was treated with laser or light-based technology. The skin conditions and the treatments used are well explained and give the readers an idea of pricing, down time, and the level of discomfort possible. The before and after pictures of each patient also provide an idea of the type of results one can expect.

I enjoyed most sections of the book, but I found that Beautiful Skin Revealed really excelled in covering the more sensitive topics like skin cancer and traumatic scars. The chapter on skin cancer can help readers identify a cancerous mole, and offers hope for those that wind up with scars post mole removal. The chapter on scars and stretch marks features a young patient who was attacked by her dog at a young age and bitten along the chin. Her scars were significantly diminished through the use of lasers and are barely visible today.

If you have generally good skin and are simply looking for advice on a good skin care regimen, Beautiful Skin Revealedis not for you. Instead, this book offers guidance to those who suffer from more serious skin conditions and have been unable to find help. Beautiful Skin Revealed allows the reader to become more informed about their condition, and to be educated in looking for the most effective treatment.

This book was provided free of any obligation by KMR Communications. No monetary or any other form of compensation was received.

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