Wednesday 19 November 2014

Barbara Cartland has just left the building

It's been a rough few weeks.  M has been in Bangalore on business, and D has had just about every kiddie sickness known to humanity - inflamed inner ear, cold, hacking cough, yucky nappies, and (my favourite) conjunctivitis.  Despite having had lots of support from my parents (and remotely from M), it's been a VERY trying and rather lonely time, and my natural emotional buoyancy has taken an absolute battering.

All of which explains why I was so looking forward to yesterday's session with an image consultant.  I am a tricky devil to buy gifts for, and being pregnant last year just exacerbated the problem - "no chocolates, booze, interesting cheese, or clothes please!"  M put his thinking cap on, and bought me a 'colour and make-up experience' with Colour Me Beautiful for Christmas, and I have to say the gift was simply inspired.  I've had nearly a whole year to build up a sense of anticipation, and after the aforementioned recent couple of weeks, I desperately needed a few hours of totally indulgent me time.

Lizann, the CMB consultant I selected, was amazing.  We spent over two hours discussing which colours & shades suit me best, how to put colours together for best effect, adapting my colours to reflect the seasons, my face shape and its impact on hairstyles / sunglasses etc, ending with a much needed make-up lesson.  My usual approach to make-up is to panic buy with a specific event in mind (wedding, party etc), use it once, and throw it away when I go to use it again in 12 months time only to find it has dried out or gone manky.  Lizann managed to achieve the holy grail and showed me how to put together a look that I'd feel comfortable using pretty much every day, and more importantly can apply in less than 10 minutes.

Prior to the session, I had regularly been that person to whom people say "are you alright?  You look tired" even if I'd just had 12 hours of blissfully unbroken sleep.  I now know this is because I was wearing clothing / colours that only served to accentuate my black bags.  As we played with colour swatches, it was easy to see how wrong I have sometimes been getting it.  On the plus side, my favourite jumper perfectly complies with my most complimentary shades. YAY!
It also turns out that the reason I'd hated wearing make-up and was convinced that wearing it just makes me look like Barbara Cartland is because, you guessed it, I was wearing completely the wrong shades.  So the time spent at various make-up counters asking the tangoed experts there for their help was completely wasted.

It's not cheap, but by jingo it's worth it.  I left Lizann feeling capable of buying clothes that will truly suit me, which is an entirely new concept to me, and I am actively looking forward to going shopping to gradually replace the worst miscreants in my wardrobe.  I'm ready to unleash my inner glamourpuss!