POP Your Day - I dare you!

- Wear a really bright lipstick!
- Pick a recipe that seems impossible to recreate online, and invite your friends over for a yummy (?) dinner with lots of wine
- Cut bangs
- Go with a friend to a costume shop and try on the pirate outfits
- Add a neon blue on top of your usual black liner
- Buy yourself a bouquet of flowers
- Paint your toe nails bright neon
- Make really pretty paper planes and throw them off the balcony
- Send an “I love you because…” letter to the people you love
- Write a list of all the things you want to do that would make you happy and then – do them!
- Create a new cocktail
- Paint each nail a neon “M&M” color
- Learn three new words and annoy everyone by using them vigorously
- Get up in the office and challenge everyone to a hoola hoop competition
- Kiss someone
- Book a trip for the weekend
- See how many Swedish fish sweets you can fit into your mouth at once
- Write a “thank you” Oscar speech
- Make your eyebrows a real statement, really fill them in!
- Put large pieces of paper on your walls and splash them with your favorite hues
- Wear feathers on your lashes
- Mix up the textures, matte on lips and shimmer on eyes, or the other way around
- Have a look in your wardrobe to see what can be altered, remade or just thrown away
- Paint your lower lip red and your upper lip pink
- Treat yourself to the best, most expensive chocolate around
- Sing, sing, sing – at the top of your voice, as loudly as you can!
- Spend a happy hour making up names for the new band you and your mates are forming
- Sign up for a dance class and then actually attend it
- Go to the beach to watch the sunset
- Plan a party, a really, really good one
- Dye your hair – you can always change it again
- Flirt with everyone you meet
- Use white eye shadow, no mascara, bright red blush and bright red lips – modern geisha!
- Watch three cheesy musicals in a row
- Name your plants and then chat to them about the weather
- Using eyelash glue, glue pearls and beads and gold leafs to your cheekbones
- Try to learn the famous Fred Astaire dance from “Singing In The Rain”
- Feed the pigeons
- Make up true and funny nick names for everyone you know
- Have a glass of champagne for lunch
- Buy a 50’s prom dress
- Load up your ipod with all your favorite music and go for long walks
- Go to a theater makeup shop and by the strangest color makeup you can find, then find fun ways of wearing them

I could go on and on, but that should keep you busy for today! Shake it up!

Love as always,
Sara

POP ‘til YOU DROP

Play with this thought: Makeup as an accessory, never as a must. An expression of art, confidence and color. Not always to beautify but the main goal is to brighten or to mystify!

Bright color on the edge can take you many places, where does creativity go when it gets air under its wings. How do you feel today? Where does your mood take you?

Okay - granted, I am not asking you to step out the door with bright colored makeup splashed all over your face (or wait....am I?!) but I am asking you to start feeling differently about makeup. Do not look at it from a stand point of correction, look at it from a standpoint of fun, of enhancement or, if you are brave enough, performance art!

As a makeup artist you might think that we look at people’s face and think “hmm, got to cover that up, spackle some stuff on there, hide that, and...” we do – but ONLY after we have noticed what amazing color eyes you have, how sculpted your cheekbones are, the perfect arch of your eyebrows, your amazing lips, etc. EVERYBODY without any exception, (whatsoever) is beautiful and has some feature to enhance. That is just the way it is. So I wish to look at makeup from a different perspective, and sometimes it can be useful to bring that new perspective into your everyday routine.

It is not a tattoo, it is not a haircut, it is just some pigment - some color! and its easy to wash off if you don’t like it!

Start looking at your makeup bag the way you look at a box of jewelry, it’s to embellish what’s already there, you don’t put on a necklace to hide your neck, quite the opposite!

So get that child in you a box of crayons and mummy’s lipstick, play with your box of jewelry, and start embellishing those peepers, instead of hiding behind those browns!

Have fun,

With love, Sara x x x

Lightning Strikes!

That illusive wonderful ray that makes all the difference to a face in a picture, those spotlights piercing the darkness to light up a face on a sullen stage - there are ways to highlight, to brighten and to pour rays of sunshine on your face, sculpting and lifting your features and opening up your eyes. Below are a few of my favorite tricks on how to do this.

1) Light at the base: For a gorgeous all over glow mix a drop or two of a luminizer into your foundation and apply all over face. For a brightening effect for sullen, grey or too yellow looking skin, use a pearl essence with a pink tone. To warm up skin, use a pearl essence with a gold holographic tone and for a universal suit all glow, just a drop of a pure white pearl essence. It should not change the color of your foundation but rather just add a light hint of shimmer.

2) Light up the bones that sculpt your face: Apply highlighter at the highest points, powder is fine but I do prefer a gel or a shimmer for this as it looks like your own skin. You can play with hues - soft pastels with a holographic hint sometimes looks so much more amazing then just a plain white, nude, or gold. Use clean fingertips and dab just underneath the brow bone and then down onto the cheek bones, ending diagonally (away from the nose) under the pupil. You can also add a small touch of glow to the bridge of the nose for lit from within effect.

3) Light up your gaze: Use a light, loose shimmer dust right in the inner corner of your eyes to reflect the light into peepers, opening them up and brightening them to the max. (Hint of color - blue mascara also brightens the eye whites, it truly works!)

4) A lip lighting maze: After applying lip color or lip gloss, dot a sheer shimmer crème just outside your natural lip line at the cupids bow and smudge a little bit onto the middle of upper and lower lips. Creating an enhanced lit up illusion.

Come out and play in the light!

With love as always,
Sara x x x

Got Style?

Pinup? Rockabilly? Mod? Housewife? Hippie? Rock ‘n Roll? Punk? Is that really all there is? No way! Let’s shake it up! Want to go vintage? Good – take your favorite elements and frazzle them up to bedazzle! Get your favorite little 50’s prom dress out and mix it up with a tattered leather jacket, a pair of boots and messed up hair. No limits! I know this is no news to you, so now let’s do it with our makeup too. This is really how to create something new, to whip it up and get the milk frothing.

You want to follow your individuality, not some set rules of what things should look like!

I was doing my makeup the other day and as I was putting on my usual winged eyeliner, I suddenly remembered that young girl I used to be. That girl who was always late for school because she was busy hair pinning tin foil to her hair or trying out that new blue lipstick found in the theatre makeup shop. In the last school picture I look like a complete mess, just a small hippie gone wrong! In my grandmother’s house coat, REALLY back combed platinum blonde hair and way too big jeans stained with paint splashes. But oh, did I have fun! In the course of 4-5 years I went through every style I knew of. I was the surfer girl (in freezing December in Sweden), I was mod (and a pretty good one, I went to the all nighters, still love the music), I was punk (yes, I had pink and purple spikes), I was skate girl (gave that up, fell to often :), I was grunge (I looked pretty good as a grunge), I was also beat, hippie, gypsy, rock ‘n roll (now those last three kind stuck with me!)

See, the hardcore followers of all these styles would tell me I am insincere and a poser, that I had to much time on my hands and that each style comes with a culture that is not to be played with. Sure, I’ll take it on the chin, but...I will keep on playing. That’s what makes makeup, fashion and life fun!

I would encourage you to do the same – mix it up! Go after your mood and make a statement, make it yours (even if it’s your grandma’s house coat!)

Make it POP!

Love, Sara x x x

At the Base!

Hi everyone-

What’s the most important part of your makeup routine? It’s actually what happens before you even put the makeup on! It’s in your skin. Below are some of my personal favorite ways to make sure my skin is prepped, primped and happy. Apart from sleeping lots (which rarely happens!) - moisturize, drink lots of water, or just being blessed with good genes (to those lucky few!) How do you really create a great canvas, so that you can start playing with those yummy hues?

• Prime: POP’s Face Magnet Primer is one of our absolute bestselling products. With ingredients like skin plumping and revitalizing caffeine, calming and antiseptic liquorish root and healing Vitamin E, this face brightening lotion will even out the skin tone as an amazing first step in your makeup routine, and it holds on to rest of your makeup all day!

• Hide: A good concealer really is key! I don’t want to go anywhere without my No Show Concealer. One side for full-on coverage and one side for a highlighting luminosity. Dab high coverage end under the eye area and around the nose and chin, or anywhere you need extra coverage. Use clean finger tips or a synthetic brush.

• Cover: your choice of powder, tinted moisturizer, liquid or crème foundation. I like to switch them up depending on the event, weather and how I feel. Always keep two shades in your base wardrobe. Lighter and darker for “summer” vs “winter” and then you can mix them together for when your skin is anywhere in between.

• Prime again! Time to prime those eyelids for shadow. The POP Eye Magnet Primer is amazing for creating a flawless finish for lids, making the shadow blend easier and stay on until you take it off!

Now you should be ready to start throwing those fun hues around! Enjoy!
With love, Sara x x