Our Eye Album: Spring
July 6, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 8 Comments
No aspect of human form or colouring do I find more beautiful than eyes. The more photos I looked at, the more it seemed that such collectively splendid human truth should be compiled.
This is our family album, a celebration of the miracle of Nature’s creation. Let yourself be uplifted by the intricate simplicity of her use of colour, in our home planet as in our own body. I payed no heed to which PCA system determined Season, or how perfect the photographic conditions.
I am not attaching words except to say that eye colour and pattern are not sure guides to Season. Season, hair, and eyes come in any and every combination. As well, train yourself to look at everything in the photo. Notice the colour of skin, lashes, blood vessels, the rims of the eyelids, and the white of the eye.
A special tip of my hat to Color Me A Season founder Bernice Kentner who was first to deduce the eye colour and pattern association with Season. Her book, The Magnificent Eye, contains all the explanations you need to get started.
If you have pictures like these and know your Season, please do send them to me at christine@12blueprints.com and I will gladly add them.
Spring eyes have been a fascination to me in that they are barely ever what I expect. I cannot come up with a consistent pattern except the presence of yellow. Quite in keeping with the unpredictability of Spring. Line patterns in the iris may be very defined, to the point of crossing into Winter’s eyes. Lines radiating out from the edge of the pupil are more defined than Summer’s (often barely discernible), though less than Winter’s. There is often a lot of yellow, but not always, and not always organized as a ring in the iris. The yellow is usually yellow to strong peach, seldom an earthy orange-brown (which belongs to the Autumns), but sometimes the distinction isn’t so obvious.
Light Spring
Pure cool colours in the eye below, much more definite lines, Winter characteristics. But the skin is light yellow and so are the lashes.
See the yellow ring out in the iris?
Below, on a Summer base blue (little line detail, line-free ring around the pupil) there are brown flecks that seem Autumn, lots of yellow that’s not organized into a ring, and petal shapes that could suggest Winter. Eyes can be as misleading as helpful. They can give away too much about the real us, as we well know. The skin and lashes seem light, clear, yellow, and pink.
Notice what is so uniquely beautiful in the eye below: there are two rings of sunshine! One at the outer edge of the brown spacer round the iris and another at the outer edge of the iris, with many a sunbeam connecting the two rings. These eye photos just get better and better. The eye belongs to the very beautiful Light Spring woman in the light coral drape just under the eye. She and I both find it interesting that her facial structure resembles Louise’s in the article Louise And Stevan Are Light Springs (Light Spring eye 1 at the top belongs to Louise.) The haircolour you see is her natural colour. Her skin could not look more perfect.
We’ve seen so much variation in Light Spring eyes. I find Spring the most difficult Season to generalize regarding eye colours and patterns – in keeping with the unpredictable spontaneity of Springs, perhaps. The eye below seems to me more typical: the colour deposit or effect is light rather than intense; the skin is very young, glowing, pink and yellow both; lashes are light and contain yellow; there is an open area round the pupil with a faint line pattern only, a bit more defined than in a Summer; the definite presence of green which happens when Spring yellow is added to Summer’s blue eye base; and the unmistakable clear yellow beaming in the iris. The yellow is not intense, so this person may lean close to their cool Light Summer neighbor than to the warm side as the woman above does, in whose eye the colours are more saturated and more transparent.
The photo below shows so many interesting points. This woman was draped as a Light Spring in London by Nikki Bogardus. See how much more pigmentation there is than in the eye above? It’s uncommon to find such intensity of eye colour in the Light Seasons, and probably looks near electric when the clothes and cosmetics are light to keep the skin perfect. I wonder if she was created with more intense eye colour to balance her darker hair, again more value than is common in the Light Seasons. These unexpected findings make us unique, the gifts of our individuality that few others received, even within our Seasons. Notice also the orange-yellow colour clustered round the pupil – that could be misinterpreted as Soft Autumn, which is why it’s essential to be draped, to be surrounded by the most beautiful colours possible.
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True Spring
True to everything else about this Season, the eye pattern are the most unpredictable. What the cameras are picking up is amazing.
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Bright Spring
Eye patterns can seem so confusing, but in retrospect, once you know your Season, it can be so obvious. Bright Spring … the Season that combines a lot of Spring (seen in the yellow ring out in the iris, separated by a small distance from the edge of the pupil) and a little Winter (you can see that the spoke lines begin right at the pupil edge and go out to the outer edge of the iris). This skin isn’t very yellow or warm because Winter puts a lot of red here. But there’s Spring clarity in that eye, like beach glass.
The eye below contains a lot of Winter’s cooling and Winter geometry in the line patterns, as does the face it belongs to, with dark hair and still darker brows. The entire picture of the face is fresh, light, warm, and delicate, far more likely to be a Spring type than a Winter. Here, you see the yellow colouring of the skin next to the apparent coolness of the eye, already a very compelling effect. Add to that that some of the colours of the skin appear in the eyes. The photo captures the crystal clarity that human pigmentation can achieve. Did you notice the blue liner in the lower lid? Makeup that you see before the person isn’t my favorite, but this is subtle, interesting, and beautiful. The colour is young, clear, too playful to wear more obviously, but so happy and uplifting when applied this graceful restraint. We are so incredibly attuned to colour that the tiniest amount usually does the job better than applying more to be sure it will be seen. Trust me, we’ll see a speck and thank you for it.
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Light Spring Looking Serious
June 14, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 13 Comments
We talked last time about how Light Summer conveys a professional, adult image with a palette that can feel like rainbows and fairy tales.
Light Spring (of the 12 Seasons, this Neutral Season is mostly Spring with a little Summer) is in the same boat. Although creamier and less misty blue, you would use Light Spring’s palette to paint the Fountain of Youth. How we dress, how our faces and bodies look, it’s just the light we give off. Light Spring’s is the creamy green, pink, and white light of a tree in bloom (not just one little flower, as has been suggested 
; this is the whole glowing magnificent tree, radiating a clear, young, vital light).
I could suggest that you to aim to project this light when you choose what to buy, but it doesn’t help much at a mall.
Let’s call this beautiful woman Lynn. Light is not the first thing you’d say when you look at Lynn’s face or her overall apperance. She knows from a Sci\ART personal colour analysis that the Light Spring palette created the most perfected skin she could achieve – but skin is difficult to illustrate, so we get caught talking about hair and eyes, though we know neither has a definitive place in deciding Season. This hair colour is a bit darker than her natural colour, but not by much. Lynn’s eye colour is not dark or intense, rather similar to the soft green leaves behind her. There is a great misconception that the Light Seasons are all blue-eyed blondes. Rachel addressed this topic better than anyone in her article on revising our idea of Spring and Summer.
Notice the perfection of the earrings, dress, sweater, both in style and colour. These people look younger than anyone else, for longer, a marvelous gift. But they don’t necessarily want others to think Barbie, Tinkerbell, cupcake, candy heart, Mother’s Day Cake, or anything else with a pediatric drift, when they assemble an outfit. This can be challenging with a palette that is sunny and delicate to the point of enchantment.
Light bounces everywhere, though not full on squinty light. The overall feeling is distinctly warmer than Light Summer’s, but lightness of colour is shared as the most important aspect of perfecting skin tone. Every item need not be perfect, is not in the collection below, and will not be in stores. The overall impression pulls single items into a cohesive Light Spring feeling.
Don’t get too playful. Though a coloured bag or jacket is so good on Springs, the brighter the colour, the plainer the style, at least for professional impressions.
Make big use of neutrals, and remember that they are luminous too.
The green blouse would be better with ivory than white, but the overall feeling is light. The pants with the yellow blouses are not part of the collection. Pants are very light neutral. Most khakis and chinos are too orange, heavy, and/or yellow-brown for Light Spring. Light beige pants are quite fine, but camel can look almost like furniture, bulky and solid on this airy lightness. It just put friction into the system that doesn’t feel good. Notice in the set above that you can feel some restraint still where heat is concerned.
In response to the Light Summer Looking Serious post, a valid point was raised that I want to share. Why does the Light Summer coat look so light (from the previous post), and this suit so much darker? Is there a difference in how dark the two Light Seasons can get? Great questions.
In my head, they went to about the same level of darkness, or not enough that it would matter in stores, though Light Spring would be the lighter of the two, with the main difference in side-by-side swatches being that Light Spring is yellower and a touch clearer (less grey). That was true of the pre-2010 books I still have. When I looked at my post 2010 swatch books (no idea when in 2010 they were made, if they were old stock or new formulas), Light Spring is definitely the lighter palette of the more recent books. A sincere thanks to the woman who pointed this out.
Sci\ART analyst Maytee Garza has posted all 12 Tone palettes on her Shutterfly page, along with photos of people in each Season. It’s a gorgeous page, one you will want to bookmark. Light Summer’s value limit is darker. The Light Spring palette looks the same as my post (not a typo) 2010 books. To look at the two, Light Spring’s look a bit hazier (as in misty,rather than grey), though those are the clearer, less muted colours. My explanation: as they lose Summer’s greyness and take on more of Spring’s yellow light, they become creamy. The purer the yellow, increasing as we move into Spring, the lighter the colour. Muted means closer to grey, a Summer characteristic. If True Summer is skim milk and True Spring is real cream, Light Summer is still only about 1%, whereas Light Spring is what? half ‘n half, not as heavy as whipping cream.
Light Spring colours must be tints, with more white added to them, or that’s how it seems, though I am no colour mixing expert. There may also be a photographic factor here, since the Light Spring swatches are the clearer (less grey) ones to look at IRL, perhaps a bit like the effect of being photographed while wearing sunscreen. In thinking of how to describe the difference, overexposed came to mind.
These articles are not intended to show the colour extremes. Only the swatch books can do that. These sets are more trying to communicate an overall feeling and simulate a real shopping experience. The coat in the Light Summer post was among their mid-darkness level browns. Is the coat above too dark for Light Spring? You may feel that it certainly is. To me, it is OK, though they would not go even one degree darker. I left it there for the illustration.
Is the colour too something-not-right, better suited to an Autumn? A Soft Autumn could probably wear it, though I don’t see a lot of orange in the colour, it seems more a Spring yellow-brown on this screen.
The issue for me is whether a Light Season would wear the jacket and pants together or if the overall look would be too heavy and somber. I still think it would work with a light blouse, but some of the very fair women may feel otherwise. Every woman will have to make a darkness adjustment within her palette, based on the darkness of her natural colouring and her own preference, how much makeup she likes, etc. The model wearing the suit is holding her own in it. The model in the photo to her left probably could as well.
How could I, I forgot handbags for the Lights?!
Interchangeable for the Light Seasons. Not too much hardware, which looks heavy. Light means light by every connotation of the word.
Light purses get dirty, I know, but I still prefer the look with this woman, clothes, and makeup.
The right column, 2nd from top, though a nice colour, may feel too clunky and heavy. May also depend on the size of the woman carrying it. Purses look good when they kind of match our body shape. Rounded with rounded, boxy with boxy, big and little with big and little.
No brown bags, which feel too weighed down and utility for Spring, especially Light Spring, even in a workplace look. I apologize to anyone with brown purses and respect, indeed welcome, your right to disagree with me as long as you tell me why so I learn something. Left column, 2nd from top, is also a bit heavy, but if something qualifies as cute, it’s probably Spring.
Middle column bottom, the blush pink may not be for the day you chair the meeting, but great for the business lunch the meeting-after-the-meeting. I believe we should find a way to wear our undertone colour every day. Others get that something is going on that their eyes are not often given.
Once again, I set prices at 100 for most items, double what I spend on anything, because beauty is not about how much money you go through.
The Brown-Eyed Spring
February 9, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 81 Comments
Or Never Give Up On Your Colouring
This post is special for a few reasons.
First, I get more questions asking how this colouring looks than all the other groups.
Is this the rarest Season of them all? I think it depends where you live. I have never analyzed a True Spring, but I have seen what they look like: Wayne Gretzky. I give up a bit on female examples because they are so altered, usually for the worse, that a natural original is almost impossible to find.
Bright Spring is not really rare. It is unpredictable. This colouring always seems to look like something else. To confuse matters, the opposite is true as well, where many other Seasons can look like Bright Spring. When hair is dark, this person can resemble Dark Autumn or Dark Winter when eyes are dark. If eyes are light, the similarity to True Summer can be startling.
Secondly, this beautiful model, whom we’ll call Audrey, has brown eyes. Those are rare in the Spring and Summer groups, but where human genetics are concerned, nothing is impossible.
The Bright Seasons are those that combine Winter and Spring colouring. If Winter is stronger, the Season is called Bright Winter. If Spring influence is larger, the person contains the colours of the Bright Spring palette in their natural colouring. Both are Neutral Seasons in the Sci\ART 12 Tone system, meaning that this skin has some warmer and some cooler colours. This is important information for buying the right foundation.
Asian features often belong to people whose colouring is perfected by the Bright Seasons. Here is one of Audrey’s pre-PCA pictures.
Nothing wrong with that picture at all, but would you think of a Spring person? Maybe, but I didn’t. Bright crosses my mind when I see Asian features, but I couldn’t picture the bright coral pink lip colours on that skin tone. When you look at the PCA pictures, do you find that Audrey doesn’t even look like the same woman? I was blown away by the difference. In her most beautiful colours, her skin tone is light, bright, evenly coloured, illuminated and brilliant. Bright Spring takes their Winter influence and turns it into pure sparkle.
This illustrates what worries me about doing Personal Colour Analysis from photographs, even good ones. They just give you one static shot, but colour analysis is anything except static. It is a very dynamic process, of ever-changing drapes, colours, and better-than decisions, through many sets of drapes. We compare and compare and compare again.
***Thank you to the wonderful Maytee Garza at Reveal Style Consultancy in New Jersey for this analysis. Maytee has shared photographs of PCA sessions with several clients on her Shutterfly page.***
During the draping, we see right away that black works pretty well, but seems too serious and hard at the same time. Something is off, not always easy to put your finger on what. In True Autumn brown, nothing happens. It just sits there. And the longer it sits, the worse things get, which happens with all wrong colours on everyone. Some Bright Springs look physically small, old, and weak in Autumn colours.
Then True Spring’s yellow goes on. Wow. The person turns yellowish, because that drape is too warm, but the eye goes from generic blue or brown to something amazing. The face becomes perfectly evenly coloured. If you could just erase the yellow, the face would already be wearing custom-coloured foundation and concealer. Ten years come off the face of older women. Everyone in the room stares speechless.
In the photo below, compare Audrey’s coloring to Maytee’s. Maytee is a Dark Winter. The clarity and lightness of Audrey’s skin compared to the much darker, muted tones of Maytee’s are so much more evident. Notice too that black works, but a small black block with a big light,bright block is spectacular.
Audrey’s descriptions are far better than mine could be. She said,
I love that it’s mostly about the skin tone in Sci/Art, but it really is about the eyes and hair too – not in the way that the eye/hair color is part of the final judgment call about a person’s season, but in the way that one can see changes in the hair and eye color too. When I wore the wrong colors, my eyes darkened and you couldn’t get the full effect of the topazy/hazel/interesting lightness (comparatively to other brownish eyes). When I wear my best colors, my eyes lighten to a shade I never even knew they could be, and even my hair changes – I notice the warmth in it, the interesting chestnut/red/orange undertones.
This is the best part. When the hair is covered, it is easier to believe what your eyes are telling you. In Audrey’s words,
The Bright drapes, both Bright Winter and Bright Spring, worked, but the Bright Winter drapes were a bit too blue/too cool, and they didn’t light me up as well as the Bright Spring drapes did. Interestingly enough, some of the Summer drapes worked on me but in general, the Summer palette greyed me and I REALLY could see it. So finally, it was between Warm (True Spring) or Neutral (Bright Spring).
Can you believe it – me, a dark-haired, “dark”-eyed gal (who actually has topaz-ish clear hazel eyes in the Sci/Art lighting which is a duplicate of natural lighting), was actually being considered for TRUE SPRING! I almost couldn’t believe it but funnily enough, it took a little while to figure out which worked better – warm or neutral. They both looked great but the Warm drapes yellowed me a bit. Also, between True Spring and Bright Spring, there was no contest – True Spring did not incorporate my natural darkness, which Bright Spring does.
One of the most interesting changes that we noticed aside from a greying of the skin or a dulling of the skin was the fact that my eyes darkened when I wore colors that weren’t bright/clear enough. This is also something that I noticed before this draping session, especially when trying different blush colors. When I’m not wearing the right colors, my eyes darken and you can’t get the full effect of how topaz/hazel-colored they are, and now I know that it wasn’t just my eyes playing tricks on me!
The more you’re willing to release, the bigger the prize.
Rimmel Lip Gloss for 12 Seasons
January 15, 2011 by Christine Scaman · 26 Comments
Some folks take exception to my swatching makeup on white paper. They say you can’t tell how the colour would look on your face. They’re going to love the way I swatch lip gloss.
I find I can see the subtleties of the colours way better on paper. On paper, you can be more detached about the colour. It’s still far enough from you to be perceived as separate from you, and only on its own merits. Once it enters your Personal Zone, all kinds of meta impressions start happening.
The hot second you try to evaluate a colour on your own face, you’ve lost objectivity. Your imagination alters your face, and everything on it. We have no idea what we look like to others. The only thing we decide when we look at a new makeup colour on our face is whether it could be consistent with how we’re used to seeing ourselves.
The Sci\ART Colours Book is outstanding for matching makeup colours, the trickiest part of working with your Season. Good thing there’s lots of help to get you started once you get your Season ID. The swatches in the Book are on white canvas. At the store, I can smear the makeup on a white page. Back home and decide, in daylight, if the colours are the same. Any client who has done this with me during a PCA appt knows that she can look from the makeup palette we create on paper to her Colours Book, and find every swatch in her Book immediately. Her eye just goes to it, and she is right every time. This system works.
These Rimmel Stay Glossy lipglosses impressed me because of the good colour selection – or was it that I found Winter colours, usually so hard to do? So often, a line will have 3 good colours, and you stand there looking at the rest of them, thinking “I have no idea who would wear these colours.” In this line, the fairest and darkest have a choice, the most muted and clearest, and the Winter colours are actually wearable.
The gloss is supposed to last 6 hours, or 8 hours, or some big, impressive number.
Critical Thinking : the ability to discern what is probably right and what is probably wrong. A 6 hour lip gloss? You didn’t even expect that to be true. There’s no 2 hour lip gloss out there, unless you’re a mannequin, the plastic kind. Forget 6.
The product is plenty nice, and reasonably priced, whatever that means in cosmetics. Heavens, I’m being snarky today, but there is too much undeserved cosmetic raving going on out there. Every week brings a new rave. That’s how you came to have a used-it-once drawer. I’m just trying to keep the reality glasses in place so you never add one more item to that drawer. I am nice enough to say that there was nothing about the application that I didn’t like, besides the sinking ship of 6 hour expectations. This is also a nice product to apply over a lipstick, long wear or otherwise to keep it going till lunchtime without needing a mirror.
I swatch lip gloss between 2 pieces of tape to avoid having gunk all over my purse. I can spread it around and look at the nuances of the colour when I get home to daylight. I can see the colour next to other tones, because colour is all about comparison.
Once you see a colour you like on paper, and it seems to match your Book, I absolutely suggest you put it on your face. There’s more to a makeup buy decision than its colour. Also, no two women in the same Season look quite the same or will interpret their Season in the same way, or have the same comfort level with colour on the face.
I match the color analyzed swatches from the middle darkness colours, or the lighter ones for the Light Seasons. The darker swatches work fine in clothing but most light-medium complected women find them dark. The Sci\ART system is 12 Season Personal Colour Analysis, because 12 is enough without being too much, but you’ll refine your position within your Season with time.
The pictures are a bit randomly organized, and seem a bit sloppy (that’s part of the reality theme), but they cover all the colours, with some opportunity to compare. In Canada, we did not have Endless Night, Unlimited Gold, or Endless Summer, unless they are here with a different name. I haven’t adjusted any settings. Photos were taken at 11AM on an overcast day, on a sheet of white paper.
True Winter : Yours Forever
Dark Winter : All Night Long
Bright Winter : Timeless Allure, Fuchsia Fever
Finding a clean red-violet that has that purple pivot that True Winter hovers around is challenging, especially in a cheaper product. I like this one.
For many darker Season women, they don’t always want a dark lip. I’ll never (or not soon) be convinced that Sandra Bullock (probably Dark Winter), Liza Minelli (True?), or Audrey Hepburn (Bright W?) look their best in browned, flesh toned lips. Dark W wears a browned deep rose as a disappearing lip (NARS Dolce Vita), but it has little impact. A very good option to nude lips for Winters, which the intensity of the person’s coloring can still dominate too easily, is a sheer lip.
I hope you can see that Dark Winter’s colour is browner. Bright W’s is lighter and clear.
As a Dark Winter, I tried All Night Long. It’s quite similar to the Dark Winter always-in-your-purse anchor of Merle Norman Stolen Kisses.
Light Summer : All Day Seduction, Stay My Rose, Dare To Say, Eternal Flirt
True Summer : Captivate Me, Dare To Say
Soft Summer : My Eternity, Stay My Rose, Captivate Me
With the sheerness of a gloss, several of these colours will work across categories. Your own lip colour will come through and help adapt the shade to your face.
All Day Seduction has a gold glimmer in it, it felt best for Light Summer. Soft Summer can do gold shimmer sometimes, as in MAC Plumfoolery blush, but the base colour is deeper in that blush than this light pink gloss. Soft Summers are much cooler than they are warm and not especially light.
Light Spring : Non Stop Glamour, Always Lovely, All Day Seduction
True Spring: Here To Say? , Non Stop Glamour
Bright Spring: Fuchsia Fever, Timeless Allure, All Day Seduction
True Spring gave me some trouble. Here To Say may be one those colours that is too browned for a Spring and not browned enough for an Autumn. It is orange and yellow enough that it may work well, with just enough brown to make it more nude/flesh coloured. I try to picture it on Wayne Gretzky…not sure. I was hoping it might look like this.( I think Uma may be a Light Spring because pale lips look so good on her. True Spring does better with a shot of real color).
The beauty of a gloss is that it tempers brightness (as in Fuchsia Fever) and darkness (as Timeless Allure), allowing Bright Spring to wear both. They could also do All Day Seduction, because it’s a clean pink with a gold shimmer. Light Summer had this colour too, because there are similarities between it and Bright Spring (both can do well in medium-darkness colours, both have a trace of Spring yellow).
So Fabulous is a slightly yellow caramel beige. It is not orange, nor is it as heavy as butterscotch sundae sauce. It is a Spring colour, perhaps a good flesh-toned lip for Light Spring, a Season that is exemplary in the various beiges of nuts and their shells.
Soft Autumn: Here To Say?
True Autumn: Immortal Charm
Dark Autumn : Everlasting Crush, Still Gorgeous
A Soft Autumn will probably find Here To Say too orange. I’m usually looking for a color like the pink in a flowerpot, and this is not it, but they do have a warm side, especially when the hair has an apricot highlight, and they do look great in nude/flesh lips, a la J.Lo. This is a line where the Autumn colours are less plentiful, while the pinks are over-represented.
Still Gorgeous could be lovely on Dark Autumn, and very natural on women of deeper complexion.
Black Diva, well, y’know. Oh, I forgot that one.
Lockets for the 12 Seasons
December 12, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 15 Comments
Lockets come in so many styles for one type of jewelry. They are at once classic, Victorian, and vintage. Styles vary from very time-honored simplicity to jewel-encrusted modern. They emanate a sense of ancestry that feels grounding, well-bred, and perfectly belonging to this time of year of tradition and family.
At Heartsmith, I found a wealth of styles and a poverty in my ability to choose just one style for each Season, which I failed to do in many cases, as you’ll see. The name of each design and the photo are linked back to the product page.
A sincere thanks to Heartsmith for allowing me to reproduce the photographs.
Let’s look at some very beautiful jewelry.
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SPRING
Heart shapes are in keeping with Spring. They are young, romantic, pointed, and delicate. The adjectives romantic and delicate are often given to Summer, but they are appropriate here too. Spring’s romance is more magical than Summer’s Bosoms&Roses style (as a young friend of mine once described her True Summer Mom’s reading taste). Spring is delicate as youth and fairy wings.
True Spring
Mrs. Potter 3/4 Gold Locket&Diamond.
Because True Spring is the sun.
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Spring is airy, floaty, skyward-directed like growing new plants reaching for the sun’s light. Many members of all 3 Spring groups have small features and a petite aspect to their features. A small, floating heart is so pretty, for any Spring or its blends.
The Alia Floating Heart Pendant.
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Light Spring
Juliet Gold Heart Locket has a brushed center to integrate the Summer element, but the flower petals could be the wings of butterflies. For the Light Spring who resembles a Summer, this style is also available in a white gold.
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Bright Spring
For me, this Season is crisp but delicate, like frozen lace. They are the frost on the window, the ice that coats evergreens and bare branches after an ice storm, the pattern in the thin ice over a puddle when you step on it. In the Season that blends Spring’s sparkle and Winter’s polish, metal must shine.
The Destiny Lace Set Diamond Locket.
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Audrey is stunning too, larger and less yellow in the metal.
If the Wishing Star pendant comes back into stock, put your name on a list.
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SUMMER
True Summer
True Winter is minimal in its ornamention. Pieces are important but they don’t move. I see True Summer as more detailed and decorated. The circle is Summer’s essential shape. The metal is brushed.
Elizabeth Sterling Silver Victorian Locket expresses the gentle strength of this group. Summer is highly capable without needing to control everything around it (like another Season we know).
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I loved this one too. I like it when I have to think about it a bit. This design felt a bit unexpected, and others may have a different interpretation of the look of a True Summer. Pushing the limits of your own taste is an expression of your creativity, of thought becoming matter.
True Summer is often a reflective, pensive personality.I loved the darkness, because True Summer is so often stuck in lightness, and they are not that light. The weight felt good, because True Summer is not light by weight any more than it is by colour. The swirling ivy lines are perfect. The peaceful message of the dove is highly Summerish, as is the grace and flow of wings in flight.
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Light Summer
Alternating polish and matte silver integrates the Summer muted and Spring shiny elements. The size is small and there’s a minimum of fuss to allow the essential heart shape to take center stage.
Laurie Chasing Hearts bracelet
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Soft Summer
In this Season that is essentially Summer, with a dusting of Autumn, the refined sophistication of Summer becomes more solid, thanks to Autumn’s strength. I love the weight of the chain, the pearl, and the stronger closure. The small blue stone in the heart is perfect. I find this piece gorgeous.
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AUTUMN
True Autumn
The Brandy Bracelet is fantastic. It is muted in colour and shine, antiqued, of mid-darkness, with good weight.
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Soft Autumn
Autumn’s lights and darks give a sense of depth. We see this in plaid, for instance, where there are advancing and receding elements. Autumn’s strength is expressed here, as we look for more sustenance in this Season (as we do in the foods we eat as the cold approaches). This is muted in colour and metal, not too hot or cold, feminine but substantial.
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We’ve been talking about which Season is which element in our Facebook group. The symbolism of the Seasons, and how these are depicted in their human examples, fascinate me. Sometimes, an association gets stuck in my head and I can’t dislodge it. For me, Soft Autumn is the tree. Are they the wood element? Yes, probably, I could make that extension.
This piece is perfect for a Neutral Season, with the gold and silver. Both are muted, as looks best on Soft Seasons. If you wear metal (or makeup, or clothes) that are shinier than you, you just got duller by comparison. The gold is earthy, not light and shiny. Love this piece.
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Dark Autumn
Beautiful, in silver with gold accents. You can see how absolutely lovely this item is in the video on the product page. (With citrine, topaz, or diamond options).
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WINTER
True Winter
True Winter is controlled and controlling. They are not all over the place. Floppiness is hopeless. They do not move their bodies in a floppy way. Like the royal family, they are contained and ceremonial when they look their best. Pieces are symmetrical and balanced, an exact equilibrium.
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Bright Winter
Yes, the metal is yellow, but Bright Winter is a Neutral Season. They have yellow in the skin, and it is this light, shiny gold. It is well balanced by the darker lower half. The jaw-dropping opulence, especially in a piece of this size, is balanced better by the Bright Winter than any other.
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Safety is nowhere on Bright Winter. It disappears completely. If you are brighter than your jewelry (or makeup, or clothes), they are duller by comparison. This is the ultimate go-big-or-stay-home Season. Glamorous hairstyles, dramatic necklines, they just look better.
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Dark Winter
Lenore Garnet and Pearl Pendant
The contrast of blood and snow is always Winter. The medieval weighted hardware of Autumn. The imperial luxury of Winter. The deep red undertone of Dark winter skin. The darkness in the metal. The overall feeling of cold and hard. Not too shiny, as Autumn mutes textures as well as colours. An amazing piece of jewelry.
Spring and Autumn Makeup Colours
December 7, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 41 Comments
Spring is light. Literally, figuratively, subliminally, Spring is light.
Colours are light to medium on the Light >> Dark scale. The brown that looks dark on Scarlet Johanssen looks pale and insignificant on Julia Roberts.
Colour deposits are light and /or sheer, though color is still lively. Like putting makeup on a porcelain doll.
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Autumn color is heavy. Like a rug, a warm blanket, a stone fireplace.
Colours is medium to dark.
Colour deposits can be more opaque. The skin is more opaque and needs heavier color. Like putting makeup on a quilted cloth doll.
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I just said something dangerous. The Soft Autumns reading this are thinking “My skin is pale and easily overwhelmed with heavy makeup. I look fake in heavy makeup.” For many Soft Autumns, or any Season that contains some Summer, that can be very true.
Spring is a Season of more translucent colour. Mix that with Summer’s thinner skin and you have extreme fragility and youthfulness of complexion. For me, Light Spring is overwhelmed by the same weight of colour that Soft Autumn can wear, in fact that would be barely visible on a Soft Autumn (either that, or it would be far too candy pink).
Note too than when someone says something about a colour, like Soft Autumn needs heavier colour, the next question should be “heavier than what?”. Alone, adjectives are meaningless because it’s all comparative.
Soft Autumn is generally darker than Light Spring – but not as dark as the other Autumns. Soft Autumn still has light flesh tones, light golden browns, and peachy terracottas. They are not dark people. Any colour extreme, be it too dark, too hot, or too bright will dominate them entirely.
Their colours feel heavier than Spring’s, but this is not the same as saying they have the density of Winter’s. They are just not airy.
Any woman can be well within her Colours Book and still make a darkness adjustment as to which swatches she matches in makeup, based on her comfort level with colour on the face, the rest of the makeup, the occasion, and so on. Some Soft Autumns prefer their lighter colours, but sheer colour can seem like not enough. A Light Spring in sheer colour can still manage to look overdone.
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From top to bottom, these collections belong to Light Spring, True Spring, and Soft Autumn.
For anyone new to 12 Season Colour Analysis, Light Spring is mostly a Spring person, with a small hint of Summer. Soft Autumn is an Autumn coloring that contains a trace of Summer.
As with clothing, even if one colour is a little off, it’s not that big a deal. The rest of the makeup, clothing, and colours in the face will pull it in seamlessly. Many of the eyeshadows are probably interchangeable enough. You can see that True Spring is the yellowest. Light Spring is cooler. Soft Autumn has some neutrality (meaning warmth and coolness at once), as in the center eyeshadow in the left column. Soft Autumn is not clear yellow when viewed as a whole, and they are yet as orange as True Autumn will be.
Light Spring is confusing, as are all the Neutral Seasons, because the question becomes “How warm?”. Both Light Spring and Soft Autumn take a pure warm Season and mix in a trace of Summer. To get every colour perfect the makeup counter, you need the personal colour palette or swatch book.
I find eyeshadow the most difficult. Using descriptors like earthy, heavy, dense, opaque to distinguish browns doesn’t help a whole lot when you’re standing at the counter. Colour is always relative. Standing at the cosmetics counter trying to match a dot in a book will be an exercise in discouragement. Smear the makeup on a piece of white paper, and smear a bunch of similar colours next to it. Even if the colours aren’t that close, it doesn’t matter. Your eye will use the range and position every colour more accurately. With clothing, if you’re choosing a blue sweater, collect several blue items, any shade of blue, and line them up. That’s when you’ll pick out the cool blue, the muted blue, etc.
Spring eyeshadows are light and yellowish. Autumn’s can be yellowish too, but it’s a duller yellow. More gold than yellow usually.
Lipstick is easier. It’s clear for Spring and browned for Autumn. The blossom or the brick.
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Invoke all 5 senses when looking at color. There is a world beyond what your eyes can see.
Spring tastes sweet, ripe, and wet.
Autumn tastes savoury, spicier, and drier.
As you look at these groups of colour, what musical note would they have? Which dance? Which is the flute and which is the drum?
Eyeglass Frames 2 Nov 2010
November 20, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 1 Comment
Frames for True Winter, Light Spring, Dark Winter, Light Summer x 2, and Bright Spring, chosen using the colours and principles of 12 Season (Tone) Personal Colour Analysis.
Or here on YouTube.
The Glasses
True Winter
Light Spring
Light Summer
Light Summer
Bright Spring
The make of the glasses can be seen on the lens, except Bright Spring’s which are Soho. Mine are Joop!
Holland Optical is in SW Ontario at 519-352-8632.
How The 5 Springs Add Yellow
October 8, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 13 Comments
We discussed How The 5 Autumns Add Brown To Hair Colour. It only seems right that we go through Spring’s yellows.
But first. As I look at the original Autumn graphic below, I notice that I’ve combined 2 concepts. I melded the type of brown with the appearance of Winter’s red.
The original picture:
The 5 Autumn browns, subtracting Winter’s red, would look like this:
The Soft Season browns are still being influenced by Summer gray, I know, but the particular brown is right. Soft Summer = campfire smoke. Soft Autumn = peanut butter. True Autumn = amber gold.
From there, ignoring the redness of Winter, but allowing its blackness,
From there, Dark Autumn = dark neutral taupe. Dark Winter = black chocolate.
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For Spring, I’ll confine myself to the type of yellow only. In 12 Season (Tone) Colour Analysis, we include the True Spring, and its strong blends of Light Spring (blend with Summer) and Bright Spring (blend with Winter). We also include Spring’s weak blends, as the Light Summer (Summer takes precedence) and Bright Winter (Winter takes precedence).
For each of the 5 groups, the yellow being added by Spring’s influence is affected by the amount of Spring and what Season it’s being blended with.
Spring’s colors are light because of a particular property of yellow. As it increases in saturation to satisfy Spring’s pure clear colors, it gets lighter. Compare that to Winter, which gets darkened by the higher saturation of the colour blue.
Before Spring : A kitten is True Summer’s white. Their best hair highlight is silver beige. Not white or platnimum, but certainly not yellow, which causes an illusion of a red, shiny nose and center of the face.
Gradually, Spring will light up the palettes. Light Summer is marshmallows. A trace of yellow from Spring and a trace of blue-grey leftover from Summer. This woman is predominantly a Summer. She looks better in Summer’s style of wearing clothes, but brightens and lightens it. Sometimes, the lightening effect can be less obvious and need not be conveyed only by pale pastel colors. For instance, a fabric can convey “lightening” as weightlessness or floatiness. So can a print like bubbles, mist, or foam. When it’s added to hair, this watery yellow looks best as a cool beige. (See How Light Summer Goes Grey)
As we move into Light Spring, color becomes yellower and clearer. The variability in human coloring, even within a given Season, is the challenge of personal color analysis. There are many texts and websites, including this one, that may show you a human example of a Season. Trying to find those averages among your friends is another thing altogether. Your color analysis will tell you the hair color and makeup colors that look most natural on you, within a small range. The range may go from warmer to cooler, or lighter to darker, depending on your position within your Season. Louise (in Louise and Stevan Are Light Springs) is very much on the cool side of the Season, with more ash brown than warm brown hair, so her highlight will be cooler than Stevan’s beachy, sunny yellow. From a colorist’s perspective, this will be hard to fine tune with bleach alone, but they have many shades of blonde to work with to give you the right highlight – and you will know what to ask for when you walk into the salon.
For True Spring, it’s a clear strong yellow. Though this woman’s hair may not be yellow at maturity, and is probably brown, her hair highlight is yellow. The harmony with the skin is extremely spontaneous and likely. Her natural hair color is probably dark blonde, but it’s glassy, like the caramelized sugar glaze of a Crème Brulee. Autumn’s base is medium to dark brown and velvety dense (and of course, Autumn would never wear a yellow highlight).
Bright Spring’s is a clearer stronger yellow. All I did was raise the saturation. Dark hair and dark eyes are very common here. When the complexion is deeper, the person looks Mediterranean, as Spanish or Italian. Dark hair and fair skin may look Celtic. If the person has white hair and turquoise-glass eyes, she is the only person outside her family who knows her eyes are turquoise, not blue, because she dresses like a Summer. This might be the one Season where the variability between people is so high that they can’t all wear the same makeup colors. You have to use judgement to harmonize the person and the makeup on the Light>>Dark scale, and on the Warm>>Cool scale, among the colors offered in the Colours swatch Book. This coloring is very unique. No hair color from a bottle is likely to improve on what you were given. The finest tuning balances the complexion with the natural hair color, but won’t believably tolerate big creative shifts.
Out at the Spring frontier of Bright Winter, there is very little yellowness left. The difference between this and Light Summer’s yellow is the amount of gray. This yellow is icy white, lighter than the color above (icy color is hard to replicate on a screen and convey the frostiness). This person is a Winter, with very little Spring remaining. Winter’s most important rule is high contrast, so very light with very dark blocks. Therefore, to be called “icy colors”, the light colors Bright Winter chooses move very close to white. Also rare and fascinating coloring, be careful if you mess with it. If it’s quite dark, leave it alone. If it’s medium brown, almost ashy, and eyes and skin are light enough, a little blonding at the ends of the hair can give a sunkissed suggestion. Don’t go overboard. If the hair is dark, leave it be. Dark and dynamic force is uniquely Bright Winter’s radiance. Now why would you reduce that?
How Springs Intensify Eye Colour
June 29, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 27 Comments
The whole premise of color analysis is that by wearing the colors already in you, same value, warmth, and saturation, you get the youngest, healthiest, most perfected skin. You also look least artificially made-up in color analyzed cosmetic colours.
When Spring eyes are light in color, they are usually quite light. If they get surrounded by dark eyeliner, hoping to bring attention to them by creating a deliberate light/dark contrast, the problem is that the dark color doesn’t appear anywhere in this person’s natural coloring, so it looks false. And because this person can’t balance such darkness, the effect is to do what a dark line around a light shape always does, to close it in and make it appear smaller.
Don’t make yourself insane looking for red-browns and green-browns and purple-grays and yellow-grays to complement the eye color itself. What you perceive the eye color to be may not be correct, and the effect backfires. What colors enhance the skin enhances the eyes, it’s the automatic guarantee of PCA. They are in your personal colour palette or swatches.
Sorry for all the links, but these images are copyrighted. May take some patience. They should open in a new window.
For all 3 Springs,
1. Makeup cannot be earthy or pastel. A lot of makeup can’t decide if it’s clear or not clear. If you don’t know for sure, don’t buy it. The disaster of earthy makeup on a Spring can be seen here (please excuse the title of the article, but you see the painful effect of orange-brown eyeshadow?) Now add the frost to a color that doesn’t make sense this frosty, and it takes it to overkill. One of those “On whom does this look good??” colors.
Same concept on the model below. For me, the eyeshadow and blush are too orange-brown. It looks unnatural and heavy. We see lines under the eyes, like she’s getting tired from competing with these colors.
Uploaded with ImageShack.us
When makeup is too cool, the effect is anemic, here again on Ms. Theron. There’s something ghostly about the skin, rather than healthy and glowing with vitality.
And when it’s good, here, same model. Only the Light Season can do this spun gossamer, sugar fairy look so beautifully. Spring adds yellow light, Summer does not. (The eyeliner is still sucking color out of the eye.)
2. Eyebrows matter. PCA brings attention to your eyes like never before. They’re the focal point of your entire being. The brows are the frame for the eye. Keep them neat and shaped. Especially important for Light Seasons who don’t wear dark makeup well.
3. The waterline of the eye is the inner rim of the lower lid. In your best colors, it will be the same color as the rest of the skin, which is calm and pale yellow-beige. That looks healthy, cleans up the white of the eye, and sharpens the iris. You could put a line of cream eyeliner there.
4. Don’t underestimate the power of jewelry. It is near the face. Violet eyeliner doesn’t look entirely grownup in makeup, but violet in jewelry can be remarkable. As Spring infuses everything it touches with happiness and movement, so can it wear a lot of bright, clear color. Even costume jewelry and plastic beads work very well. They express the exuberance, the enthusiasm for life that is felt even at the outer reaches of the Season.
If you’re young and want to wear violet eyeliner, be sure it comes from your Personal Colour Palette. Don’t buy a purpley grey or brown. It’s the color of the string on the necklace linked above.
5. Mascara is cool brown to black brown, depending on how dark you are. Black looks like spider eyelashes. Some of the dark-haired Bright Springs can wear black. Hard Candy makes a cool brown mascara. Smear a few out and look at them.
6. Wear your eye color and wear its complement color in clothing.
7. Wear a yellow-cream or yellow-peach eyeshadow hilite. It brings out yellow in the eye.
8. Think about accessories. The inside of eyeglass frames can have another color bonded to it. It looks cool, and I find it imaginative. Spring is a bit exaggerated and they can manage this effect nicely. (image linked to source)
Light Spring
These people are usually very fair. Some have ash hair and look like Summers. Some have yellow-green or brown in the eye and believe they’re Autumns.
The woman who gets my vote as most consistently ruined by makeup and clothing. At least, her hair is usually good. True of the Light Seasons, the less they put on her, the better, younger, real-er she looks. Here not too bad, but I searched.
This is a Light Spring eye. Notice that there there is yellow in it. It may be a green yellow, but it is certainly not an orange yellow. The eye belongs to Louise in the article Louise and Stevan Are Light Springs. Notice how cool and ash her hair looks and that she is not particularly light, though Stevan is. Notice too that the lashes are not very dark.
Repeat effects using makeup if eyes are blue or green will be the cream eyeshadow hilite or the cream waterline pencil, but go easy with this waterline thing. It can look bizarre quickly. If you love a pale aqua eyeliner, you’re under 25, and you are not in a professional situation, have at ‘er.
With Summer’s cooling effect, Light Spring still has more greys in their palette than browns. You want an eyeliner that defines without overtaking. Rimmel Stormy Grey is good. Summer may have left an unexpected charcoal rim to the iris and this repeats it nicely. Don’t ignore your grey clothes, for the same reason.
Keep makeup light in color. Don’t be talked into pops of color that just compete with what you are. Even contour eyeshadows should be light. Louise does not wear dark makeup.
If there’s green in the eye, wear your clear light red lips, even as a sheer. Red and green are complements.
Go easy on the frost. The Summer Spring blends have a deceivingly fragile complexion. Makeup effects can take over and fast. Do a thin shimmer in 1 place at a time, maybe inner corner of eye. Or maybe do a lipgloss over lisptick in a light peach-gold like MAC Instant Gold Lustregloss.
True Spring
These are the fair-skinned, light-eyed, yellow blondes. Uma Thurman, Charlize Theron, Cameron Diaz are the stereotypes.
Same repeat effects as Light Spring if eyes are blue or green.
Brown eyeliner is good. Warm yellowed gray also works. As ever for Spring, it is not an orange brown. Can Spring still wear orange? Absolutely, a clear orange. It’s just that the browns are not oranged.
Balance the eye with lively lip colors. Flat and safe looks like Nicole Kidman in pale hair and lips. Spiritless in a Season based on the very opposite concept. The whole face, the entire presence is drained and diluted. True Spring can balance a lot of the right colors and look fantastic in them.
Brown eyeshadow is fine. Light and clear. Picture those women in beer and honey eyeshadow, it works. In flowerpot or antique deep gold, too heavy, doesn’t work.
Wear bronzer that’s not too yellow or brown. It should be a sheer, pale, yellow-golden-beige. This is Stila 01 at Sephora. Sweep it up onto the forehead, around the eye.
Add a touch of cheek highlighter in a light yellow gold if you’re young. This is the face of the glowing outdoors.
As ever, wear your eye colors from your Colours Book somehow every day. A scarf, a pin, an earring, a purse, a hairband.
Bright Spring
The very fascinating Bright Spring never fails to surprise everyone, the analyst included. If the eyes are light, you’re wondering why they look so bad in Summer pastels, which is where you thought you were headed. If the eyes are darker, you’re wondering why Autumn drapes look tragic, while all the lines are eased away by the Spring drapes.
These women can use the light/dark contrast of dark brown or grey eyeliner with light eyes, because the darkness of the hair can balance it. The grey must be clean and crisp, and less dark than Winter. Merle Norman Galaxy and Annabelle Mercury are good.
They never wear brown in eye makeup very well, unless it’s a light taupe like Dior’s Earth Reflections. Notice (linked below) how there is no orange in the colors and they never get extremely dark.
They are deceptively light, though they don’t look it. The same rules of Spring apply, meaning not going overly dark or bold. This remains delicate skin.
Heather Karuza, who writes the very worthwhile makeup/nail blog at Coloruza.com…a Bright Spring could look like this. That could well be that Autumn-looking eye of this Season. The dark hair-light skin contrast makes one think of Winter, but this girl is not really all that dark. The skin on the throat is light and yellow.
Here, in clearer colors, showing also the Dior 5-shadow Earth Reflections.
Here in more Dark Autumn makeup.
You see why they’re so intriguing, ay?
(PS- Heather, if you read this, the e-mails from the site didn’t get to you. Hope it’s ok for me to post these links. If you prefer not, I’ll take them down. C.)
Best Makeup Colours : True Spring
May 5, 2010 by Christine Scaman · 8 Comments
We each have a map, an inborn GPS that aligns us with our best makeup.
The makeup that looks most believable, youngest, the least severe (synonymous with ‘aging’), and the least fake is dictated by our natural coloring.
Anything else can look as off as a herd of grazing cats. It just feels wrong, you know? Not impossible, just crooked.
Choreograph your appearance to keep repeating.
You begin with a natural colour palette that is specific, not random.
Repeat it with your clothes.
And again in your hair colour.
Again in your makeup.
Once more in accessories.
Level after level after level of building blocks that stack up precisely. Every element is aligned. That looks like strength.
Learn which of the 12 palettes is yours with Seasonal Colour Analysis. The cosmetic colour palette below will be in your personal colour palette swatch book.
We’re going to go through the True Seasons first. They don’t have a cooler and warmer alternative. The True Spring is purely warm, the most important thing about its colors.
This palette is a little different from True Summer’s. Even purely warm Seasons have greys, they’re just warm.
The best lip/blush (because they should be the same) fuse with the basic undertone of your skin.
You adjust the depth of your makeup colors to the darkness of your coloring or complexion. The lip colours should be about the same intensity as the hair colour.
In learning who you are not, the release will flood you with amazing freedom.
In understanding who you are, you will be renewed – and you will look rejuvenated, by 10 years at least.
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Let your natural colouring guide you to your most flattering clothing, makeup, and hair colour choices.12 Seasons of practical, affordable information on the styles, cosmetics, hair colour, and jewelry that each palette wears most beautifully and the comparisons you need to wear your Season perfectly!
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