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Brighten and Anti-Age with the Triangle of Pearls

7/16/2015

 
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The most flattering pearl earring design features a large pearl that dangles or a pearl tassel because the slight movement increases the brightness and blur effect...
Take a moment and think about your skincare routine: do you use products that lighten and brighten your complexion? Do you have dark circles, discolorations, old scarring, or a dull complexion? Aging skin can look dull without the bright glow we all have in our youth. Another aging reality: the “fat pad” we have in our upper cheeks actually begins to drop down to our lower cheek area as we leave our 30’s. Shadows develop in our nasolabial folds and newly- developed hollows under our eyes and upper cheek area.  Many women address these issues with complexion brighteners, skin firming products, and dermal fillers and there are a lot of really good ones available. 


But what if I told you that there is a skin brightening and plumping illusion you can create with pearls? This is a secret that women have used for centuries, if not longer. White or creamy-toned pearls do a funny thing to the human eye that is looking at them. Because the color of natural and cultured pearls is actually fairly bright, luminescent, and composed of many micro-colors, the eye muscles contract slightly. Think of what your eyes do when you look at a bright light- the light makes everything around it brighter and a bit blurry.  That is the first part of the illusion.

The second part involves the focus and recognition properties of how our eyes and brain work when we look at an image. Think about how you can seemingly magnify the color of your eyes by wearing that color. Framing an object with a dark color emphasizes shadows, while framing an object with light colors emphasizes the light. Also our brains look for the same shapes- so if we frame a picture with a lighter color frame with round curves in its design, we will focus on the lighter and rounder objects in the framed image. This is why when you frame your face with the right kind of pearls, attention is focused on the brighter parts of your skin, and your upper cheeks appear more youthfully full . Other parts of our faces that flatten with age also appear rounder and more youthful.

Pearl Tassel
Tassels provide the pearl anti-aging illusion and slenderize the face; a matching pendant can be added to complete the triangle.
The Triangle of Pearls effect is achieved when you wear both a pearl necklace and pearl earrings. The most flattering earring design features a large pearl that dangles or a pearl tassel because the slight movement increases the brightness and blur effect, and a dangle earring accentuates cheekbones and eyes. The most flattering necklaces have either large pearls separated slightly from each other with tiny wired loops, or a pendant of  pearls wire-looped into a tassel.  These designs can be seen in many classical paintings, especially portraits, in museums around the world. The slight separation of the pearls allows the angular portions of the face to also be accentuated, and the continuous hourglass silhouette of the necklace provides several illusory suggestions about a woman’s figure.

Pearl Necklace
One of the two most flattering pearl necklace designs a woman can wear.
For many years, I have created just these types of cultured pearl necklaces and earrings. Several of these designs are available on my website, and I also love to customize these pieces for individual customers, adding other gemstones that flatter individual coloring or altering sizes and lengths. I also offer a pair of “cool girl pearl” earrings featuring a tiny sterling silver spike. A smaller version of this design is coming to the website sometime in the next two weeks. More “cool girl pearls” will be appearing in the next few weeks, and these types of pearl designs were all over the fall fashion runways.

My next blog will explore how to use longer earrings to create the illusion of a more slender, angular face. Done properly, these earrings can create the illusion of more slender cheeks, jawlines, and can even distract from jowls and double chins. Attention is drawn to the eyes- especially if the correct color is chosen. And my personal FAVORITE: you can get all of these effects while getting all of the anti-aging effects of pearls with a long pearl tassel earring. I wear them constantly, everywhere.

Deborah

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Jewelry Can Enhance Your Beauty

7/5/2015

 
What do you think is your best feature? Do you hear that you have beautiful eyes? Do people tell you that you have beautiful hair? Have you received compliments on your figure?

 You may have learned to select certain colors of cosmetics, certain colors or styles of clothing, even certain types of handbags that you know will enhance and magnify the effect of your best features. But did you know that you can use certain styles and colors of jewelry to enhance your best features? Even better, you can use certain colors and styles of jewelry to disguise and distract attention from those features that you wish you didn’t have.

For several centuries, jewelers working for women in royalty- known as court jewelers- have designed jewelry that enhanced the women’s best features and distracted attention from their flaws. Using principles of color, brightness, level of contrast, proportion, sharpness of angles, and appropriately sized curvilinear or straight lines, these court jewelers could amazingly transform a woman’s appearance. Jewelers working for other wealthy women also practiced these principles, and passed this knowledge down to their apprentices as part of their jewelry education.

Today these principles are not well known in the jewelry industry. Individual components of this science are practiced by celebrity stylists, and in formal programs such as those that analyze a person’s hair, skin, and eye color for clothing and make-up color recommendations. But the knowledge of the overall major theory is no longer being taught or practiced as a specific body of information.


  When I was a sophomore in college, I was introduced to this body of knowledge as a happy accident one day when I was visiting one of the many art museums found in Houston, Texas. I was in a small crowd of people studying a painting of a very severe-looking older woman wearing a stark black and white high-bodiced gown. She had graying red hair, a large hooked nose, sagging cheeks and jowls, a sharp long chin, small closely-set eyes, and a map of deeply-set wrinkles covering her entire face. Yet all of those features were almost impossible to see. What was easy to see, in fact striking, were her hypnotic bright blue-green eyes, her glowing youthfully plump alabaster skin with a slight coral flush, her also coral-colored full lips, and her startling youthfully slender but curvy figure.

Staring at this conundrum, I would walk closer to the painting, then retreat a few feet, then pull closer; trying to figure out just how such a technically unattractive aging woman could look so, well, radiant and frankly sexy. It was astonishing.

 The small crowd of people eventually dispersed, but I remained in front of that painting. I had to figure this out. Finally, a well-dressed older woman, approached me and said quietly, “ Eeet eez ze jewelry.”

Over the next two years, this woman became one of my closest friends. She taught me the basics of the art of using jewelry to alter a woman’s appearance, and introduced me to the books, and articles, and handwritten notes that explained the mathematics behind the theories. She spent a great deal of time translating much of the material from French, Italian, and even Russian; and mentored me until I finally mastered the material.

  In my next post, I will explain how to use a “triangle of pearls” to brighten your skin, eyes, and take years off of your appearance.

Deborah

P.S.  
If you want to get an email notification about my next blog post, then sign up for my mailing list by clicking here

    Author

    Deborah Weinhauer’s interest in jewelry began in her childhood during trips to museums.  Now living in Melrose, a suburb of Boston, she specializes in custom diamond and gemstone designs, as well as creating jewelry that enhances her clients’ beauty.

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