Valentine’s Day is fast approaching. But we don’t think the Day of Love should be all about finding the perfect guy. It should be about falling in love with your own beauty, and treating yourself the way you deserve on this special day. So this Valentine’s Day, make your look about defining your own beauty, and not about pleasing someone else. With that in mind, here are a few makeup trends that you may want to consider trying to give yourself a new, stunning look that is entirely your own.

Go for Gold

We believe that a woman’s beauty is worth more than gold. But that doesn’t mean gold can’t be a part of your makeup routine! This Valentine’s Day, try adding a bit of shimmer to your look. We recommend trying our Strive lip gloss over your favorite nude lip color. Or, layer it over a soft pink lip color for a rose gold effect that will have you falling head over heels in love with your new look.

Roses Are Red

Rosy colors don’t have to be limited to your lips and cheeks. This year, rosy eyeshadows have become extremely popular. Why not give it a try yourself and see if this new look helps to capture your true beauty? We carry several rose-toned eyeshadows, including Harmony, Grace, and Hope.

A Lasting Kiss

If you happen to be sharing Valentine’s Day with a special someone, the last thing you want is to end up sharing your lip color. More and more women are switching from lipsticks to long-lasting lipstains that don’t smudge or fade. Our LipLast line provides a smooth application and long-lasting finish that’s perfect for a romantic night filled with stolen kisses.

Berry Beautiful

Red is a traditional color for Valentine’s Day, but the bold red lip is not for everyone. If your unique beauty calls for something else, consider trying a berry-toned lip color. With a variety of hues—from the bold to the bashful—berry lip colors work beautifully with many skin tones. Our favorites include Genuine and Intent, from our LipLast collection, and our Beloved lip liner.

Make this Valentine’s Day less about looking for love, and more about falling in love with your own, unique beauty. We hope these makeup trends can help you to explore your look and find a definition of beauty that can truly let you shine.

Eyebrows. We come by them naturally, but we never seem content to just leave them be. Through the years, we have waxed, dyed, tinted, tweezed, penciled, painted, and gelled them in countless ways, all to achieve that perfect arch. But this is hardly a modern phenomenon. In fact, women have been styling their brows for centuries. Here’s a look at brow trends throughout history.

Ancient Egypt

Ancient Egyptian women preferred dark, arched eyebrows. They would darken their brows with powdered minerals to achieve the dark, strong look they desired. You can see evidence of this style on the bust of Queen Nefertiti, with her heavy, black eyebrows above her thickly penciled eyes.

Ancient Greece and Rome

You might be surprised to learn that ancient Greeks and Romans had an obsession with unibrows. Both cultures saw unibrows as an attractive feature in a woman, as well as a sign of intelligence. So women never tried to thin their brows, but would darken them slightly with black powder for a thicker look. And if they weren’t blessed with a natural unibrow, some women would try to create one with black paint.

Middle Ages of England

In the medieval period of England, the forehead was seen as the most important feature of a woman’s face. Women styled their hair to emphasize their foreheads, and they would often remove their eyelashes and eyebrows entirely to make their foreheads appear larger.

Victorian Era

In this period, it was heavily frowned upon for women to wear makeup of any kind. Styling your brows or applying rouge was something that only “ladies of the night” would do. And so, most women left their eyebrows completely untamed, for a natural look that would show them as women of good breeding and high morals.

1920s

Silent film stars became the trend setters of the 1920s. Starlets wore their eyebrows in extremely thin, extremely straight lines, giving them a dramatic and thoughtful look. They would also apply Vaseline to style and add shine to their brows.

1930s

Though women of the 1930s still favored heavily tweezed eyebrows, the straight-brow trend gave way to high, rounded arches. The thin, curved brows of pinups like Jean Harlow led the way.

1940s

The ‘40s favored a more natural look than the previous two decades. Though women still tweezed their eyebrows to achieve a prominent arch, the era was dominated by heavier, well-groomed brows.

1950s and 1960s

Eyebrows of the ‘50s and ‘60s mirrored those of the ‘40s as far as shape is concerned, with thicker, more natural brows and defined arches. However, darker brows became the preferred look, and women began to pencil in their brows for a bolder look that made eyebrows the defining feature of the face.

1970s

In the ‘70s, brow trends divided slightly. While disco enthusiasts sported thinner brows with pronounced arches, hippies of the era favored thicker, more natural brows. Actresses like Lauren Hutton popularized the more natural look, however, so the majority of women in the ‘70s put their tweezers down altogether.

1980s

The natural looks popularized in the ‘70s continued into the ‘80s, with thick “caterpillar” brows dominating the scene. Women who didn’t naturally have thick brows would try to emulate the look with the aid of brow pencils and powders.

1990s

While we’d probably rather forget the eyebrows of the ‘90s, our school photos won’t allow it. Extremely thing, overly tweezed eyebrows were common, resulting in a great deal of women sporting a permanently shocked expression. Some women would even remove their eyebrows completely, replacing them with a tiny penciled arch instead. It was not a good time for eyebrows.

2000s

Thankfully, the eyebrow trends of the ‘90s didn’t last long, and since then, styles have favored a more natural look, with thicker brows and gentle arches. Of course, some styling is still in order to achieve that perfect brow. Our Brow Kit includes brushes and powders to help groom and tint your brows as needed. And if you desire a thicker brow, our incredibly innovative Fiber Brow product allows to add fullness and definition to your brows while keeping a totally natural look.

Whether you love your eyebrows as they are, love the look you achieve with careful brow grooming, or are still striving to groom your eyebrows to your liking, they are a prominent part of your look. So give them the attention they deserve, and make them a part of your beauty routine this year.

Pantone recently spent some time observing people’s current color trends and preferences in order to pick a color of the year. The answer they came back with may surprise you: ultraviolet. The choice was inspired by “color signals” among consumers, and the self-proclaimed color experts stated that their decision indicates a message of hope, “because it takes two shades that are seemingly diametrically opposed—blue and red—and brings them together to create something new.”

Perhaps that’s reading more into a color than is necessary. Or perhaps it’s a message we can all take to heart in our exploration of our personal beauty. Maybe 2018 can be the year that you step outside your comfort zone, push aside the thoughts of what you can and can’t “pull off,” and create a new definition of beauty. And perhaps exploring the color of the year will be the gateway to an entirely new look for you.

The Eyes Have It

Eyeshadow is a great place to begin exploring new colors in your makeup routine. So put aside those shades of brown, and try out something a little bolder. Purple can make a beautiful impact as an eyeshadow, helping to add a powerful punch of color to your look. Our Glorious eyeshadow is just as beautiful as the name implies, with a subtle shimmer that will make the color really stand out.

Add a purple finish to your look with a deep violet eyeliner, like our Noble liner. The deep violet is dark enough that even those with more conservative styles can be comfortable using it. But the underlying purple tones will really draw out the color in your eyes and highlight their natural shape and beauty.

A Royal Kiss

Purple is the color of royalty—and the occasional pop star. But ultimately, purple is a confident color, and perhaps that’s why many women tend to shy away from it in their makeup routines. It can be an intimidating color to tackle. But if you wear it with as much confidence as this color demands, it can give you an entirely new outlook on your own beauty.

If you’re just beginning to explore the color purple in your cosmetics, our Royal lip gloss is the perfect way to pump up your confidence. You can layer it over your favorite nude or pink lip color to add a deep, berry-toned shine to your kiss. As you grow more comfortable with using purple hues in your makeup routine, you might venture into something bolder, like our LipLast in the vibrant violet color that we call Remarkable.

However you choose to add it to your cosmetic pallet—in subtle hints or bold strokes, on the lips or the eyelids—try exploring purple this year. You just might find an entirely new look and gain a new perspective on your own beauty. And odds are, you can pull it off a lot better than you think.

Where does your definition of beauty come from? Whether you realize it or not, there are many influences on your personal definition of beauty. Your mother, sisters, friends, significant others, and, of course, society at large all play a role in manipulating or perspective of what it means to be beautiful. With so many influences pushing and pulling on our views, it’s normal for things to sometimes become skewed.

But now is the time to put things back into perspective. Who will you allow to continue defining your beauty for you? At Shine Cosmetics we live by a motto: Nobody can create or define your beauty but you.

Identifying Your “Beauty Influences”

If you’re like most women, you’re already bogged down by others’ definitions of beauty. Your own definition is simply a combination of different “beauty influences”—others who have pressed their definitions of beauty on you. So how do you separate those opinions to find what you truly believe to be beautiful?

First, write down what you think makes a woman beautiful. Is it being a size 2? Is it perfect lips and a flawless complexion? Glossy hair and a swan-like neck? Once you’ve written down everything that you think makes a person beautiful, try to define where each of those ideas comes from.

Was your mother always obsessing over her skin and applying endless creams and layers of foundation? Perhaps her perspective caused you to believe you needed perfect skin to be beautiful. Did your best friend fawn over long and luxurious eyelashes, and constantly experiment with mascaras and eyelash extensions to get those beautiful lashes just right? Maybe she influenced your definition of beauty as well.

Defining Your Own Beauty

Once you’ve identified as many beauty influences as you can, make a new list—this one of the things you see in yourself that make you beautiful. Maybe you love your eyes. Perhaps you adore your freckles or your full lips. Let these things become your new definition of beauty.

Because Shine is not about hiding your imperfections. It’s about showing each and every woman that your beauty is not defined by society or anyone around you. It’s about highlighting those things you love about yourself and becoming your own kind of beautiful. Always remember that beauty products don’t create beauty; they simply let your natural beauty shine through.