While beauty can easily translate into makeup, eyelash extensions, and nail polish, it is important for professionals to understand that, for others, beauty can mean happiness, love, and generosity… One of the many duties of a skin care professional is to interpret a client’s style and self-confidence and transform it into a seamless look through cosmetics. While professionals should be committed to educating clients with proper skin care practices, the opposite can be true when it comes to makeup application. Look for the client’s style and adapt to them accordingly.

The theme this month is all things beauty. First, Shawn Towne explores the benefits of providing an explicit space for makeup in the spa in “Beauty Happy Hour: Creating a Successful Makeup Bar.” Our feature article for the month, “Top 6 Tricks to Master Makeup,” is written by Michelle Richardson and details tricks of the trade that will never be considered trends, but, instead, staples in beauty. Finally, we end our theme with a great step-by-step teen makeup application guide by Amanda Azar. She offers a beautiful, 10-minute tutorial for professionals to give young clients for promoting self-confidence.

Though it is not as often as I should, every few years, I get the urge to set aside a Saturday morning and clean out my skin care and makeup baskets. With my most recent cosmetics purge, I was not surprised at how much was under my sink, but amazed that most everything was only half empty! After realizing that most tubes were past their expiration date, I passively tossed them into the trash. Thinking back to why I changed moisturizers or mascaras when I wasn’t out of the product, I remembered how I was either tired of the texture, annoyed with the scent, or disapproved of the color. Makeup inventory can be a lucrative and rewarding investment. Every woman keeps a bin of cosmetics in her bathroom – and I can bet it needs a fresh start!

Amanda Strunk Miller
Associate Publisher