Shades of Plum

Plum is such a great makeup colour - be it for eyes, lips, blush - plum flatters a variety of skintones!  When it comes to makeup, plums can be cool-toned (and compliment cool berry shades,hints of burgundy, wine and jewel purple).  Plums can also work with warmer skintones (especially if it has a golden/bronze undertone and compliments warm burgundy-brown and various shades of gold and eggplant).  Here is my little tribute to 'Plum':

Breath of Plum Blush by MAC is one of my all time favourite blushes.  It is the perfect balance between plum and a beige-pink and works really well with a range of lip colours: berries, pinky-plums, raspberry, soft fuchsia and soft burgundy shades.  If you're looking for a more neutral plum blush shade without going for the 'purple streak across the cheek' look, try 'Breath of Plum' - its subtle and very pretty!!!

Julia Roberts and this model look stunning with plum toned eyemakeup.  Plum shadows look amazing on almost all eye-colours - they bring out blue and green eyes, but they also make brown eyes 'pop' - If you're going for a richer more jewel like plum-purple shade, I recommend keeping your lipcolour more natural.  However, if you want to go with a more neutral brownish-plum look, then wear a more plum, fuchsia or burgundy shade on the lips to compliment the neutral plums on the eyes.

Prunella eyeliner by MAC has always been a staple in my makeup-bag - its not a plum colour per se, but it compliments a lot of plum and plum-brown shadows.  I absolutely love this liner!!!

If you're looking for more of a true plum shade, I recommend that you try 'Perma Plum' eyeliner by MAC!!!

I tried to create a subtle plum-look for this picture - I'm wearing a neural greyish brown shadow called 'Charcoal Brown' by MAC on the lid and into the crease and lined my eyes with 'Prunella'.  I used the same cool brown shade to smudge the top liner (I wanted to create a plum-brown shade).  I'm wearing 'Breath of Plum' on my cheeks and my favourite 'Baroque' lipstick by Chanel (which has plum-brown and red undertones).  For evening, I would totally play up this look by adding a more jewel like plum-purple shade to the crease/outer corners and adding a fuchsia gloss to my lips.  I found an older picture of myself with plum toned makeup and my haircolour even had a 'subtle' plum tone to it - check it out:

I wish I could remember what lipstick that was!  But I wanted you to notice the plum undertones in my hair - I love adding the cooler red burgundy/plum shades to my hair - I think the next time I go to see my hair dresser I'm going to ask her to put the plum tones back into my hair!

Plums and purples can be very sexy for evening - don't be afraid to use purple, icy pink and blue colours to compliment the cooler plum tones.  In this picture I used the eyeshadow 'Swish' - an icy blue pink on my eyes, lips and cheeks.  For my eyes, I used a sheer light pink base, scene (a bluish grey colour) on my lid and into the crease and blended 'swish' into the shadow - this created a very pretty 'violet plum' shade (I'll have to work with that combination again).  I then lined my eyes with 'Blooz' - a royal navy shade and again smudged 'swish' into the upper lash line, creating a very pretty plum shade.  On my cheeks, I used 'Breath of Plum' and added Swish again to the centre of my cheeks.  I mixed Media and Brave on my lips and topped it with (yes, you guessed it) swish - the end result was an icy violet like soft plum/mauve shade!  I love playing around with different colours and mixing shades,  Sometimes if you're after a certain colour and you can't find it at the store, you need to create it yourself!
I hope you enjoyed my little tribute to plum toned makeup.  I just posted a few products that I like to use - but there are a ton of plum toned colours out on the market - I just think its such a pretty colour and you can find some variation of it that will suit your coloring and skintone - Out of curiosity - what are some of your favourite plum toned makeup products?