What’s your approach to beauty… Simple, Sophisticated or Sexy?

This is the question that launches you into a process of self reflection and helps to determine your “Beauty Intention” throughout Lazy Perfection: The Art of Looking Great Without Really Trying, a fun and comprehensive publication from TV personality, author and professional makeup artist, Jenny Patinkin.

Breaking down myths about being perfect and building up self esteem is the message I received loud and clear! Jenny has an innate ability to deliver the truth about what it takes to look amazing without a condescending tone. In fact, her warmth and humour make hearing the truths about beauty palatable. Beauty takes time. How much time is wholly up to you.

Jenny’s way of imparting her knowledge and commanding your attention through self-deprecating and no non-sense humour opens you up and allows you to receive and absorb all that she has to offer. She boosts your self-confidence and awareness about yourself because she has taken everyone into consideration and wants everyone to be The Perfect Woman (TPW)!

As she hand-holds us through the challenges of purging our makeup bags, provides strategies on how to purchase product and how to use it, she then takes it all a step further to educate on the importance of skincare. Music to my ears! The appearance of healthy skin is truly the foundation for any makeup look no matter what your intention. Jenny makes makeup and skincare recommendations for a variety of skin types and skin goals, encouraging you to follow through on making the necessary adjustments and purchases. Trust Jenny!

While reading her book, I felt as though parallels could be drawn from Jenny’s approach to makeup to our own about daily skincare here at Zyderma. Simple. Clean. Effective. Our Clarifying Cream helps support the skin’s healthy appearance and we were thrilled to see that her readers could easily incorporate it into each of the simple, the sophisticated and the sexy routines as laid out in her book.

Keenly aware of Jenny’s vast experience and immense talent, I boldly reached out and asked if she would kindly evaluate our Clarifying Cream, not only for skincare but as a primer-barrier too. You see the nano-free micronized silver in our cream creates an invisible mesh-like structure on the skins surface. The silver particles are too large to be absorbed by the skin and therefore collect into the small crevices of the skin creating a depot effect. This depot effect has a dual function. It cleanses away environmental microorganisms and creates a smooth even surface for make-up application.

In Lazy Perfection, Jenny explains the purpose and benefits of primers and the pitfalls too. According to her guidelines, there are 3 questions to consider when choosing a primer. 

1. Does it hold your makeup in place all day long?
2. Does it prevent you from getting shiny?
3. Does it prevent creasing/fading?

Jenny makes it quite clear that there is nothing lazy about Lazy Perfection; and, given that she has worked with an array of cult-status and expert green beauty products, we were anxious to know how our cream would measure up!

Always on the look out for new and exciting products, Jenny graciously accepted our request and took on the challenge of putting the cream to work.

Here’s what Jenny had to say!

While some like to apply skincare product with brushes, and even though I have my own beautiful collections, I actually prefer fingers for anything "cosmeceutical" as I like to spread all over and then lightly tap into the skin, there's more control and less waste with finger application too.

When choosing a foundation, I prefer non-toxic liquid or cream foundations that are silicone and mica-free. There are several high performing options that follow clean and green beauty standards.

To gauge if a primer will help extend wear time, it depends on the makeup you’re using. A more slippery foundation can sometimes need to be touched up (ie blotted or powdered) within hours, but my expectation for good wear time is pretty much all day - or at least a full work day.

After testing Zyderma, underneath different foundations, my overall take is that it DOES extend wear time and mattifies nicely! If someone has oily skin, it’d be a good choice, but for a drier complexion, it’d have to be paired with a much more fluid, dewy foundation to make the skin appear hydrated.

Conclusion: Zyderma gave me all day wear under my regular medium coverage, satin finish foundation.

HAZZUH! Fantastic news! We are so grateful and thrilled to know that a beauty expert like Jenny, who intrinsically understands makeup and skin, gives our dual-purpose Clarifying Cream, her approval!

KM on “Simple” Lazy Perfection: Now, for those of you who follow me on Instagram, you know that I said I wouldn’t post another selfie until I read Lazy Perfection, from cover to cover. I’ve made good on that and hope I’ve done the master, Jenny Patinkin, proud with what I’ve learned.

For those of you who don’t know me, when it comes to make-up, I would say that I started my Lazy Perfection journey in the pre-Simple category. The easier the better. I manage mild rosacea and acne prone skin, and previously used chapstick, as a basic lipstick choice.

To help tell my story, I took a couple of pics. One with a basic clean face (usual look) and another demonstrating my new skills. Before applying make-up… I cleansed, toned, applied a serum and then our Clarifying Cream (my daily go to). Here I’ve applied a shear tinted moisturizer with an SPF, a bit of concealer under my eyes, a brow pencil to fill in sparse areas of my eyebrows, which BTW are so much lighter now that my hair is grey. I did apply a brow serum to help hold it place since it is crazy hot outside. Thanks for the tip Jenny!

Ok, my make-up… Based on Jenny’s recommendations for green/blue eyes and my grey hair, I’ve applied a warm peach tone across my lid, with a warm white in the corners of my eyes to help them pop. I no longer use black eyeliner because I want a softer, more natural look. So here I’ve gone with a blended dark brown eyeliner and shadow. I now know that nude lipstick is relative to your own natural lip colour (lighter or darker). Huh.

I truly appreciate all that this book has to offer! There’s SO much more that I haven’t even touched upon like “formulating my fashion”, which I have begun by choosing a V-neck, navy polka dot top to help set-off my healthy-looking complexion.

Dare I say, that after putting the Lazy Perfection methodology into play, I could soon be branching out into the Sophisticated category! Stay tuned.

Much love and great respect to Jenny for writing this book and for evaluating our product!

Kelly xo

PS – I may be Jenny’s demographic, but truth be told, I could have benefited from this book YEARS AGO! My daughter who is barely a teen will be reading it when she’s old enough to start wearing make-up and managing her own skin care. I’m planning to start her out on the right foot.