Be The Best Gift-Giver On The Planet - Part 2

We talked about gifts for the home or office before.  Now it's time to turn our hand to personal gifts - gifts of jewelry, accessories or clothing.  

Here are three tips that can help you get outside your own personal taste and focus on the person receiving your gift.

1.  What is your friend's style?  Is she conservatively tailored?  A northwest jeans and fleece gal? A jeans with tops and jackets that enjoy drape and flow?  A bohemian style with lots of movement and color?  Knowing the answer to this question can also help narrow down the options drastically.

Simple T-shirt and khakis, small earrings,
no necklace, only a watch.
She's also wearing warm tones - brown and tan

2. what is your friend's favorite color(s)?  This question often stumps people, so start paying attention now.  If you're not sure, just close your eyes and see the person in your head.  What color clothing do you see most often on her?  When you think of her, do you see blue-purple-aqua?  Or brown-orange-moss?  One of those means she prefers cool colors, and the other warm.    Maybe she's an all-black-all-the-time person.  These important clues will help narrow down a gift choice in the jewelry or accessory category quickly.

Flowing clothes, a bit Bohemian.
Can't tell in this picture, but she loves colorful, long, fun earrings.
There's a big, wide bracelet too.
Also notice the colors - pinks and purples, so in the cool tones.

3. What pieces of jewelry and/or accessories have you seen her wear?  Not everyone enjoys necklaces, for example.  I have several customers who were given a necklace by their children, and it is the only necklace they will wear.  This rules out necklaces for this pal!  Alternatively, she may enjoy earrings.  Okay, what kind of earrings?  Short ones with bright colors?  Long dangly ones?  All silver?  If she wears bracelets, notice if she prefers the stiff, cuff type, or a more flexible chain or beaded type.  

A more tailored look on the right - button up shirt and jacket.
Hair pulled back and - oh no! - no earrings!
But and lovely, simple, feminine necklace looks perfect.
The pretty blue means she wears cool tones.

And of course, we must consider a scarf.  A scarf can turn a simple top and pants into an outfit with a simple twist of the wrist!  If you have seen her wear scarves at all, not only do we have a wide variety of scarves, but we also have an entire shelf devoted to scarf toys!  

And in the post just before this, there are three great ideas on how to wear your scarves more fashionably and with greater versatility.  There's even a video of me showing our favorite way to tie scarves!

And here's me, in my comfortable, drapey, sexy clothes.
Also I like jewelry to be pretty showy, too, so I've got on some big earrings, necklace and bracelet here.

These three simple tips will make your gift selection process so much more effective, and give you much more confidence in your choices.  It's all a simple matter of paying attention, which is rather fun anyway.  So take a few minutes to think about those with upcoming birthdays, or those on your holiday gift list, and make them very happy this year!

Manya Vee

www.ManyaVeeSelects.com

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Manya Vee Selects

409 Main St

Edmonds, WA  98020

425-776-3778

Hours: Daily 11 - 6, Sunday & Tuesday noon - 4

Getting the color right

What do you do when you lose faith in your own judgment of yourself due to long-term put-downs?  Well, you do what most anyone would do.  You start shopping for those things that attract the least amount of attention to yourself as possible.  After all, choose something that speaks to your heart, and you are guaranteed a barrage of negative comments enough to make someone want to hole up in a cave for a bit longer than a hibernation season.

That's what had happened to a delightful customer visiting from Illinois.  Debbie M. has endured many years of having her creative juices squelched.  And squelched hard.  As we spoke about it further, more and more examples were brought to Debbie's mind about how so many aspects of her life had squelched what had been a vibrantly creative mind as a child.

She desperately wanted help learning how to choose clothing and jewelry that would be attractive and fun.  She came in dressed in a white top with a black cami, a tan skirt, and tan thongs.  It turns out that her coloring is far more suited to warm tones like coral, mossy greens, turquoise, warm browns and such.  The white washed out her skin completely.  Her silver jewelry dampened the lovely peach-tones of her skin too.

We played around with a variety of things - especially those with gold-tone metals in colors that complimented her skin tone.  The best part of all was that as soon as we put those colors next to her skin, she herself could immediately see how much better the colors worked!  She'd just been told so many times that she made bad choices, that she didn't trust her judgment anymore!  Well today, she learned how to trust herself all over again.  And she went home with some lovely new jewelry to prove it to herself!  Check it out!

What colors look best on you?  Not sure?  Come on in and let's play a bit!

Manya Vee
manyaveeselects.com