The Makeup Box

Winter Starburst (Wearing Glitter Without Sealing Liquid or Lash Glue!)

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Most of the time when we want to wear glitter on the lids WITH eye shadow, we need to fiddle with:

1. Eyelash glue - too gloopy and doesn’t allow a light dusting of glitter
2. Liner sealant - Hard to apply over the entire lid without shifting the shadow underneath
3. No setting medium - Glitter just falls right off when you try to apply them over shadow

Here’s an easy way to apply glitter without having to run out to buy glitter glue, brow gel, sealant, etc: Apply it right over your base or primer BEFORE your shadow. If you’re careful, you won’t dust off too much of it when you apply powder shadow over it, and the glitter will stay on a lot better than if you applied the glitter last, over your powder shadow.

The effect I chose was a bright shadow in the center, fading into a glittery wing, like a trail of stardust. Fantastic for a party because it almost looks like regular shadow from the front, but as you turn your head, the light will catch the flecks of glitter and produce a rather dramatic sparkling effect at the outer corners of your eyes.

Tip: You can be as subtle (green-on-green) or as dramatic (gold-on-violet) as you want when it comes to colors! Experiment with whatever you have.

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Step 1: I applied a generous coat of black pencil to the lids. Don’t worry about it being messy looking.

I don’t recommend using gel shadow or any fast-setting primer because you need a slightly tacky surface.

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Step 2: Using a flat brush or synthetic brush, gently smoke out the edges of the pencil, moving outwards always. Follow the hollow of your eye socket. (If you move your brush back and forth, you are likely to mess up the inner corners where it should be clean.)

On the outer ends, extend into a soft wing.

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Step 3: Now for the glitter. Just use the same flat brush to pick up a little glitter, and then PACK/PAT gently onto the outer portion of the lids. I angled it diagonally (see dotted line above) but you don’t need to.

Go over twice or more times, just to really pack on more glitter, since some will dust off later. 

Try a translucent, fine-grained glitter like MAC Reflects Transparent Teal or Blue.

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Step 4: Now is the time you apply the shadow. I’ve reversed the order of application as you can see. Begin with the inner 1/3 of the lids and you can just buff/rub your brush over this area to get intense color. I used MAC Tilt shadow. Coastal Scents Hot Pot in Niagara is a similar duochrome marine shade but with a more intense gold sheen instead of aqua. 

On the center portion of the eye, your shadow is going to overlap the glitter. This is where you want to be gentle and just pat-pat-pat the shadow on with your brush, rather than sweep it back and forth. This makes sure most of the glitter doesn’t get dusted off, but is pressed into the base. 

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As a final step, simply run the black pencil along the inner rims of your upper lids and apply plenty of black mascara. That’s it! It’s quite dramatic but isn’t hard to do at all. What’s fun is the combination of a black base, which transforms and really brings out the color in translucent blue glitter and duochrome blue-gold shadow. 

Twilight Fae: Dramatic Colorful Eyes with a touch of Sparkle

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For those of you craving some excitement for Summer nights, here’s a colorful and dramatic smoky eye which is actually pretty easy to create. To tone it down for day, just keep the shadow within the socket area instead of blending it out and up as far as I did.

There were 3 main products I used:

• Black kajal (any very creamy and smudgy black cream shadow or pencil will work)
• Translucent green sparkle (I used a discontinued mica from TKB called Starlight Green, which has been replaced with Starbright Green. The Body Shop also has a single shadow highlight #08 which is exactly the same thing but in pressed form.)
• Pink/purple duochrome with blue sheen (I Nuovi Amethyst dust; this is like a loose version of MAC Stars n Rockets shadow.)

And yes, these swatches above look NOTHING like how they appear on my lids, but that’s why it’s so fun working with duochromes and a black base!

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Step 1: First apply black kajal or paint very thickly all over the lids, up to the socket line. 

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Step 2: Using a synthetic concealer brush (or any synthetic paint brush), softly smoke out the edges so there are no hard lines, and bring the color up and out. 

Step 3: Apply the kajal to the lower lash line and water line as well, and smudge out lightly. The finished look should now be like the above image, which is a typical winged smoky eye shape.

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Step 4: From here, we move on to the fun stuff. Lightly dust the translucent green highlight all the way from lower lash line up to the brow, but ONLY ON THE INNER HALVES of the lids.

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Step 5: The shade that’s going to make everything look holographic is the pink/violet/blue duochrome on the outer half of the eyes, top and bottom. When you pack it over the black, you will no longer see the pink, but the violet and blue is going to take on a sort of glow which is going to stand apart from the green and give the most interesting effect.

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Step 6: This step is optional. I wet a flat brush with a little liner sealant (Ben Nye Liquiset), dabbed it into some aqua green translucent glitter, then pressed it right down the center of the lids. This echoes the green shadow, but adds a “wet” effect and gorgeous sparkle when you blink.

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Step 7: To finish the look, I curled my lashes and then applied a strip of wispy lashes. Any type of lashes would work, including plain black mascara.

Dramatic Duo-chrome Winged Eyes (MAC Green Brown and L’oreal Infallible 014 Eternal Black)

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This isn’t a complicated eye look. You actually only need 2 colors. A rich black, and a duo-chrome shade.

The duochrome shadow you can switch out for pretty much any duo-chrome you want. (MAC alone has Cornflower, Rose, Blue Brown, Club, Gorgeous Gold, etc. Just to name a few.)

The black shadow I used however, I highly recommend. This isn’t just any regular black shadow because the L’oreal Infallible formula contains a lot of binders so the texture is in between a cream and a powder, which makes it go on really intense, but also allows it to act like an eye shadow base, so other colors go on beautifully over it.

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Step 1: The wing. You just need to line your lower lashline with black. Follow the angle of your lower lashline when you reach the end, and extend straight up and out. For the inner corners, I actually had the line go straight in and down for a slightly more dramatic effect. If you don’t like it, you can always just follow your lash line all the way.

(P.S. Use a black pencil if you’re in a hurry.)

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Step 2: On the top lids, use a flat brush to pack black onto the outer half of the lids, extending out to meet the end of the black line you drew earlier. The higher the black goes, the more dramatic.

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Step 3: I used my fingers to just smooth a green brown duo-chrome pigment over the lids from inside out, blending over the black, but stopping BEFORE I cover it completely. You want the outer ends to be very dark and very black still, so leave the black alone there.

The finished look should be almost peridot-green on the inner corners, shaded to brown in the center and then to black on the outer ends.

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Step 5: Finish with just black mascara on top and bottom lashes. I added black kohl pencil to the inner rims of the lash line for extra oomph.

Warm, Foiled Metal Look

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This is a look that can go from day to night with just one single change; your lip color.

Both are pretty dramatic looks; make no mistake about it. The eye shadow is foiled for a very dramatic, metallic finish. But the main shade (a beige gold) is still “neutral” enough that you can wear a dark lip with it without things looking too over the top.

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Step 1: Run some dark copper shadow (try something like MAC Antiqued) from the outer corners of your eyes inward, arcing along the hollow of your socket line, and the lower lash line as well.

Pack a bit more shadow into the outer corners and blend.

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Step 2: In the center of the lid, I recommend a very high-shine golden-beige shadow. Try applying Urban Decay’s Half-Baked shadow dampened for a high-shine finish. If you have very pink undertones and Half-Baked is a bit yellow on you, try MAC Woodwinked.

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Step 3: With a flat angled brush or a small detail brush, apply the first shadow (deep copper-brown) wet as a liner thickly along the lower lash line. If you own MAC’s Richground Fluidline, that would work as well.

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Step 4: I cut a strip of lashes into 2 to create half strips, and then applied each to the outer corners of the eye. (If you’re new to false lashes and find them hard to apply, try this method. Just make sure you get lashes that are longest at the center and equally short at both ends.)

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Step 5: Finish by applying black liquid liner over the lash strip to hide it completely, and applying a bit of mascara to bind your real lashes into the falsies.

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On the Lips and Cheeks:

• I wanted a really burnished, tawny look, so I swirled MAC’s Mineralize Skinfinish Natural in Dark with NYX Cinnamon blush (a bright vermillion coral) and dusted it high along the cheek bones.
• Natural/Nude lips: Revlon Super Lustrous Lip gloss in Nude Lustre
• Dramatic lips: MAC Deepest Wish Amplified lipstick

Forest: Matte Teal and Metallic Pink-Bronze Cat Eye

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Dark matte teal isn’t a shade that I normally reach for, because green is a pretty dramatic color in many cases. To keep it from looking to flat and heavy, I’m contrasting it with a luminous bronze. MAC Pink Bronze, like its name implies, has an iridescent coral-pink sheen which stands out very well against a deep aqua-green like Revlon Matte Shadow in Tempting Teal.

I paired it with rather dramatic black gel liner so it’s not the typical smokey eye.

Step 1: Apply a dark black-toned base to the lid. This will keep the green very intense and deep.

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Step 2: Apply the deep teal green to the outer halves of lids, keep the inner corners bare. With a soft blending brush, gently spread the color inward along the socket line, and then outwards into a wing.

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Step 3: With the pink bronze pigment (you can use any metallic bronze or copper as well) pack the brighter color onto the inner halves of lids, overlapping the green that you spread inwards along the socket line.

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Step 4: Now the eye lids are done, apply a black gel liner thickly along the upper and lower lash lines, ending in a long, thick flick at the outer corners. The flick should be a straight, upward extension of the lower line.

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Step 5: Apply black mascara to finish.

Le Papillon: Defined, Dramatic Butterfly Eye (Great for Mono-lids and Hooded Lids)

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This is inspired by an old video by Gossmakeupartist and would work on those with mono-lids and hooded lids, who want dramatic color to show up on their eyes. The wing shape and the colors I chose are a good deal different from his as I was going for a more dramatic look, reminiscent of what has been going down the catwalks recently, but the basic premise is the same.

You will need a slim black pencil and 3 shadow shades; 1 light, 1 bright, 1 dark. 

For a less dramatic look you can choose colors in the same family (e.g. pale, medium and dark purple) or complementary colors (gold, orange, copper). For more “pop”, I went with shades that weren’t exactly next to each other on the color wheel; pale-gold, teal, and purple.

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Step 1: Laying down the shape. The diagram above shows you the approximate shape of the eye. What you’ll get is a sort of rough “E” shape at the outer corners. The more top-heavy your “E” is, the more dramatic the wing will be.

The important thing is that the top of the “E” MUST be visible when your eyes are open, and you can only do that by going above your lid. Don’t follow your natural crease, especially if you have hooded or mono-lids, as the crease folds downwards and will cover up any eye color you apply there.

Step 2: Smudge the inner portions of the “E” inward with a firm shadow brush or your finger. It should fade inwards, rather than end in a harsh line. 

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Step 3: Apply the palest shadow to the inner 1/3 of the lids and also bring it down around the corner of the eyes to the inner 1/3 of the lower lash line as well. You don’t have to use the same color as me, but in general, if you have smaller eyes, don’t pick a dark shade for this area.

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Step 4: Pack a strong teal green in the center of the lids, and also along the central portions of the lower lash line to mirror the upper lid.

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Step 5: Finish the lid by packing a dark purple into the remaining 1/3 of the lids, going right up to the edge of the black kohl but not going beyond it. You can use your brush to blend into the black pencil a bit so there isn’t a harsh an obvious black outline.

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Step 6: Run the black pencil along the upper lash line and along the waterline, before applying black mascara to finish the look.

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Quick-Tip for uber-drama: Make the top part of the “E” shape angular rather than rounded.