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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:
- Eyelash glue - too gloopy and doesn’t allow a light dusting of glitter
- Liner sealant - Hard to apply over the entire lid without shifting the shadow underneath
- 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.
