The Makeup Box

How To Stop Cream Shadows and Gel Liners from Drying Out

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Do you love the look and feel of gel/cream products, but hate how they always seem to dry up and get streaky and cakey after awhile?

Well, instead of avoiding or throwing them out or avoiding them altogether, here are a simple tricks I use to restore them, but more importantly, keep them fresh longer. 

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Sci-Fi Cleopatra Eye Makeup

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Halloween is coming and someone requested for a makeup tutorial for Cleopatra makeup. 

Now, there are many tutorials around for the simple Egyptian eye liner look, as well as Elizabeth Taylor’s look in the movie Cleopatra, so I didn’t want to just do the same old thing.

A quick search in Youtube would get you tons of tutorials. 

I did a more jazzed up and possibly more dramatic version, but kept the overall shape quite true to the usual style. If you don’t want it to be quite so avant garde, just skip some of the steps. (I’ll tell you which ones.)

Tools:

• A small brush for lining
• Black gel liner (that comes in a pot)
• 3 matte or satin shadows of your choice (I used the 88 matte palette). I picked a pastel blue, a cyan blue, and a deep purple. If you want to stay true to ancient Egypt, pick a dark green or strong blue.

Step 1: The brows were one of the things the Egyptians exaggerated. Pictures of statues and drawings often showed them with brows darkened and then extended straight outwards.

First follow your own brow and fill it in with black liner. Don’t create a sharp arch. The shape should be quite rounded.

Then at the outer ends, instead of following the curve of your brows back down, pull it straight outwards toward your hairline.

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Step 2: On the lid, I placed the palest shadow, a soft blue. Keep within the socket line, and then just sweep straight outwards at the ends.

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Step 3: For some subtle sculting, I used a deeper, stronger blue on the ENTIRE eye, from brows downwards until it reaches the socket line. This gives you a very soft cut-crease which emphasises eye contours without being too obvious.

If your eye socket is already very deep, skip this and just use one single shade over the entire lid.

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Step 4: The liner. First line your upper lash line thickly, and then extend it at the inner corners, following the angle of your upper lash line. This creates that cat/hawk-beak eye. If you want, you can end it in a sharp point, but I decided to end it in a rounded “snake-head” for a twist. 

Connect that extended point back to the lower lash line.

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Step 5: Following the entire lower lash line, continue laying down the liner thickly, until you reach the outer corner.

Here, you want to follow the angle of your lower lash line and just extend outwards.

The ancient Egyptians actually kept the line horizontal, on an equal level with the brows. If you want to stay true to the historical look, don’t follow my upwards angle.

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Step 6: This is the optional step for those who want to jazz it up. Because I wanted a geometrical effect, I used a smoky matte purple to color along the lower lash line (under the liner), and then extended it straight outwards, Egyptian style.

You should get a rectangular block of color at your temples.

The other secret is that it can be hard to do 2 symmetrical eyes when you’re being so dramatic with liner, so using the purple to create the outer shape helps to hide any uneven angles on both sides of the eye.

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.