The Makeup Box

Color Overload: Jewel-toned Dramatic Eyes

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This is a dark and dramatic look that’s at the same time very bright and punchy. You have the option of wearing it 2 ways; one more of a traditional colored smoky look, and the other an all-out color-fest.

You’ll need:

A black base or eye liner

• A shimmery purple shadow or pigment (I used MAC Cornflower)
• A shimmery golden green (I used MAC Golden Olive)
• [Optional] Gold liquid liner (I used Lime Crime’s Rhyme)
• [Optional] Bright fuchsia lipstick (I used Barry M Punky Pink)

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Step 1: First smear the black pencil or base all over your lid, along the lower lash lines, and also the inner rims of your lids.

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Step 2: With a flat brush, gently smudge out the edges of the liner so you get a softer smoky look and look less like you walked out of Kungfu Panda.

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Step 3: The fun part is always applying shimmer on top of the black. I chose a violet-blue and packed it gently over the black. Do not rub back and forth as you might smear your liner. You can use any colors you want but remember the shades will tend to appear deeper and richer than usual, so choose brighter, more vibrant ones.

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Step 3: On the inner portion of the lids, pack the bright golden-green shimmer and let it fade slightly into the violet earlier.

Remember to run your brush along your lower lash line as well, so the color is there.

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Step 4: This is where it’s optional. Use the black liner from earlier and draw just the tail-end of a flick from the outer corner of your eye outwards. 

Then follow by running bright gold liquid liner along the entire upper lash line, meeting and stacking right on top of the black at the outer ends. Then add a bit to the inner corners of the lower lash line as well.

Finish with mascara and that’s all there is to it.

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Step 5: For the lips, you can choose either to go with a nude lip so the look stays focused on the eyes, or you can opt to just go crazy with a brighter lip like I did.

Soft Mauve Pastels - Stacked Liner and Purple-toned Lips! (MAC Asian Flower)

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I’m not a fan of MAC’s Sheen Supreme Lipsticks, because I find them goopy and poorly-formulated compared even to the drugstore versions. It’s too soft so a lot of product comes off unevenly and clings to your lips in patches. 

This is more a tutorial just to demonstrate what you can do with a softer purple-toned lipstick, and here are 3 alternative products to try because they have easier textures to work with:

• If you are very pale, try NYX Power. 
• If you are fair to medium, try Inglot Lip Paint 59 or Revlon Lip Butter in Gum Drop
• If you have caramel-to-dark skin, use MAC’s Up The Amp.

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Step 1: I first packed the purple shade to the inner half of the lids, going all the way up to the inner corners of the brow. It’s going to look really weird right now, but just bear it. The whole point is to create a soft, water-color effect on your lids, and not keep the color narrowly confined below the crease.

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Step 2: Using the orange, go from the center of the lid outwards and extend SLIGHTLY in a wing-like shape. The color also goes up past the socket line, to just under the brows. What you’ll get on your eye is a sort of trapezoid shape with a flat “table-top”.

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Step 3: The trickier part is stacking the liner, but then it’s really not super hard to do. You can skip this if you don’t have a purple liner since the effect is very subtle. (That, or you can put this on your Xmas wish-list. Yes, I’m such an enabler…)

1. First apply a THICK line of the purple shade.
2. Then after it sets, apply a THIN line of black below and very close to the lash line AND under the lashes as well just so you don’t leave a pale visible line of flesh below.

I find fine brush tips are easier to control than marker-pen type felt-tips, but whichever you can get a neater line with would work. And yes, using 2 gel liners will work too though the line might not be quite as crisp as liquid.

NOTE: You CAN choose to go with either just black or purple liner, instead of stacking both, but this is more subtly dramatic.

Baroque Flower-Girl Shimmer: Smoky Eye Makeup with a Pastel Twist

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One more queued tutorial for those who are doing any floral or candy-themed looks this Halloween! This is a hazy, colorful look grounding colorful pastels with the strength of a dark shimmery wood-brown so you get the rich sexiness of a smoky eye look, but paired with bright and soft colors so it’s complex but soft.

You just need

• lid shade: a bronze-brown shadow (e.g. MAC Tempting)
• defining shade: a rich purple (I used MAC Satellite Dreams)
• highlight shade: a pale pink (L’oreal Forever Pink)
• pencils: 1 matching the lid shade (brown) and 1 matching the defining shade (I used Bourjois pencils and it might be hard to find for those of you in the US, so just go with NYX or any brand you can get hold of with lots of colorful metallic pencils!)

P.S. You should know that you can actually choose different colors for your look. E.g. grey on the lid, green on the socket and pale blue as highlights. Experiment!

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Step 1: First, apply a dark eye shadow base over your lids. You can use a grey/black pencil and blend it out, or something like MAC Blackground Paint Pot or the dark primer from the Kat von D line. Just blend it up towards the socket line in a rounded shape. (Don’t wing it out.)

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Step 2: In the center, on the lid itself, apply the medium brown shade. The dark base below will make it look more intense and also give it a richness.

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Step 3: Now using a smaller brush and the defining shade, which should be the most colorful and strong of the 3 you choose, run it along the otuer perimeters of your socket, covering the last bits of the dark base you applied earlier. 

Run it along the lower lash line as well so when you close your eyes, it looks like a ring of color surrounding the neutral shade in the center. DO NOT blend the 2 shades into each other! You will get a messy, muddy look.

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Step 4: Using a soft brush again, pick up some of the pale pink and then apply it to the inner corners of the eyes, fading in an arc above the purple but keeping it strongest at the inner corners.

Then do the same from the outer corners of the lower lid, inwards. Blend it outwards over the tops of your cheekbones if you’re using this for a Halloween look. It’s very “pixie-ish”.

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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.

Soft Velvet-Lavender (MAC Crystal and Satellite Dreams)

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After the really bright and acidic looks, it’s time for a break with a softer, more wearable option that you can throw on for work or play.

I dug out some MAC shadows that I forgot about, and the only thing you need to remember is that you can easily soften a bright color for work or school by layering it over a soft tone like I did here.

• Deep smoky brown or grey (I used BH Cosmetics MS17, a soft grey)
• A pale duochrome lavender grey (MAC Crystal) 
• A brighter medium true purple (MAC Satellite Dreams)

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Step 1: Simply ground your look with some definition and shape by applying the smoky grey to the outer 1/3 of the lids and along the lower lash line. It should blend up to the socket line only, not any further as this isn’t a dramatic shape.

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Step 2: On the rest of the lids, and the inner half of the lower lash line, apply the soft lavender grey. If you have deeper skin tones, go for a truer purple because Crystal can end up looking just pure grey on very dark skin tones. 

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Step 3: Now pick up the strongest color, the medium bright purple (Satellite Dreams for me) and just pack that down the center of the lids, over a part of the pale lilac earlier. Without this step, the look can seem almost neutral because of how soft the pale shade was. This is the step that gives the look a little oomph and a beautiful transition from light to bright to dark.

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Step 4: Finish with mascara, and that’s all there is to it. 

Reverse-Color Lid (88 Matte Palette)

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I did a look a year ago inspired by the Queen of Blending. This year, I’m revisiting the look using different, stronger colors. Do note that you don’t need to use the exact shades I did. Just look for 3 colors that are sort of complementary, and line them up from light to dark.

Just make sure to apply an eye primer so the shadow goes on with maximum intensity.

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Step 1: Imagine an invisible line along your socket. Below the line, you want to pack the palest shadow onto the inner portions of your lid, and along the inner corners of the lower lid. Apply the same color ABOVE the socket line on the outer portions.

Just remember not to pull the color too far out at the outsides or your lids could look droopy.

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Step 2: I accidentally deleted the image I took when I applied the center shade (rich blue), so bear with me and look at the portion I marked out right down the center of the lid.

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Step 3: Using the darkest shade (purple), I applied the color in the opposite areas to the teal at the start. Above the socket on the inner corners and below the socket, on the lid at the outer corners. The color on the lower lids should match what is on your upper lid as well.

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Step 4: Using a fluffy brush, I blended out the inner corners. This is the tricky portion as a dark shade above the socket line at the inner corners can look very tacky and messy if not softened out.

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Step 5: I finished by using a fine brush to apply black kajal along the waterline, and then thickly along the upper lash line. Then curl lashes and apply mascara to finish.