I will start with how to select eye shadow.
Many of the people I talk to are misinformed about selecting correct eye shadows to enhance their eyes. I still see a lot of people that select an eye shadow to complement whatever it is they'll be wearing. This really is not the proper way to go about it. You want to enhance your eyes, not your clothes; what you wear will speak for itself.
The best way to enhance your eyes is use colors that are in the eye itself. This way they work as a background for your eye so when you walk into a room your eyes are what project first. Your eyes are what people notice, not so much your eye shadow.
The whole idea of wearing eye makeup is to have somebody tell you how beautiful or how sexy your eyes look, rather than have them say, "Gee, I like that eye shadow. Where did you buy it?" That's not what your doing this for. You want to enhance your eyes; make them project. I can't over emphasize how important it is to make the eyes project.
When I ask people what color eyes they have, 9 out of 10 will say they have "boring brown" eyes. No one has boring brown eyes! Take a hand mirror, go over to a window, and stand directly where you get good natural lighting. Take a close look at your eyes and you will see that brown eyes have tiny little flecks of green, gold, rust copper and brown. All of these colors are in a brown eye, and more predominate in hazel eyes. So, your color selections should be one or more of these beautiful colors. People with brown or hazel eyes can wear almost any shade of eye shadow with any spectrum of color and it's going to look pretty damn good, as long as they apply it correctly.
People who have blue eyes are a little more limited in eye shadow selection. Brown eye shadows should be your basic color palette for the simple reason that brown makes a wonderful contrast to the blue. It makes the eye just an electric blue. It makes it project and really enhances it more than any other eye shadow that I can think of. Other colors that work for blue eyes are lavenders, purples and plums. These will still be effective and look good, but they won't make the eyes project as much as brown.
Never use a blue eye shadow with blue eyes. It's an artificial blue next to the natural blue of your eye. When somebody looks at you they will automatically focus in on the eye shadow and not on your eyes.
People with green eyes can follow the same color scheme as people with hazel eyes and brown eyes. You can use a shade of green as long as it is something that has some gray in it; khaki, moss, or a deep teal. You don't want to use something that is an "electric" green or a bright jade because, again, it's too artificial against the green of your eye.
Once you have made your palette selection, it really doesn't matter what shades or colors you decide to use, but you should, however, select three shades/colors: a dark, a medium and a highlight. The highlight will be the lightest of the three you have selected. You always want to go from dark to light; this is what opens the eyes up and projects them. I know I use "project" a lot but that's what you want.
I recommend starting with the eyes before the rest of your makeup. No matter what product you use or how careful you are, as you apply powdered eye shadow little specks will flake off and drop onto your cheek. If you have done your foundation first, as most people do, the flecks will fall on top of your foundation. If you then try to remove them, you will streak and smudge your foundation and blush. Then you have to go back and spend time repairing it. You can eliminate all these problems by starting with the eyes first.
Start with a light dusting of translucent face powder on the eyes. It will absorb any natural oil on the lid and traces of moisturizer that might still be on the eye. Otherwise, your shadows will get a streaky, splotchy look because where there is oil on the lid, the shadow spots and will not blend.
Now, take the darkest shadow and start on the outside comer of the eye. Apply it approximately halfway in and halfway up the lid. Stop, take your blending brush, and blend this area. When I say blend, I don't mean you have to go over the entire lid with the brush. You only want to make a few, small, simple brush strokes, blending the outside edge where you applied the shadow. So, take your brush, start from the outside, and blend very lightly to the inside of the eye towards the nose. You have all this color on the outside of the eye and if you start blending from the inside outward toward your ear, you're going to end up with color halfway to your ear and look like Cleopatra.
Do this for both eyes, then go on to your second shade which will be medium. This color should start at the inside comer of the eye and it should be applied, again, about halfway up and toward the first color, your darkest one. You bring it just to where you stopped with your dark color so that they meet. Then you take your blending brush, starting from the inside corner of the eye this time, and blend toward the outside. Again, you don't need to brush all over the lid; you'd just be dragging a lighter shade over the darker and end up with mud. You don't want a sharp contrast between the two colors. You want them to blend lightly one into the other.
Once you have that done on both eyes, take the highlighter, the lightest shade, and apply from the inside corner of the eyebrow, right under the eyebrow, all the way to the outside comer of the brow. It's like an arch. You want to lift the eye; open it up. Don't bring the highlighter down too far, because you will overlap the outside comer where you applied the dark shadow. You want a definite contrast. Again, that opens the eye up.
The secret of great looking eye makeup is blending. Once you have learned where to apply the three colors, the next step is to learn how to work with that brush so you can make them blend very smoothly, one into the other without sharp contrast. You do, however, want there to be a noticeable difference between your dark, medium and highlight colors. If you just blend and blend and blend, you end up with sort of a muddy look and that's not what your going for.
Next time: Finishing the look. Eye liner and Mascara.
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