jacanza

Tools/Paints/Products:
Toner (applied before moisturizer and used to help remove mistakes)
Moisturizer (applied before makeup)
Applied concealer & foundation/powder
A small, rounded eyeshadow brush
A larger, fluffier eyeshadow brush
Pencil Eyeliner
Lengthening Mascara
Dark shade of eyeshadow in your color of choice
Q-Tips (for smudging lines and/or removing mistakes)
Highlighter pencil/shadow
Brow powder/pencil
Fake lashes optional!

Before we get down to it I would like to address the following points:

Pick your Poison
What colors are you going to use? Since you’re going for a smokey sexy look, it’s best to stick with darker shades of any color you wish. If you have a darker skin, use that black! If black is too harsh, try a navy or even a purple color. It will give the same affect but soften the look. If you have a lighter/fairer skin, try using a brown or a charcoal/gray color. Experiment and play around with it, you’ll surprise yourself!

Prep your face!
You always always always apply moisturizer BEFORE you put on your face makeup. A moisturizer with an SPF is sweet, if you don’t have one of those, there better be SPF in your foundation/powder! Sun will only age your skin prematurely, a tough lesson I’ve had to learn.

Do not be intimidated
Makeup is easy. Just be aware of how much shadow you’re putting on your brushes! As I mentioned before, it’s worth it to play around with color. Test shadow on the back of your hand if you aren’t sure. If you have a fair skin it’s best to stay away from jet-black shadows that will be too contrasting on your skin. You want to compliment yourself! Try a deep brown, navy, or a gray color to soften the look a bit.

Here we go!!

Step 1:
Line & smudge your upper lid only. Applying eyeliner FIRST ensures that there will be no gap between your lid and your lash line, it also provides a base for the shadow to stick to. Working from the outside corner inwards, apply the liner in short, quick strokes (AKA feathering) as close to the lash line as possible. GENTLY hold the corner of your eye taught if need be. Use your q-tip and toner to remove any mistakes (using a makeup remover will remove more makeup than you intend to). Once you’re happy with that line, use the smudger or a q-tip to soften the line (this is called smudging). You want the line to appear smudged instead of a blunt, defined line.

Step 2:
As you should ALWAYS do, tap your brush off your hand and apply shadow from lash line to crease. Banging off the excess is a fool proof way to keep you from looking like a doll. Don’t load your brush up with shadow, a little bit goes a loooong way, just keep dabbing your brush. Be careful of your placement, make sure your brush stays ontop of your lid (the part that covers your eyeball). Because you’re working with darker shadows, it’s going to be hard to remove makeup from places you don’t want it to be.

Step 3:
BLEND! While this could be part of Step 2, blending is vital to this look and should be given special attention. You’ve just applied shadow from lash line to the crease of your eye, now you can blend it up just over the crease. The crease is the area in your eye just above your eyeball and below the brow bone, you should be able to (cafefully!) smush your brush right in there. This is where you want to cover. You do NOT want to blend up into the brow bone.

Step 4:
Re-apply eyeliner. This time, you don’t have to smudge. Just feather the liner from outer corner to inner corner. Now, if you want to, you can line the bottom lid. You can also use the tip of your eyeshadow brush to carefully smudge eyeshadow onto the lower lash line. Again, less is more!

Step 5:
Use your highlighter. Apply to your browbone (labeled E above), just below your eyebrow after the arch. Applying highlighter to the entire length of your eyebrow will look dated. Blend with your fingers by patting, swiping with your fingers will remove it.

Step 6:
Apply mascara and brow powder/pencil. These last two steps will help to set your look and make your eye stand out even more.

Voila! You’re done 🙂 Now, you can apply false lashes if you like. Remember to stop yourself every so often to take a step back and look at what you’re doing. Sometimes we get into it and go a little overboard. Keep your Q-tips and toner handy, and remember to BLEND! This is a dramatic look, but you want to look dramatically sexy, not dramatically crazy!

No matter how hard those blood-sucking marketers try to convince us otherwise, make-up is not supposed to make you look like something you are not. Instead, it celebrates the fabulous looking person you already are and emphasizes your fabulocity while downplaying your, well, not-so-fabulocity. It’s a beautiful thing, figuratively and literally. Back to my point…

Watch any female-driven TV channel (Bravo, Oxygen, CMT, Lifetime, VH1, to name a few) and you’ll witness 30-seconds long assaults showcasing things like a Shitaki Mushroom Extract (really?) and bodywash that invigorates the skin with fruit extracts via osmosis (sounds great, right?). My personal favorite being the lash-extending “beauty tubes” from a mass-market mascara. I could go on. From my experiences in Makeup Application and Theory as well as my own professional choice, I’ve gathered my Top 10 Makeup Myths women fall for which I think are a load of garbage, to be perfectly honest.

As a self-proclaimed beauty junky I’m constantly on the prowl for the latest, greatest, quick fix. The only problem being … that doesn’t exist. Here are a few of my favorite myths:

“Perfect Blend” foundation, Didn’t your mother ever tell you those mood rings are a bunch of crap? Well, this works in the same way. While it would make our lives so much easier and take the guess work out of one of the most trying, and important tasks in makeup application, there is no such thing. Makeup doesn’t have a brain. It’s not going to magically figure out what your natural skin tone is. Even if it did work, it would most likely require a thinner consistency, so you would have minimal coverage. Great if that’s what you’re looking for, but for those of us with imperfections to hide, bring on the thickness.
Plastic, spikey mascara wands, Another personal favorite of mine. Think of it this way, the OG mascara wands are generally bushy, bristled, and can therefore grab onto your lashes while applying product. These new spikey things are generally set further apart and made out of a material allowing the product to slip. You put it on, you STILL need the lash comb. The only difference a wand should make is your own personal preference of a straight brush or a curved brush. These new fancy shmancy wands are not going to apply product any better than the old ones. Leading me to my next point…
Lash-extending “Beauty Tubes”, OK REALLY?? Beauty tubes (what IS that anyway??) are not going to magically form on your eyelashes. Imagine if they did? How uncomfortable would that be! How would you blink?? This mascara has the best of intentions-to lengthen, separate, and curl, but they went too far with this marketing campaign. While it may work wonders, there are no tubes forming on your lashes.
Eye-Color Enhancing Makeup, Remember learning about the color wheel in your 7th grade art class? Same rules apply. Truth be told, you can wear any shade of eye-makeup you please, there are so many different tones and shades of colors, you can play for hours to find what suits you best. If you have blue eyes, eye-shadows with warm tones (reds, yellows, oranges) will help bring them out. If you have green eyes, eye-shadows with purples and reds will make your eyes pop. Hazel eyes and brown eyes luck out in this department because you’ll benefit from any color. However, since red + purple = brown, greens and purples will enhance the color. This does NOT mean that your eyeliner and mascara should also match. If you’re going for a softer look, wear a softer eyeliner (brown, blue, even charcoal) and a brown mascara. For a more dramatic look (think a night-time look) wear a black mascara with black eyeliner of your choice.
Mineral Makeup, While I can’t knock this one entirely, mineral makeup is not the cure-all they make it out to be. It is all “mineral based” product so it is a powder consistency (as far as I know there is no liquid mineral makeup, please correct me if I am wrong) which will give you a lighter application. So if you’re a fan of not feeling the makeup you’re wearing, you should probably check some of this out. It also gives a really smooth looking appearance, almost making the skin glow. HOWEVER, if you have a dry skin, this will do nothing for you. There is no oil within the product to help benefit your skin. You’ll love it at first, but give it a few hours and it will be gone. It will not improve the look and feel of your skin, it will only ensure an easy application and decent coverage.
“I can’t wear shimmery makeup” Poppycock! Of course you can! A common indicator of this complaint is that you’re wearing products with glitter instead of shimmer. A shimmery product will have a frosty appearance, while the glittery products will have little flecks of sparkle. Shimmer products are perfect for highlighting areas like the brow bone, cheekbones, inner corner of the eye, and bridge of the nose. I prefer to leave the glitter products to the body–shoulders, chest, legs.
Shadow Trios should only be used with each other, These makeup trios you see on the makeup shelves are hugely popular. I’m a huge fan; however; it needs to be noted that these prepacked trios are merely guidelines. You should be the only person deciding what colors to wear together! If you don’t think you can pull off a certain color, go with a lighter shade of the color you want until you get used to it. Ease your way into those vibrant and beautiful colors!
You should always wear lip-liner, While I am generally opposed to lip liner because I feel it looks dated (again, MY personal choice), it will help lip color stay put if you have aging skin around your lips or are a smoker. It is NOT a necessity. Since the wrinkles create nice little grooves in your skin they can allow for the color to bleed from your lips and make its way though the wrinkles. Lip-liner helps to prevent this by creating a bit of a barrier, since the pencil is a more solid consistency then the liquid gloss or creamy lipstick. I also recommend using lip liner for a longer lasting color.
Everyone should have an eye-shadow primer, No! Everyone does not need a primer. This is foolish! The only prepping or priming the skin needs before a makeup application is a cleansing, toning, and an oil-based moisturizing. Perhaps a serum to reduce redness or flakes. Using a primer such as a concealer or foundation, will only make your shadow cake or crease.
Concealer is to cover anything, While concealer can cover almost anything, it depends greatly on the shade used. If you put a concealer that is 1-2 shades lighter than your natural skin tone on a blemish, it will only make it stand out more. If you put that same concealer on under-eye circles, it will help lighten the shadow. For blemishes or any redness, try using a concealer that is 1-2 shades darker than your natural skin tone. For any redness that is present throughout the face, try applying a color-correcting concealer, typically minty green in color, to these areas to neutralize the color.