Makeup Tips/How To

1. Start with an eye primer

Aye, primer! And ahoy, matey! As any self-respectin’, makeup-lovin’ pirate be knowin’, ye should always start yer eye looks with a bit o’ eye primer fer the best eye looks, yargh!

OK, that was wackadoo. Sorry! But it’s about 93 degrees in my house right now, and I feel loopy.

No joke, though, eye primer is such a crucial step, and one I never skip, barring extenuating circumstances (like 10-minute makeup looks because I’m feeling lazy or I’m running way behind), when I wear powder eyeshadow.

Just like the kind of primer painters use, eye primer fills the little gaps on the surface of the skin, making lids nice and smooth, which in turn makes products layered on top of them last longer without settling into fine lines or applying unevenly on dry patches. Eye primers also keep your eye makeup from shifting around while intensifying powder shadow colors, which are all great things!

Most (but not all) eye primers have a creamy consistency similar to eye creams, and they come in lots of different kinds of packaging. Some come in a tube that looks like mascara and have a doe-foot applicator. Others come in squeeze tubes, and others come in pots.

They usually come in different shades, too, although some are un-tinted — with the idea for those being that they won’t interfere with any other colors you layer on top. Some lightly tinted varieties can also color correct discoloration on the lids, and those tinted ones aren’t supposed to interfere with whatever shadows you pop on top of them, but I find that they usually do tweak them a little.

I think un-tinted colorless primers are good choices for beginners because they can be used with a wide variety of looks, and my favorite, favorite, FAVORITE one of all time is NARS Pro-Prime Smudge-Proof (not just for beginners, but for anyone), which I know I mention every 10 or 15 minutes. 🙂 But I totally stand behind it. I try new primers all the time, and I have yet to find anything I like better.

A tube will last me about half a year. Your mileage may vary, but for what it’s worth, I wear a LOT of eye makeup.

2. Invest in some quality brushes

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It is entirely possible to bang out a smoky eye in 10 minutes. Hand on heart, hair to the sky, I’m serious! — it’s totally true. And I know this because of a little something called “the disco nap.”

dis·co nap
/ˈdiskō nap/
informal
noun

1. Sleeping when ya got something goin’ on later for which you need to get ready.
   “I was about to go to the club, but I needed a disco nap to feel refreshed.”

When I’m getting ready to go out with my friends, and I know it’s going to be a loooong night, I have very clear-cut priorities. I devote less time to my makeup so I can devote more time to my disco nap.

I know, sacrilege! — but you gotta do what you gotta do. I know myself well enough. If I can’t squeeze in at least a short nap before leaving the house, I’ll be dozing off in da club by 11, what-what!

So my fallback look for late nights is this 10-minute smoky eye, and what I like most about it (other than the fact that I can crank it out pretty quickly) is that it doesn’t have to be perfect to still look pretty good. You don’t have to be perfectly detail oriented with the blending because it’s purposefully undone. In fact, the messier it is, the more ya look like a bad-@ss rock chick. Plus, if you are going somewhere for dancing, odds are the lights will be low anyway, so nobody’s really going to be able to tell if you’ve got like four colors transitioning into a gradient in your crease.

Save yourself the effort! — and spend less time doing your makeup, so you have more time to disco nap. 🙂 Zzzz…

Now let’s get started, shall we? First things first, gotta get the gear.

What you’ll need…

1. A brow filler
2. A matte brown cream shadow
3. A black kohl pencil
4. A shimmery black eyeshadow
5. A matte brown eyeshadow
6. A shimmery, peachy beige eyeshadow
7. Under-eye concealer
8. Mascara

Now for the step-by-step…

1. Fill in your brows

I like to start by doing my brows first because they’re sort of like my roadmap. Once they’re done, I think it’s easier to gauge how far I want to sweep my shadows out.

Also, particularly when doing smoky eyes, and this is doubly true when using black eyeshadow like we’re going to use here, I think it really helps to do your eyes first, then clean up any makeup that drops down under your eyes (because there will be some fallout, especially if you’re working quickly).

So set aside your base makeup for now. We’ll come back to it a little later.
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Here’s a tip I discovered recently, and it’s been very helpful! If you’re using pencil liner for smoky eyes (or just using pencil liner in general, really), start your application in the middle of your lash line. That way if you accidentally apply too much (she said, accidentally applying too much for probably the one millionth time!), all you have to do is drag the excess left or right.

Control! — it’s one of the toughest things about makeup for me. Controlling the product.

Of course, I probably have some minor control freak issues (more like definitely), so this could be a bigger issue for me than it is for most people, but I like to know that if something should go wrong, and Murphy’s Makeup Law says that if something can go wrong, 99% of the time it will, at least this way I can correct it.

I used to always start applying my pencil liner in the outer corner, and then when I’d accidentally apply too much, I’d turn it into improv winged liner, but when I start my liner in the center instead, it’s easier to control how much product ends up in the inner and outer corners.

Just a quick thing to try if you ever have a hard time with pencil liner.

Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,

Karen

P.S. Totally not liner or smoky eye related AT ALL, but The Unauthorized Full House Story on Lifetime is REALLY GOOD (please don’t judge).

Well…good for a Lifetime movie, LOL! But this one isn’t good because it’s so bad that it’s good… It’s actually good! I think so. Even El Hub, who vigorously begs me to turn the channel whenever I start watching a Lifetime movie, could not look away!

Basically, it’s what you expect. It’s a dramatized behind-the-scenes look at Full House, which I watched and loved back when it was first on TV in the ’90s.

It’s not brain food or complicated like War and Peace, but if you’re in the mood for candy-coated sugary brainlessness, it’s satisfying. 🙂

Next time you do a smoky eye look, if you’re not doing it already, try smudging a little shadow along that lower lash line, babe. It’s a revelation! — especially when you do it with smoky eye looks.

If I were forced by a sorcerer stylist/cosmetics conjurer queen to wear just one type of eye look every day this winter and fall, I choose smoky eyes (but winged liner would come in a close second).

They’re my favorite eye look of all. You can go messy and grungy, super polished and perfect, soft and subtle, or dramatically diva with them, and they range from simple (a cream shadow with a smudgy kohl) to complicated (with hella shades in the crease and on the lid).

They’re very versatile and pulsate with personality, and I think they’re fun to do.

There’s usually a lot of stuff going on when it comes to smoky eyes, but some of the biggest bang comes from the subtlest touches. They’re the little things that can take your look from “pretty good” to “DAMN, GURL! Did you get your makeup done at the counter today!?” 🙂

One of those high-impact subtle touches: smudging shadow along your lower lash line.

In the before picture at the top, my lower lash line is bare. There is a little liner on my lower water line, but that’s it, other than concealer, and I think the eye looks slightly top heavy and unbalanced.

Not a lot though. It’s not a big deal, and I don’t think anybody is going to stop me on the street to shake the living daylights out of me and yell, “Excuse me, miss, but you need to fix that top smoky situation!!”

At least I hope not.

But compared to the after eye on the right, where I’ve smudged shadow under my lower lash line, I think that eye looks more balanced. The smoky effect envelopes the eyes, making it look larger, better balanced and more dramatic.

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Of course you can skip wearing eyeshadow primer when you’re doing smoky eyes, and if you do, the world as we know it will not fall apart.

EVERYTHING WILL BE OK, PEOPLE!

But I do think that primer is usually a good idea, especially when doing smoky eyes, because primer makes your lids smoother, which, in turn, makes your eyeshadow less patchy. Primer also extends the wear time of your eye makeup. Both are good things!

Since smoky eyes usually involve a lot of layering and blending — you do a little layering, then a bit of blending, more layering, more blending — and they’re a big part of the fun, you don’t want to be working *too* hard, you know? And that’s another way in which wearing primer can help, because it makes your life easier. By enriching the color of the eyeshadows you apply on top of it, primer makes those shadows more vibrant and more intense, which in turn equals less layering!

So, on top of all the other good things primer does, it also makes smoky eyes, as well as many other eye looks, easier and faster. That way you get to spend less time on your makeup, and more time harassing your cat. 🙂

Nowadays, there are many different kinds of eyeshadow primers out there and different ways to use non-primer products as improv primers. Classic eye primers that are dedicated to priming your lids are available from most of the big brands, and my favorite one for the past few years has been NARS Pro-Prime Smudge-Proof. I think it’s seriously the best one out there now, hands down, and I’ve yet to find one better, particularly for smoky eyes.

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