Flirty Pink

A few weeks ago, as a birthday gift, I received a goodie bag from Christal Clear Cosmetics.  Included was one of Christal's signature 5 shadow palettes in Flirty Pink.  Seeing as it was a rather dreary, rainy day today, I thought I'd liven it up by adding some bright pink to my lids.

I just did a simple pink gradient, using the brightest pink as my base color and then adding dimension by applying black to the outer corners.  I finished with winged liner and mascara, as I almost always do. :)

Looking forward to enjoying the weekend, though I am tackling a big project for one of my classes.  It is the weekend before Halloween though, so that ought to be fun!  Looking forward to posting pictures of pumpkins and things! :D

Hugs,
Cat

Winged Liner Technique

I'm sure this is nothing new, but just thought I'd do a post on a little trick I use to dramaticize and even out my winged eyeliner.

For the sake of visibility and clarity, I'm just going to apply very neutral shadow over my primed eyelid as a backdrop for the winged line:

With my Sonia Kashuk bent eyeliner brush and Maybelline Eye Studio black gel liner, I'm going to line my upper lash line.  I'm going to make mine moderate in thickness, but you can definitely go thicker or thinner to suit your own taste.

Notice that it's thinner towards the inner corner and gradually widens towards the outer corner.  Next, I'm going to create a little flick along my outer corner using an upward stroke.

The flick can be as long or as short as you'd like depending on how dramatic you want your wing to be. Now, I'm simply going to connect the tip of the flick to the rest of the eye line.  Sort of like connect the dots:

See how the wing is starting to take shape?  Now all we have to do is fill in the uncolored space with more black gel liner:

All done!  Wasn't that fun and easy?

Overall look:

Winged liner is my favorite way to define my eyes.  I have small, almond-shaped eyes, so I find that it's a very flattering way to accentuate my natural eye shape.  I like its effectiveness towards adding instant drama without requiring much else.  Hope some of you found this tutorial useful, and hopefully clear.  I was working on a video, but kind of flubbed it and have to re-film.  I'll see about getting it up as soon as I can, though I do have another midterm next week.  Ugh!  Thanks for reading tonight!

Hugs,
Cat

GoldenEye: Crease shading for Asian (and non-Asian) eyes!

I've done a number of eyeshadow tutorials with bright colors, but have yet to do one with metallics.  I thought gold would be a nice one to do.  When we're done, we should have something that looks a little like this:

As much as this is about doing a gold-toned shadow tutorial, this is also about defined crease shading, a technique that is rather new to me.  I've always admired beautiful crease shading, but I feel very limited to just a few eyeshadow styles because my bone structure doesn't really allow for very much versatility in terms of shading.

This is the type of eye I wish I had:

Notice the deep-set eyes, strong brow bone, and defined crease.  Now compare these to my eyes:

Shallow sockets, barely a brow bone in sight, and just the slightest little eyelid crease.  I think I have a strange hybrid between a mono lid and a double eyelid.  Very difficult eye shape to work with.  Therefore, I do the best with what I've got and have been trying to develop a defined crease-shading method for my typical Asian eyelids, which I will demonstrate today.

If you don't have shallow sockets like me, then you're probably fortunate to have deep set eyes like my ideal eyelids I posted above.  Good for you!  This technique will work for you too, it'll probably be even easier! :D  For this look, I'm going to use these colors from the ELF Endless Eyes palette:

1. Pale Gold: highlight color
2. Yellow Gold: base color
3. Iced Coffee: crease color
4. Espresso: deep crease color
5. Black: outer corner accent color

I start out with a primed eye, then apply gold pencil liner to my eyelid to intensify the gold shadow color I'll be using:

Next, I apply the yellow-gold base shade to my entire lid and highlight my brow arch with the pale gold shadow:

Now I'm going to take black pencil liner, line the my top and bottom lid lines, and then smudge and smoke black shadow over the liner:

The next step is a little strange.  I'm going to draw a thin, winged line with liquid liner along my top lid line.  Because I'm new at this, I find that it's easier to define my crease if I have a guide point, this being the tip of the wing.  I figure I may be able to skip this step once I get better at it.

Using the ELF Studio Contour brush, I'm going to start defining my crease.  These brushes are perfect for this kind of shading.  They're so soft and precise, I ended up getting 3!  I'm going to dip my contour brush into the iced coffee crease shade and, starting at the outer corner of the brow bone, I'm going to sweep shadow inward along the hollow.  The color should taper and fade towards the inner corner of the eye.

You can take the color all the way to the inside corner if you'd like, but I'm going to stop 2/3 of the way in.

The result should look something like this:

I'm going to deepen the crease by sweeping the darker, espresso brown shade along the crease line that I've created.  I want a nice fade, however, so I'm not going to take the color as far in as I did with the iced coffee shade.

For added depth and drama, I'm going to further define the outer corners with black shadow:

Then I'm just going to re-define the winged line by retracing with liquid eyeliner:

Curl lashes, add mascara, and I'm done:

Not bad!  I've come to terms with the fact that I'll never have deep-set lids and I'm pretty happy that I can get mine to look the way they do here.

To complete my entire look, I finish with lips and cheeks.  I define and fill in my lips with a nude lip pencil:

Oh, I bought a new lip color the other day!  ELF Essential Luscious Liquid Lipstick in Baby Lips.

It's a gorgeous, barely-there, shiny pink shade.  It has a nice consistency and I love the convenient, twist-up tube with an adorable little flocked applicator tip that resembles a fuzzy pony hoof.  The smell is a little strange, kind of like my mint dental floss, but tolerable.

Overall look:

Cheek color is Milani Minerals Blush in Luminous, supposedly a dupe for Nars' Orgasm.

Hope some of y'all found this tutorial useful!  Have a great night. :D

Hugs,
Cat