Eyeshadow Tutorial : Night-time Smokey Eye

This is one of my favorite looks I have done in a while. It's perfect for a night out no matter where you are headed. The dark smokey gives you a look of fierceness and confidence while the pop of shimmer completes the look giving you a cute and pretty feel. 

1. I started off, of course, priming my eye lids with the Mac Paint Pot in the shade Soft Ocre. I then applied my transition shade onto my crease. I used the shade Lt. Brown from the Lorac Pro 2 palette. I made sure to blend this as well as I could using a fluffy brush.

2. I applied the shade Plum from the Lorac Pro 2 palette onto the lid only. You want to make sure to be careful with this step because if you bring it any higher than the lid, it could cause you to look like you have a black eye.

3. I then took a big fluffy brush and buffed out that Plum color. Do this step slowly and make sure you get it as blended as you can. You want the effect of no harsh lines or strokes. (I didn't add any other color. When I blended the Plum color, the purple hues got a little washed out.)

4. For this step, I applied a tiny amount of the Urban Decay Eye Shadow Primer Potion in the shade Greed to the center of just my lid. I wanted a sticky base down so when I applied my shimmer shade, it would enhance the shimmer and color. I then grabbed my Naked 2 palette and packed Half Baked on top of that primer.

5. I applied false eyelashes to just the top lashes and I felt that it really completed this look. For my lower waterline, I applied that same Plum color and blended it out with a pencil brush under my waterline and then applied mascara. I put some little black pencil eyeliner onto my lower waterline and I felt that it really pulled things together!

The "Strobing" Technique

                                  

Have you just mastered the technique of contouring? Well, sorry, it's time to put down your brush. This new trend called "strobing" relies solely on highlighters!

Although, some may think the strobing technique is a knock-off of contouring, it's actually quite the opposite. Contouring focuses on creating low lights and shadows to your face to have a more profound look, where strobing focuses solely on the highlights of your face. The process of strobing essentially means just highlighting to the max.

Before you begin, make sure you are familiar with where the sun naturally hits your face. Usually this is your cheekbone, bridge of your nose, center of your forehead, tip of the chin and brow bone area. You're also going to need a highlighter. Many people prefer cream or liquid highlighters over powder highlighters to achieve a "strobed" face, but you can use whichever you prefer. If you are more on the paler side, I would go for a pink toned highlighter where as if you are on the medium to deep side I would look for a gold toned highlighter. 

To begin this look, I sprayed Smashbox Primer Water on my face and then applied my foundation and concealer as I normally would. One thing I did differently was not set my face as heavily with power as I normally would. You want your face to appear dewy instead of matte for this look, so lightly powdering your face would be the way to go. I also only applied blush, rather than adding bronzer as well. I did not want the bronzer to over power the highlight, so I left that out.

Once this was completed, I applied the L'oreal True Match Lumi Liquid Glow Illuminator in the shade Ice to all of the areas on my face where the sun would naturally hit. I like to begin my highlight with a liquid highlighter and then go in with a powder highlighter over the areas I've done. This really intensifies the highlight and helps it stay on throughout the day. I used my BECCA Shimmering Skin Perfector in the shade Opal as my powder highlight. 

You always want to be careful when applying highlighters because it is very easy to get an "oily skin" effect with them. Always apply with a light hand and a small fluffy or fan brush to prevent the "oily skin" look and get that beautiful "strobed" face you're aiming for!

♥♥♥

Ipsy Glam Bag January 2016

For only $10 a month, you can receive five full size or deluxe sample sized products as well as a cute makeup bag once every month! I love my subscription to Ipsy and am SO excited to share what I was given this month in my Glam Bag! 

This was the super cute makeup bag that was given this month! These are such a cute thing to collect and to have nearby when you need a small bag to carry products in.

V-Luxe 

Eyelashes With Mini Lash Glue

This was one of my favorite things I received! Eyelashes are always a good thing to have to enhance any eye look.

J Cat Beauty 

Blinkle Shimmer Eye shadow 

An eye shadow is another amazing thing to get. Especially this one! I swatched it on my hand and it was so pigmented. I am so excited to use it!

Beau Gachis Paris 

Smudge Eye shadow Brush

One of the most amazing things about Ipsy is that you can get a makeup brush included in it! I am so excited about this eye shadow brush. It is so firm and you can tell it is such great quality.

theBalm Cosmetics 

Mr. Write Eyeliner

This is such a beautiful Copper eyeliner. It went on so smoothly and definitely an exciting thing to get in my bag!

tucker ashley 

Advanced Peptide Eye Complex

This is said to target dark circles, puffiness, and fine lines while moisturizing the delicate eye area. This is also another great thing to have!

Use the link below to subscribe to the Ipsy Glam Bag yourself

https://www.ipsy.com/new?refer=151c4

 

Eyeshadow Tutorial : Natural Daytime

This eye look has got to be one of my favorites! It is so simple yet it adds so much to your appearance. The browns in the crease give your eyes a look of dimension while making your eye color pop! It is so simple and easy to achieve. 

1. I started off, of course, priming my eye lids with the Mac Paint Pot in the shade Soft Ocre. I then applied my transition shade onto my crease. I used the shade Lt. Brown from the Lorac Pro 2 palette. I made sure to blend this as well as I could using a fluffy brush.

2. I began to darken up my crease by using various shades of brown in the Morphe 35O palette. Try and keep the eye shadows on your crease only. If it gets a little messy and falls onto your lid, that is fine because we will be cleaning the lid in a little bit.

3. This is the only tricky part in this look. I used a very small and flat eye shadow brush and dipped it in my Mac Paint Pot. You can easily use a very light concealer for this. It will give you the same effect. I began to carve out my lid using the product on the brush. You can pretend it is an eye shadow and just place it on your entire lid from the inner lid to the outer lid. Keep this away from your crease. This will give the effect of a "cut crease". 

4. I took the shade Buttery from the Anastasia Beverly Hills Self Made palette and packed it on top of where we just applied the Paint Pot/concealer.

5. For eyeliner, I made one simple line above my lash line using the Nyx Collection Noir Liquid Liner.

6. I applied the same shade I used for my transition shade (Lt. Brown from Lorac Pro 2) to my lower lash line. I didn't want to leave my lower lash line empty. After this, I applied mascara to my upper and lower lashes and blended my crease a tiny bit more. Blending is key - always remember that!

I paired this eye look with a brownish nude lipstick. I feel like what you choose to wear on your lips can always complete a very nice eye shadow look! This beautiful eye shadow can be worn on any occasion. It is so natural and perfect for the day time. If you want to wear this at night, you can always use darker shades in the crease. Thank you for reading! 

P.S. 

Excuse my eye brows! I need to pluck them desperately.

♥♥♥

Eyeshadow Tutorial : Smokey Champagne

So as I said in my last post, I was given a camera for Christmas. I wanted to test it out and try and put it to good use by doing a step by step tutorial of a very simple and not so drastic eye look. I know that as I use it more and more, the quality of these tutorials will get better. 

This look is a very simple night time look that can be done for many occasions. The dark colors will bring out almost any eye color and make your eyes pop! Here is a step by step tutorial with pictures to help you recreate this look. 

1. I started by priming my eyelids with Mac's Pro Longwear Paint Pot in the shade Soft Ocre. This ensures that your shadow will stay in place all day. I then took a fluffy eye shadow brush and went in with the shade Lt. Brown from the Lorac Pro 2 palette and blended it in throughout my crease. This is called your transition shade. It helps blend all the other shades you will be putting on your eyelids. 

2. Once the transition shade is down, I applied the shade Hot Chocolate from the Self Made palette by Anastasia Beverly Hills just in the inner and outer parts of the lid with a dense shadow brush. I blended that color onto the crease with an E25 brush from Sigma. I kept the Hot Chocolate color very light because if I went in too dark then, it's easy to make your eye have a black eye appearance and we don't want that. I made sure to keep the center part of my lid free of color so that the champagne color I will be 

adding will pop more. 

3. When step 2 is finished, you will then want to find a nice, light shimmery color to apply to the lid. I used a flat and very dense shadow brush to apply the color Pink Champagne from that same Anastasia Beverly Hills palette I used in step 2. I packed that color on to make it look how I wanted. This is where I went in and slowly added more of that Hot Chocolate shade to make it darker and to my preference. Make sure to go in slowly and don't just throw it on very darkly. It's a lot harder to make a color darker than lighter.

4. Once I was satisfied with the way it looked, I took my Nyx Collection Noir Liquid Liner and made a thin line very close to my upper lash line. If you are new to eye shadow, I wouldn't recommend this eyeliner to you. I would recommend a felt tip eyeliner because it's a lot easier to get the hang of and gives you the same look. 

5. I applied a few coats of mascara using my L'OREAL Telescopic Mascara on only my upper eyelashes for now. When you have a full look on your lid, you don't want to leave your lower lash line empty. So, I applied the same Hot Chocolate shade under my lower lash line with a small pencil brush. The flash of my camera diffused the harshness of the color on my eyes so it looks lighter than it really was. I then took a brown pencil eyeliner and lined my lower waterline. I finished the look with putting mascara on my lower lashes. (I didn't get a picture of these last two steps)

I wore this look for New Year's Eve and thought it was beautiful. Wearing fake eyelashes or having naturally thick and full eyelashes would really complete this eye shadow look but because I have neither, I couldn't show you. But, if you do, I would love to see how it turned out! Also, if you want to recreate this look, there is no need to use the same products I did. You can always use what you have at home and find shades similar to what I used. I hope you enjoyed reading this!