Eye liner is, perhaps, one of those basic beauty mysteries that sometimes gets the better of us. You've nailed down the foundation. Your eyebrows are on point. You have blended, blurred, transitioned those colors fabulously on your lids and you go to put in the eyeliner and WHAM! Disaster strikes. Your hand shakes and you have a wiggly line.
No problem. I'll just make it a little thicker and go from there. Whew! Crisis averted.
Crap. The other side isn't as thick. Okay, I'll beef this side up and add a little flick. I'm rocking my "Adele"
Farfegnuggen! I did it again. Ugg it looks like I put it on while riding a horse on a cobbled road. *Grits teeth and makes it a little thicker. Does the same to the other side*
Finally: You look like Amy Winehouse with no hint of eye shadow showing.
At this point you either have to play out the whole super smoky eye or you start over.
Don't despair my kats and kittens. I too am completely sucky at eye liners. But I have learned a few tips and tricks over the years. Most of what you see on makeup tutorials comes from years of practice but for those of us that don't have the hands of a master painter, there is still hope and that comes from a few handy tricks. So grab a business card, a great eye liner brush and let's begin!
If you want a fool proof method, I prefer the water/eye shadow eye liner. I firmly believe that no makeup kit is complete without a very high quality eye liner brush. I actually think you need two. You need a fine point brush and you need an angled brush. I use my angled brush for powder/gel and my fine point brush for liquid/gel. The angled brush allows for less mistakes. It sounds counter intuitive but bear with me.
For the powder method, take a little droplet of water and add it to your palette, sink rim or the back of your hand. Gently wet your brush and then run it over the back of your hand once on each side. Then dab it in the corner of whatever color eye shadow you want to rim your lids with. I use the corner so it doesn't' build up the entire surface. The next step is very important. Just press! Dab. Press. Dab Press. Connect the dots. Don't tug!!! And always just off center.
When you have lined your entire upper lid, then you can go back in with a very gentle sweeping motion while gently tugging your eyelid taut. This will allow you to smooth out your eyelid. I have "aging" eyelids and they have creases. If you have less than smooth eye lids (or you didn't prime as I didn't in the picture *yes that makes me a horrible example but hey...it's a Sunday*) then you have to make sure that the eye liner gets into every crease.
After you have mastered this, you can try it with a gel liner or a liquid liner. It's all the same principle. Dot. Dot. Dot then connect.
Do you want that winged cat eye? Use a business card. Yep. Place it flush against your eye and sweep up. How high you want is up to you. You can then place little dots to connect to the rest of your lid and....fill the rest in.
In the picture I'm showing two different eye liner designs. One is a more Arabic design that incorporates a winged line and the other allows for a more Egyptian. What I like about the two is it allows me to have my lower eye lined. This is fantastic if you have small "closed" eyes. If you look closely I have tight lined my waterline with a white liner, then carried my eyeshadow down past my lashes and then finally used the eyeliner below that. I didn't, however, use any mascara.
The trick you'll see from professional MUA's and YouTuber's is that they will add in fake lashes on top and bottom to make it more lush. I'm lazy and I'm terrible with fake lashes. Plus that's not Every Day Beauty!
So what do you think? Ready to tackle some eye liner?
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