Product Review: Smokey Eye Demo

Happy Tuesday All,

I wanted to start off the week with a makeup tutorial as well as give a few shout outs to some new products I am SERIOUSLY crushing on!

Last Friday I had an urge to play up a smokey eye. I do love dark eye makeup, but being a makeup artist and doing this for a living, I often just do what artists who paint faces do on their days off, (that is, swipe on concealer and mascara and go). It's a bit like my friends who work in wardrobe. On their days off, they hate shopping and live in sweat pants. (Hazard of the trade I guess).

But I had noticed that NARS was debuting a new palette at Sephora in March and I was dying to test it. (NARS often makes limited edition products purely for the Sephora market, and I grudgingly part with my makeup artist discount and pay full freight, knowing I'm going to LOVE the colors). So I trundled off to my local mall in search of the "God Created Woman" palette along with some new goodies.

And here's what I got. The NARS palette, a new tube of Benefit, Bad Gal Lash, and to top it off, NARS Lip gloss/pencil in New Lover. (This is a Sephora 100 point gift and to those of you who use their point system, I'd suggest grabbing two)! To this, I added a new drug store gem, the NYC bronzing wheels.

Now the trick with any major makeup is to focus on one element. Since this was going to be eyes, it meant subduing the rest of the face. Blush: out. Bronzer: in. Lipstick: out. Glossy-sheer stain: in.

I rolled my hair in curlers to get some body while prepping. Here I am wearing only undereye concealer, (which helps prime the makeup in addition to getting rid of bags) and a coat of mascara.

1: Let's get started. Begin by sweeping the most neutral tone shadow across the lid and into the crease of the eye. How far you go is determined by the shape and size of your lid and brow-bone. Mine is big, so I go to the crease and just a hint above it.

2: Next, blend the lightest, highlighting shade through from the crease to the browbone and under the brow itself. 

3: Add depth and warmth along the crease with a deeper shade to complement what you've already used. I often like to use a color with some shimmer at this point. It reflects light away from the hollow points around the socket. (Corner bottom left).

4: Blend into the outer crease with a flat, wide brush.

5: Choose a dark and potentially matte color to line the upper and lower lash-line. I like to start with this chocolate, and then highlight over it as a secondary step.

6: Soften your lower lines under the bottom lashes by adding a highlighting shade to blend out the darkest edges. Brush and blend gently to smudge your liner. (I'm doing it with the uppermost, right hand shade of peach you see in the image above).

8: Using your darkest color, triangulate an outer edge which you can then smudge out with a blender brush. You can see the line here right before I smudged and softened. (Middle bottom shade is used as a liner, top right hand corner shade is being used to lift and highlight over the liner).

9: Time to finish and polish! I'm choosing a subtle bronzer in place of blush. This serves to keep the face "neutral" outside of the eye makeup and creates balance. The lighter bronzer seen up top is highlighting my orbital bone, while the deeper bronzer is contouring my cheek and chin.

10: Finishing touches include a dab of brow gel, two coats of Bad Gal Lash, and a lip tint from NARS.

11: Brush out the curlers, and it's on!

 Time to set rollers: 3 minutes. Time to sculpt eyes: 5 minutes. Contour, lip, mascara: 2 minutes. Brushing out hair: 3 minutes. Total time to glamor? Under 15 minutes!

With Love,

Noa B