Even though I am over forty years old, I still want to be able to create a sexy eye look without appearing like I’m either trying too hard, or am overly-made up. Many of the styles we see in magazines work on women with younger skin, but they don’t transfer well as we age. How can you create a more smoky and dramatic eye look while maintaining an age appropriate amount of makeup? How do you prepare for the hot date, fancy party, or evening wedding in a way that is classy, sophisticated, and stylish?
The Secret to Smoky Eye Makeup
The secret to applying a more dramatic eye is in the proper use of contour and highlight. (See my video on contour.) Depending on your skin color, you will be using darker and denser colors to achieve the smoky eye look, which means that you need to have a solid blending technique. When using black, dark brown, plum, or whatever color you are putting on your eyes, having a contour color that is one to two shades darker than your skin is key. I like to layer colors, starting with the contour and working my way into darker shades until I reach the intensity I desire in my eye area.
Start with Great Skin
To start, you need to have hydrated skin, which comes from using solid skin care products. My favorite skin care line is Truth Treatments by Ben Fuchs. I’ve posted a product review video on the line, as well as an in-person interview with Ben to further explain our shared viewpoints. Each product contains no more than nine active ingredients, and you only need Truth Serum, Truth Balm, and Retinol for your daily skin care regime. That’s right, just three products, and no eye cream! Ben’s platform for skin care is that we don’t need all the fillers and extra products like eye cream, day cream, night cream, etc, in order to have amazing skin. We just need active ingredients and consistent usage to bring our skin to a glowing, healthy state. Makeup blends and holds up better on good skin, and will allow you to achieve looks that you can’t on dull or unhealthy skin. To learn more about Truth Treatments, visit his website, and use code havethetruthSB for a 10% discount.
How to Apply the Smoky Eye
After applying foundation, concealer, blush, and lipstick, move onto the eye area. Take your contour color, which should be one to two shades darker than your skin, and, using a crease brush, place it in the crease of your eye socket. If you have large lids, you can smooth it over the entire lid area without looking like you were punched in the face. If you want, use a light, shimmery shade for the inner eyelid to add sparkle and glamour to the eye. After that, use your chosen eyeliner and place a thin line between your lashes and lid, making the outer corner thicker than the inner edge that’s closest to your eyes. Then take a dark eye shadow, and using a brushing motion shown in the video, brush it over the liner to make it appear smoky, or blended out. Only put a small amount under your eye, as this can bring attention to dark circles or lines.
Taking the same or similar color, place some in the outer edge of your eye, and blend it toward the inner eye, going slowly and working the color into the skin. This is where a good blending technique and a base contour shade come in handy. If you struggle with blending, dip your brush in the contour and continue to work until both color blend to your satisfaction. You can add more or less around the eye area and into the outer corner depending on the look you are going for. In the video, I used a Deck of Scarlet #6 palette and if you follow this link and use code GRAY you’ll get 10% off your first purchase. Deck of Scarlet is a subscription based makeup palette where every other month you receive a new palette created by a popular YouTuber. The colors are rich and blend well, and you get new palettes to try out and play with on a consistent basis.
Continuing on, you can also add some highlight to your brow bone and cheekbone, as well as false lashes if that tickles your fancy! Glamour is an individual state of mind so go with your comfort zone and have fun! I hope you have found this video and blog informative. Please add comments and questions, as I love to hear from you and how I can produce better and more targeted content to meet your needs.
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