Recently, my friend Carol the Cookie Monster asked for tips to apply eyeliners. People always assume lining your eyes is a simple and easy task but the truth is very far from that assumption. It took me years to master the art of lining my eyes with pencil liners and many years after that to get over the fear of being poked in the eyes by a liquid liner. Just when I thought I was a pro, I found myself stuttering when I lined my friend's eyes. You see, applying eyeliner is not that simple and I guess it is time for me to write a tutorial about this topic.
What you need: pencil liner (Teddy eye kohl from MAC) , a slanted eyeshadow brush (I use MAC 266), a powder eyeshadow (mine is Hazel Brown from Aura Science, a discontinued makeup line at Victoria's Secret), an eyeshadow primer (optional, I use MAC Bare Canvas paint pot), an eyelash curler (mine is ELF, also need to review it!)
Not shown: a mascara (I use L'Oreal Voluminous Carbon Black)
Optional step: prime your eyes with an eyeshadow primer
Even when I don't use any eyeshadow, I apply Bare Canvas paint pot so my eyes would have some nice glimmers. But most importantly, I have oily eyelids that tend to crease and the eyeshadow primer helps my eye makeup to stay put.
Step 1: Curl your eyelashes
Although curling your eyelashes before or after applying eye makeup is still up for debating, I prefer to curl my lashes first. To my friends who are not into makeup (or are guys), curling eyelashes looks like something from Guantanamo Bay. A friend of mine always refers to the eyelash curler as a torture device. The truth is, it doesn't hurt at all!
Step 2a: Warm up the tip of your pencil eyeliner
While I have other eyeliners, I prefer the Teddy eye kohl for this tutorial because it is soft and glides more effortlessly than the other eyeliners I have. Looking back, my failure line my eyes was mostly due to the pencil I used. Hard ones are more pokey and do not tend to glide that well. Soft ones lack control and if you mess up, it is hard to fix. MAC eye kohl is between hard and soft, which is why I prefer it on days I just need to line my eyes really fast and go.
Warming up the tip of the pencil will make it even softer and hence, make it a lot easier for you to work with.
Step 2b: Make a silly O-face
Remember my fear of being stabbed in the eye by an eyeliner? Well, I blink too much, which increase my chance to have beauty-related injuries. The muscles around the mouth and around the eyes are connected. Therefore, when you make an O, your eyes will not blink. Seriously, I'm not making this up. I learned it in "Human Anatomy and Physiology 1"!
Step 2c: Start lining the eyes
Finally, some action! I prefer to line my eyes from the inside out but you can do whatever way you want: line from the outer corner, from the middle, from the Moon (?!) Well, you get the idea, right? Right?
The secret to getting a straight line is not to line it at once but to connect the dots.
There, I said it. Please write it down, underline it, and highlight it. This is important! It took me years to figure that out because there was no YouTube and Michelle Phan's channel when I started with makeup. Seriously, RiceBunny is a genius!
What you need to do is to move your pencil liner bit by bit connect the dots until you get to the outer corner of your eyes. It should look like this:
Nice, right?
In fact, it's perfect. Now, imagine it is not and I need to fix it. I know it's kind of hard but just use your imagination, ok?
Step 3: Correction
If you did part 2 well, chances are you don't need to correct anything. But for the sake of having a complete tutorial, let's say I messed up big time and I need to fix my goop without having to start all over again, which is a pain in the you-know-what.
So, how can I do it? With a slanted eyeshadow brush and a powder eyeshadow, of course! I use brown because my eyeliner is brown. If you use a different color, make sure your eyeshadow matches, otherwise it would be tres weird :)
With the slanted eyeshadow brush, I dipped it into the eyeshadow pot and apply it over my liner. If there is anything I need to fix or smooth out, my brush will help me do that. Also, if your eyeliner is not waterproof, doing this will enhance the lasting power of your liner a lot longer. (This is a trick I learned from a famous makeup artist whose name just escaped me!)
Optional: line your lower lashes
It's really really optional, most of the time I do not care but recently, I find doing so makes my eyes look more mysterious.
Apply mascara and voila, you're done!
Eyeliners are a lot of fun. I consider it the best part in eye makeup because I hardly wear eye shadows these days. With eyeliner on, you can look put-together fast without using any extra eye makeup on top. Also, I find the eyeliner/paint pot combo gives me a clean and professional look with the least effort.
Carol, I hope this helps you. If anybody has any questions/comments/requests, please let me know! I really appreciate your feedback and they do make my blog better. So please speak up, ok?
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