Heavy Time: applying makeup to heavy-lidded eyes

Question:

I have heavy eyelids, and so my eye makeup always smears and doesn't look good. What can I do, short of surgery, to avoid this problem?

Answer:

So you have heavy lids..? Welcome to the club. I also have heavy eyelids, which smears the eyeshadow (and liner, and mascara) like crazy. It doesn't help that most of the tip cards are designed for women who have lovely rounded eyes with no saggy, crepey, or droopy lids! When we follow those helpful little tip cards, we look like we've lost a fistfight. We wonder what we did wrong...and eventually can give up and figure, "Nope, I just don't know how to apply eyeshadow." It's not a fun club to belong to, the heavy-eyelid club. We have no meetings, no tee shirts, no spiffy membership card. Just a lot of frustration.

Folks with epicanthic folds don't have the exact same problem that heavy-lidded women do, but you've got some of the same problems: eyeliner that really, really, REALLY wants to go play on the upper lid; difficulty contouring so that the shadows are actually visible; and most makeup tip cards will not give you the effect that you want. And as you age, you probably get to look forward to both the epicanthic fold AND older eyes! Don't you feel privileged?... Yeah. Some privileges, you'd rather just do without, pleaseandthankyou.

There are a few things you can do to apply makeup and have it look good for longer than five minutes:

1. Use some kind of primer or cream base color on your eyes. Apply the primer, keep your eye closed for about 20-30 seconds to let it dry, and then apply your eyeshadow. This will help the shadow to adhere to your eyelid a bit better. You can use transparent, colored, or wildly colored primer - your preference.
2. When applying your contour shade...don't apply it "in the crease", like all the nifty little tip cards say. Apply it on the outer edge of the eyelid, starting from the lashline to the crease (straight line) and from the crease halfway up to your brow (slight curve, following your eyesocket's curve). This gives you the contouring WITHOUT putting a dark circle around your eye.
3. Apply your contour shade, then apply an "all over" shade atop it. This will keep your darker color from migrating along your eyelid...or it will at least slow the process.
4. If you wear pencil or liquid eyeliner, apply a light layer of powder right atop it. This will keep the liner from migrating.
5. If you apply your shadows wet, use liquid fixative to dampen your brush instead of water. Applying shadows wet will give them more staying power; but applying them with a fixative liquid - made specifically to set makeup - will give it even more power to stay put, or at least stay closer to where you applied them in the first place.

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