Repotting Eyeshadows: one person’s process

...or, actually, repot my shadows. Phyrra asked on Twitter if I’d ever taken pics of the process. I hadn’t - hadn’t though about it, actually - but that got me thinking. And hey, more content that may or may not help someone else out at some point.

I repot all my shadows that I buy - not because I dislike the original packaging, but because I want everything to be in the same size jars for purposes of neatness and ease of storage. (Yes, I’m that weird.)

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PSA: Wear your sunscreen

It’s getting warmer, we’re all shaking off the winter lethargy and getting out and walking several times a week. (Or we’re going to say we are. Shush.) But don’t forget the sunscreen! Even if your chosen foundation has an SPF factor, chances are that it’s not enough protection - so grab your sunscreen of choice and add that to your daily routine.

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Using color correctors

If your face has age spots, overly large freckles, birthmarks, rosacea, scars, acne…and let’s face it, who among us doesn’t have something that stands out in ways we don’t quite love…you’ve got some choices: cope, conceal, or correct. While the beauty market is flooded with products for eyes and lips and cheeks, and of course foundation is readily available, the most readily-available option is cover-up…not correction. This is the age of Photoshop, of quick and easy red-eye correction in digital photos. So why is it not as easy to find corrector options? Many times you can get better results with a color corrector than with any cover-up option.

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An ‘Exquisite’ Mistake

Someone, hearing that I was interested in two of the colors from the Bare Escentuals Be Adventurous kit, offered to trade me for their unopened pot of Exquisite. So for the price of a few brushes that I wasn’t going to use - and postage - I got a pot of Exquisite.

It did not look the yellow-gold shown in the photos of the kit. It looked more like - forgive the indelicacy - baby-diarrhea yellow-brown. The same color as cheap “brown” mustard. And it was a “glimpse”, to boot - which means very little pigment. (Given the shade, that might be a good thing…) Since I have additives from TSS and jars of mica powder from Coastal Scents, I decided to see what I could to do salvage this.

I tried adding Violet Interfine, thinking that since purple is a complimentary color to yellow the result might look acceptable - kind of like Hot Spot (which I adore), but with a bit more brown. I didn’t measure, just mixed in a dollop. It did add a little bit of the interfine, and lightened the color so there wasn’t quite so much yellow visible; but it still wasn’t all that great. So I added a dollop of Sunstone - a darker golden-orange mica powder. While the color was no longer quite so disconcerting, there still wasn’t much effect. Not too surprising, since it was essentially a pot of mixed mica powders with a small amount of actual pigment in it. Applied wet, it adds an interesting glaze layer. While I don’t know that I’ll use this super-often, I can apply a thin layer over dark brown or black liner pencil and add a little flash to a given look - and I have managed to turn something that would have been pitched or forgotten, into something useful.

Mascara: guerilla storage and application tricks

Sure, mascara application seems fairly straightforward...so why in the heck do you end up with clumps, no matter how careful you are? And why can't you get your lashes to look thicker, like they did when you were a kid? And when should you throw this stuff out, anyway? (This post is actually a collection of tips I've found on forums, and stuff I've successfully tried.)

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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.