A "pop of color" for hooded or small eyes: the inner corner accent

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My eyes are small and fairly hooded (likely to become moreso as I age), which gives me limited eyelid space to work with when I apply eyeshadow. In most of my blog photos, I have to tilt my head back a little and raise my eyebrow so that my eyeliner, or whatever I'm featuring, is fully visible. My usual eyeshadow technique is to use just 1-3 shades layered horizontally. That means with three shades I will have one on my mobile lid, one across the crease and in the outer corner, and one on my browbone. There's not a lot of room for blending designs that are more complex than that.

With my eye shape and size, one of the things I struggle with is using bright or bold eyeshadow colors. It's easy to overwhelm my eyes if I use vibrant colors all over my eyelids, and the usual "accent" suggestions tend not to work out the way I want. For instance, lining below my eye with a bold color closes it up and makes it look smaller, along with still overpowering everything else. If I put colors in the crease, they get swallowed up and are only visible if I blink. I can use a bright color as a liner on my top lid, and I do that sometimes, but I'd rather just use a bright eyeliner than to relegate my bright eyeshadows to eyeliner duty.

Recently I've found a way to add a colorful accent to my eyes that is neither invisible nor overwhelming. I apply the bright shade to the inner corner of my mobile lid and blend it about 1/4 to 1/3 of the way toward the middle of my eyelid. I don't know if I've ever seen this technique in an eyeshadow tutorial, though I have seen inner corner accents that are blended both above and below the corner. I really enjoy the subtle effect of just applying the color to part of my upper lid. Depending on the shape of your eye, this may or may not create a look that you like. I know that some people are hesitant to put deeper shades near the inner corners of their eyes, because it can make your eyes look closer together, but that isn't an issue for me. My eyes aren't particularly wide-spaced, but they are rather deep-set, so there is already a natural shadow in that area. If you prefer, you could use the color above the outer corner of your eye instead, but there it tends to hide more in my crease.

For the look in this post, I did my eyeshadow just as I normally would (described above) and then added the teal accent after the other shades. I used this old MUA palette called Dusk Til Dawn (swatched here, expensive from Amazon here, affordable in the UK here), and since it's all shimmers, it's admittedly a little much.

I'm trying to decide whether or not I want to keep this palette (which is why I used it exclusively today). It performs well, and the teal is really beautiful, but the other shades aren't very unique in my hoard. I might try to depot just the teal, but I'm a little nervous that I will destroy it, since the palette is constructed pretty securely.

Does anyone else do bright inner-corner accents? If not, what else do you do with your boldest eyeshadows? You should in no way try to convince me to buy the Urban Decay Electric Palette. Ahem.

(I know we're all sick of the phrase "pop of color," but then you all immediately know what I'm talking about when I use it, so . . . . )

Thinning the Hoard

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Someone once asked me how I decide what to keep and what to get rid of when sorting through my accumulation of makeup products. Now seems like as good a time as any to write a post about that process, since I just realized that I'm going to have to move in less than 6 weeks. Ugh! I mean, I'll be glad to get out of my current shithole of an apartment, but apartment hunting and moving are huge pains in the ass.

Before I pack everything up and move it somewhere else, I'd really like to eliminate as much of the useless shit I have lying around as possible. My piles of unnecessary belongings extend far beyond just makeup, but since that's what I mainly talk about here, that's what I'll stick with right now. Writing it all out is a useful process for me, because it forces me to come up with realistic rules for myself about what I should or should not hold on to, and to spend the time to consider whether or not I really have room for various items. So I'll go through a few categories of cosmetics here and lay out some guidelines upon which I'm basing my decisions about what to keep and what to set free. If you can think of any other suggestions, I'd love to hear them.

Trash or Keep

There are certain items that I can easily decide to hold on to, such as products that I use on a regular basis and/or one that are unique and well-loved, and there are those that I can easily dispense with, because they are of no use to me.

Trash: There are some things that I'm never going to use, and that I also don't think anyone else should use. I tend to come into the possession of shit that falls into this category through subscriptions (Ipsy, in particular), free samples/gift-with-purchase deals, or the occasional impusle purchase. For example, in a recent Ipsy bag, I got some "Mark Fading Pads" by Proactiv, and the first ingredient in them after water was SD alcohol. No thanks. I don't want to use them, and I don't want to subject anyone else to them, so bye bye.

Practical, non-perishable stuff: This category includes products that will get used up eventually and won't expire in the meantime, like eyebrow pencils. Yes, I have too many of them. But they don't take up a lot of space, and they will be fine waiting for me to get around to finishing them. Just don't pick up any new ones in the meantime, self.

Those categories are pretty straightforward. But I also have a lot of things that are more difficult to classify. They may or may not be superfluous. They probably are, but it's helpful to think carefully about why, so that I don't regret passing them along to someone else, because I am ridiculous.

Makeup

Eyeko Skinny Liquid Eyeliner and Urban Decay 24/7 Velvet Glide On Eyeliner

Dupes: I confess that I own a lot of unnecessary dupes and products that perform basically the same function as one another. One example is black eyeliner. Everyone has a favorite black eyeliner, and so I've picked up quite a few along the way that I've heard good things about. I don't really like to open something that I don't yet need, so I have several brand new black eyeliners just sitting around waiting for attention. And I don't even fucking wear black liner very often. Why did I buy them? (Anxiety?) I'll hold on to a couple in addition to the ones I'm currently using, but the rest must go.

Pigmentation Wars: Urban Decay Dangerous Palette (originally $36) vs. MUA Smokin Palette (about $10)

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For some reason I have been putting off writing this post for a couple of months. I had visions of the Urban Decay fangirls eating me alive. I'm over it now. Mostly. The point of the comparison here isn't to tell you which eyeshadow is better (though I have a personal preference), but to compare different formulas and point out some pros and cons of each. Savannah Scorpion wrote a post here a while back pointing out the role of the term "pigmented" in cosmetics marketing; this post will take some of those ideas a little further and consider whether and under what circumstances more highly pigmented eyeshadows are (or are not) preferable. I've noted before that for blushes too much pigmentation can actually be a bad thing. Is that the case for eyeshadows too, or are more pigmented eyeshadows always better? Are eyeshadows the kind of product where you are likely to have better results the more money you spend? Ultimately you're going to have to decide for yourself, but I hope this comparison is helpful.

I bought the MUA Smokin Palette a while back when MUA had a free international shipping sale. With the current exchange rate, the palette is about $10 (US). I posted photos and swatches of it here. Love. Love-love. That palette is clearly meant to imitate the Urban Decay Smoked Palette ($49). It has all the same elements, except that it doesn't come with a mini-primer like the UD version. I was curious about how the cheaper MUA shadows, which I think are fucking fabulous, matched up to the more expensive UD ones, not only in color, but also in formula and result. Unfortunately I don't have the Smoked Palette to compare, and I'm sure as hell not going to spend $50 on something that is nearly identical to something I already own. But I do have the UD Dangerous Palette (now discontinued), which I got on sale for about $15. It contains three of the same eyeshadows as Smoked, and two others that are somewhat similar. It makes a good comparison for the MUA shadows, then. What the Dangerous Palette does not contain are the matte shades, so I'm going to have to leave those aside for now. The MUA mattes are wonderful, though (see swatches linked above).

Okay, okay, let's look at these things:

MUA Smokin Palette

Urban Decay Dangerous Palette

The lighting in those two photos is a bit different, but I think it's easy enough to tell which shadows correspond to one another. The three that match are Loaded, Evidence, and Mushroom, which are also in the UD Smoked Palette. The Smoked Palette has Rockstar instead of Gravity, which is a more bluish purple, Asphalt instead of Ace (I think Asphalt is darker), and Barlust instead of Deeper (Barlust is a more bronzey/red-brown, while Deeper is a golden brown). These last three are matched by shades in the MUA palette.

First I swatched all of the shadows in the UD Dangerous palette next to the most similar shadows from the MUA palette. I'm going to show you about a million more photos, so I'll put them below a cut.

Two awesome MUA eyeshadow palettes: Smokin and Dusk til Dawn (photo heavy post)

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I'm going to try to make this one mostly photos with few words. I will quell my usual long-windedness as best I can, but if anyone has questions about these palettes, I'm happy to say more.

I think everyone in the UK knows about these, but since most people who read here are from North America, I thought someone might find this interesting. These aren't available in North America, as far as I know, but at least once a year MUA has a free international shipping sale (ETA: sadly they don't do this anymore), and it is totally, totally worth taking advantage of that. International shipping is normally £7.50, which is about $13 at this point, so it's not cheap. Not exorbitant (like it would be to ship makeup from North America to the UK), but the free shipping sale still makes a significant difference, especially since the products themselves are really affordable. They just held that sale last month, so it might not come around again for a while. MUA palettes themselves are £4-6. 

I bought the Smokin and Dusk til Dawn palettes in January. They are both excellent. The Smokin palette is clearly meant to dupe Urban Decay's Smoked palette. I'll write a post in future comparing the MUA shadows to UD's. Many of MUA's eyeshadow palettes seem to have been "inspired" by Urban Decay.

Enough talk. Let's look at the palettes. All of the swatches below were done without primer. Look how fucking impressive they are! I always use primer because of my oily lids - just imagine how much more brilliantly pigmented the swatches would be over primer. I wanted to give you the worst case scenario, the basic performance of these shadows, which is awesome on its own.

I've included photos taken with flash so that you can see the level of shimmer in each shade, since there's a range from completely matte to slightly shimmery to mattes with glitter to really fucking sparkly shadows.

Smokin

MUA Smokin Eyeshadow Palette

MUA Smokin Eyeshadow Palette (with flash)

Swatches of MUA Smokin Eyeshadow Palette (natural light)

Swatches of MUA Smokin Eyeshadow Palette (flash)

THIS IS NOT A DRILL: Free Worldwide delivery from MUA Makeup Academy today only

Oh fuck yes. I have been waiting for this one. When I was in London last summer, I looked all over for MUA products (well in the few stores I passed while I was wandering) and couldn't find them. I went to multiple Superdrugs and found nothing. So now is the time!

I really highly recommend the eyeshadow palettes. The wonderful Undressed palettes are sadly out of stock, but the equally wonderful Heaven and Earth palette is still available. These eyeshadows are really fucking pigmented and awesomely textured and come in great shades. I use them more than all of my more expensive shadows (like Urban Decay, The Balm, etc.). They have both shimmers and mattes, neutrals and colors. Of course I've been caught away from home without my camera on this momentous occasion, but I brought one if my MUA palettes, and I'll try to take a hotel bathroom webcam selfie later. In the meantime, here are some Heaven and Earth swatches.

From what I understand, the Velvet Lip Lacquers are good dupes for Lime Crime's Velvetines, without the obviously shady proprietor and ridiculous markup.

Any other suggestions?

You have to spend £20 to get free shipping, but no code necessary as far as I can tell. Normally shipping for international orders is £7.50 (almost $13 USD), so this is a good deal. Go go go!