Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Now that you've mastered winged eyeliner (?), try this trick

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.
So you've no doubt been spending the last 6 weeks perfecting your eyeliner game (as if you have anything better to do). How's it going? Here's something new for you to try! I call it: Using Eyeliner to Fuck with the Shape of Your Eye.

Or play with the shape? Whatever, so long as it's not "correct the shape". Your eye shape is fine. There's not a wrong eye shape. But it's still pretty fucking cool that you can use makeup to make it look like a different one, if you want.

When I go liquid/gel eyeliner, I usually choose one of two shapes. This first is the one you'll get in most eyeliner tutorials: thinner line near the inner corner of the eye and gradually thicker toward the outer corner. This can make your eyes look longer (horizontally) and turned up a bit at the outer corners. Like so (and I've pinned many other eyeliner tutorials on this Pinterest board).

The other technique I like is to make a line that is thickest in the middle of my eyes and thinner toward both corners. For me, this makes my eyes look wider, rounder, and more open. Compare my eyes in the photo below: they are not actually crooked! But this little bit of eyeliner fucks with things enough to make them look that way when only one is done. It does make a noticeable difference. Lean back a bit from your computer screen to get the full effect.

Check out the photo at the top of the post for a close up of the shape I used. To do it, I start with a fairly even line across the whole lashline, much like I did here, but then I go back and add thickness to the middle and curve the line down toward either side. It's easier to do it in two steps than to try to go thin-thick-thin all in one go - plus you can make sure you get eyeliner right down as close to the lashes as possible on the first swipe before you worry about the shape. I also usually pull up my eyelid a little and dot the eyeliner between my lashes to make the line as solid as possible, but you don't have to do that if you are worried about poking yourself in the eye. I've never poked my eye out, but sometimes I get nervous and blink, and that can transfer some liner to my under-eye area.

Here is the final look, with the addition of some eyeshadow and mascara:

I used the wonderful L'Oreal Lineur Intense Felt Tip Liquid Eyeliner here. I think it's one of the easiest to use, and I've tried a bunch of eyeliners. It goes on smoothly and doesn't bleed or smear. Something about the shape and stiffness of it is just really easy to control. This is the tool I learned on. It doesn't work like a marker, where the pigment is wicked up through the inside, but more like a stiff brush dipped in paint. It's also apparently identical to the Lancome version but $9 vs. $30 (L'Oreal owns Lancome, but not all their products are necessarily interchangeable). Maybe not cheap as fuck, but then I try never to buy makeup that isn't on sale. Make sure you get the one in the gold packaging. The black "brush tip" is not as good.

Have you played around with eyeliner shapes like this? What's your favorite?

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