The Perfect Eye

By Alejandra Corona

The Perfect EyeWelcome to my first “official” pictorial, featuring Urban Decay’s Naked palette. This will help us effortlessly transition from a work/day look to a night look.

In this slide show we will focus on just the eyes—beginning with a simple day look that is work appropriate—and we will end with a slightly smoky, sultry look with a pop of color. 

Start off with your favorite eye primer to ensure your eye shadows last all day and into the night, as well as better adhere the shadows to your eye area.

I’m using Wet ‘n’ Wild Fergie Take On The Day eye shadow primer, which can be found wherever Wet ‘n’ Wild products are sold (primarily Walgreen’s and CVS if you’re in the Las Cruces area) for about $5.

Once your eye area is primed, you have a blank canvas ready for magic! 

Use a shade that’s 2 to 3 shades darker than your natural skin color; for me that’s Naked 2. I will be using this color as a transition/blending color. If you have darker skin the color to the right of Naked 2, Faint, is also a good transition/blending color.  

Using a soft crease brush, apply this color above your crease (highlighted in orange). Use windshield wiper motions from left to right to make sure the color is evenly distributed and remember to blend slightly upwards so you can have a smooth gradient effect from brow highlight (applied later) to crease color.

 

Your first sweep of color should look like this.

With the same soft crease brush, pick up a dark brown color (for me that would be Faint; darker skin tones can mix Faint with the black next to it (Crave).

 

Apply this to your crease (where the eyelid folds) using the same windshield wiper motions as before, except don’t take this color as high as the previous step, we want to have a nice gradient effect, like this: 

Now we will apply our lid color, and highlight. I use a mixture of Foxy and Walk  of Shame (WoS) for both. Darker skin tones can try Naked 2 on the lid and either Foxy or Walk of Shame for the highlight. 

Apply these colors to the orange areas shown with a flat shade brush. Use a patting motion to focus on just these areas. 

Make sure to blend the lid color into the crease color. As for the highlight, only apply it under the highest point of your brow’s arch and blend out (do not blend all the way to the beginning of your brow).

This is what mine looks like so far: 

Next we will apply eyeliner. This one is more of a personal preference thing (as well as what you’re comfortable/allowed to wear to work). Winged liner is generally favored and popular; you can also just line your top lid as you normally would. A great alternative is using a dark brown shadow or a black shadow as close to the lash line as possible. It’s not as heavy looking as traditional liner but you still get some definition.

If you’re interested in doing a winged liner, it’s really simple. I like to start out with the wing part first (keeps from me from going too thick with my liner on accident). Draw a line as if your bottom lash line is extended, as indicated in the picture. You can do a thin wing or a thick wing – whatever you prefer. Once you pick how thick you want it, you’ll want to line your upper eyelid.

When you fill in the wing with eyeliner, it will look like this:

The outline of your wing should look like this:

If you like what you see, finish lining your eye so the top lid looks like this:

For our day look we want to keep the bottom lash line pretty light and simple. I chose Faint; a blend of Faint and Crave would be fine for darker skin, just try not to be too heavy handed). You don’t want to take this color too far in, line about 2/3 of the way in from the edge of your outer lash line to keep from closing off your eyes entirely. Use the tip of the flat shade brush we used for lid and highlight color, just remember to wipe off the colors in between.

Welcome to your new day look! Curl and apply mascara to your top and bottom lashes for a fresh, sophisticated look.

If you want more definition and pizazz, continue for details on how to turn this day look into a eye worthy of a date night!

Using Faint (or Faint/Crave mixture), apply these colors to the outer third of your lid (highlighted in the picture), using your crease brush:

Now, using the black (Crave), apply this to the outermost part of the outer third of your lid.

Make sure to blend the color in by making tiny circular movements in the outer corner, keeping most of the color concentrated on that spot. Add color to your brush little by little with black, since it’s easier to darken than to lighten.

Using the edge of the flat shade brush like we did before, pick up a little black shadow (Crave) and line the outer 1/2 of your bottom lash line.

Here’s the fun part! I like to add a small pop of color that compliments my eye color. Using a shimmery teal eyeliner pencil, I lined the inner 2/3 of my eye beginning from my inner corner tear duct. You can use purple for hazel eyes, plum for green eyes, and gold for blue eyes, and brown eyes can get away with anything!