Smokin&#39; Eyes

For some reason or another, so many women are completely clueless when it comes to dramatic eye makeup. Every day natural makeup is a cinch, but introduce dark colors or black eyeliner and most gals are deer in headlights.

Ever since 8th grade when I played makeup artist for all my older sisters’ friends, I’ve become the go-to girl whenever a friend needs dramatic makeup for a special event. So for all the makeup dummies out there, here is my foolproof guide on creating sultry eyes when you want to wow ‘em.

First, remove all traces of old makeup. Start with a thin layer of eye primer so your sexy eyes will last all night. Urban Decay eye primer is my personal fave.

Next, cover your entire lid with a light colored eye shadow like gray, lavender, white, or gold. Pick colors that are the exact opposite of your eye color to really make them pop. Purple looks great on brown eyes while gold really makes blue eyes stand out.

Choose a darker eye shadow in the same color scheme as the lighter shade that you started with i.e. charcoal for gray, black for white, dark brown for gold or eggplant for lavender. Nars makes my favorite eye shadow duos. They come with one lighter shade and one darker shade and are heavily pigmented – perfect for smoky eyes.

Using a small, flat brush, make a line with the dark shadow close to your lash line and extend it to the outer corners of your eye while making the line thicker. Sweep the shadow on the crease of your lid, stopping three-quarters of the way to your inner corner. Use short strokes so it doesn’t look like a hard line on your crease. Line your bottom lash line with the shadow – it’s less harsh than using regular liner and will make your eyes look larger. If specks of eye shadow fall on to your cheeks, just use some makeup remover to clean it off.

Line your top lash line with black eyeliner. Begin with a thin line at your inner eye corner and increase the thickness of the line as you move toward your outer eye corner. If you have medium to large eyes, also line the inside of your bottom lash line. Don’t do it if you have smaller eyes– it will make your eyes look too harsh and scary.