6 eyeshadow looks to learn and master during circuit breaker

6 eyeshadow looks to learn and master during circuit breaker
PHOTO: Screegrab/YouTube/Angela Bright

Scroll through Instagram and TikTok and you’ll probably find your friends posting about cooking, baking, exercising or the Zoom meeting they had with you.

With the majority of the population staying home as part of the circuit breaker measures, we’ve had a lot more time on our hands to indulge in our hobbies and explore new interests (banana bread, anyone?).

If you’re looking for something new to maximise your spare time, why not practise and master your eyeshadow skills?

While we all probably know the basics needed to create an everyday eye makeup look, it requires more skill, technique and patience to create more impactful looks.

We’ve gathered six YouTube tutorials that teach us how to create anything from dramatic, glitter-packed smoky looks to trendy fox eyes.

Cut-crease for hooded eyes

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Raise your hands if you have hooded eyes like me and feel personally victimised by an eyeshadow look that gets lost the moment you open your eyes. Angela Bright teaches us how to overcome the predicament in this tutorial. Start by sweeping the transition shade above the crease.

For hooded eyes, the placement would be on the brow bone as we do not have a natural crease. Switch to smaller, more precise eyeshadow brushes to pack and blend the darker shades to build the look.

To cut the crease, dab your concealer or eyeshadow base on your natural crease, open your eyes completely and see where the cream/concealer gets transferred to.

This new point will serve as a guide to how high you need to apply the concealer before packing on another shade to create the halo effect. The key is to always look straight with your eyes open and ensure that the colour is visible before moving on to the next step.

Smoky and glittery

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Glitter amps up any eyeshadow look but it can be messy and overwhelming if you're new to it. Sinead, also known by her YouTube channel name TheMakeupChair, teaches us how to properly use it to elevate the humble smoky eye.

She first delves into creating the eyeshadow look, with tips on placement of colours and brush choices to create an impactful yet blended finish. She then employs a small fluffy eyeshadow brush to brush on a thin coat of glitter glue on the eyelids before applying the glitter.

She recommends using patting motions to pack on the glitter and finishing by brushing it all over gently to remove any excess particles. Besides loose glitter pigment that Sinead used, you can also try gel, cream or liquid-based glitter eyeshadows too.

Fox eyes

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The fox eyes trend was inspired by Bella Hadid and Kendall Jenner's makeup looks where the eyes were made to look elongated and lifted through eyeshadow and eyeliner placement.

Start by creating straight brows with a soft arch, using concealer to sharpen the look. Next, create an imaginary line from the edge of your nose to the outer corner of the eyes. This line will serve as a guide for eyeshadow placement.

With a small flat or pointed eyeshadow brush, sweep the eyeshadow from the outer upper lash line towards the temples while following the imaginary line. Keep the strokes light and quick and continue building colour till the desired intensity.

The eventual eyeshadow shape should look like an extended triangle. If you want to finish with false eyelashes, pick tapered designs that flare at the outer edges.

Glossy lids

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Glossy looks are regularly seen in magazine editorials but you can easily recreate the look at home. Lisa Eldridge starts by priming her lids with an eyelid primer that's close to your natural skin tone (she used Mac Paint Pot Eyeshadow) for added longevity and reducing any creasing.

Using neutral hues, she subsequently sculpts the eyes with a light wash of colour. Then, she adds lashings of smudge-proof mascara - a necessity for such looks - before applying an eye gloss from Kevyn Aucoin with patting motions so as not to disturb the shadows underneath across the entire eyelid.

For the finishing touch, Lisa adds a touch extra on the centre of the lid for extra oomph. If you don't want to purchase a dedicated eye gloss, you could use transparent lip gloss too - she recommends something without fragrance to prevent any irritation.

Playing with colours

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If you've always been intimidated by colourful eyeshadows, now is the perfect time to get the hang of using them. Tammi Clarke starts off by touching on colour theory and what colours and shades work well with each other and which combinations might blend into a muddy mess.

Sticking to the same tone family (i.e. warm or cool tones) is an easy way to distinguish what works. Another tip Tammi gives is to work with the darkest shade first before moving towards the lighter, transition shades to ensure that maximum pigmentation.

Using packing motions, instead of sweeping, will also minimise loss of saturation. Finally, build your confidence by using two to three matte shades first before evolving to trickier colour combinations and eyeshadow looks.

Dripping rainbow eyes

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If you're feeling a little stuck creatively, Instagram is a treasure trove of inspiration. A particularly striking look is this rainbow eyeshadow look with dripping effect. Denitslava starts by priming her eyes with a light eyelid primer to ensure that the colours pop atop.

Then, use a small eyeshadow packing brush to pinpoint build the colours following the sequence of colours in the rainbow. She recommends using dedicated brushes for each colour to prevent contamination and crisp payoff.

For the dripping effect, she dips a cotton bud into makeup remover (like micellar water) to clean off the spaces that would become the drips. Then, take an eyeliner brush to clean the edges of the drip with concealer before using a sharp eyeliner pen to outline the drops and smoking the lines to create a shadow, 3D effect.

She copies the colour placement for the lower lashes, jazzes up the look with an inner corner highlight and finishes by tightlining the eyes with matching eyeliner pencils. Word of caution though, this look needs patience and dexterity to execute.

This article was first published in CLEO Singapore.

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