So over the long weekend, I celebrated my birthday! Let's not talk about age but I am at that point, it's not exciting anymore to be turning another year older. I am not that old either to party it up all night, but I'd rather have a nice quiet dinner with my hubby. This though does not mean I was not going to dress up and get glamorized, it's my birthday! Plus, I finally found an excuse to wear a nice dark smokey eye! I have not done this look before and I am so happy that it turned out great and I did not end up looking like a raccoon!
Before I started with my face, I went to straighten my hair first. It was windy out so a curly hair will not do well that night. I used the NuMe Finishing Serum from my Ipsy bag (check my post, here!) after and whoaa! My hair looked pretty shiny! I am loving that serum!
I'm using the infiniti Conair that my sister gave me! |
So for this look, I took out my NYX Wicked Dreams Palette which I bought months ago! I have been using the neutral shadows on this palette, and I like it. For this look I used mostly that nice matte blue-green shadow, second to the right at the very bottom row of the palette.
Before I started putting my shadows I used the tape method to give me that nice sharp edge. I saw this method used on Youtube and I've used it before to do a daytime smokey look and it works great!
TIP ALERT: Put the two tapes on your wrist first to take out some of the stickiness, so in the end it's not gonna be pulling your skin too hard.
With the Tape Method: From the outer corner of your eye, you align the other end of the tape to the end of your eyebrow. Check picture below, for a clearer visual.
- For this look, I did my eyes first before putting on my foundation and blush, just in case there's any fallout. Surprisingly I did not have any!
- After putting on my primer, I used a flat brush to dab this blue-green shadow all over my lid up to the crease.
- And with the same shadow, I used the end of the flat brush and dabbed it below my eyes
- Using a crease brush I took a little dab on the matte black shadow and put that in my outer corner for depth.
- Then with a clean crease brush, I blend, blend blend around the crease area to remove any harsh lines. By doing this also, it brought some of the color above the crease a little bit.
- Finally, added some highlight with that shimmery cream shadow below my eyebrows and the inner corners.
- Now you can finally remove that tape and voila! A nice sharp wing! Now you can just follow that outline when you do your eyeliner! I used my Shiseido Gel Liner in Black/ Noir for this look because I want that dark black wing.
- Then used Mally Waterproof Eyeliner in Gunmetal in my waterline so it's not too dark, which I love!
- Don't forget your mascara! And your false lashes if you like. I am not a fan of fake lashes so I skipped that part.
Left: tape lining the outer corner of my eye to the end of my eyebrows Right: the finish product once you remove that tape! |
on to the FACE. . .
- After priming with BareMinerals Primer, I used my Yaby Concealer in Vanilla to do my new highlighting technique, which I posted here!
- I used my BareMinerals Foundation in Golden Tan all over my face.
- For blush I used Milani Baked Powder Blush in Rose D'Oro. This has beautiful gold shimmers to it so I didn't have to use a highlighter with this blush. I just did a light sweep of this, just to give my cheeks some color.
- And on my lips my favorite nude lip color of all time! L'oreal Colour Riche Caresse Lipstick in Silky Java.This lipstick goes on like buttah! Super moisturizing! And this is good for dark pigmented lips because this is more of a dark nude color. On top of that I just added a little bit of BareMinerals Marvelous Moxie Lipgloss in Maverick for some more shine!
and here's our FINAL LOOK!
outfit: necklace from BaubleBar and dress from Joe Fresh |
All in all, I love this smokey look! I will definitely gonna be doing this a lot when I go out at night. Maybe use a different palette tho since I've noticed on my other pics, this did not blend well and got patchy even with a primer on! It's great when packing in the shadow to the lids but after blending it I see patches on my lids =( You can see it a little bit on the picture above. I tried fixing it but it was just not going away. Good thing we were dining at a dimly lit restaurant and my husband doesn't really care about these minor girl problems I have.
I still had a great night. My husband is the sweetest! The food was amazing at Delmonico's, and I made sure I had room for dessert! I'm a dessert girl, I always have room for sweets tho!!! We walked around the neighborhood afterwards, hubby was reminiscing when he used to work in the area. Another birthday I will not forget!