How to *Actually* Wear a Crazy Eyeshadow Palette
So you swooned hard over those insanely beautiful pastel makeup palettes and spent the dolla dollas on one of your own, only to realize you have no idea what to do with all the crazy colors inside. For wild-child beauty buffs, this is no problem — experimentation is your middle name. But for my minimalist makeup-loving babes, the thought of wearing pastel anything intimidates on many levels. For this look, I thought it would be fun to show how you can take an otherwise wild palette full of intense colors and wear it in an everyday way. Once you’ve mastered this basic approach, you can play around and eventually come up with your own creative ways to use your chosen palette.
The Palette
For this look we went with Sephora + Pantone UNIVERSE Modern Watercolor Eyes Palette ($39).
Get your flawless face base makeup on so you can build the look from there.
Prep: Flawless Face
Find the pigment that most closely matches your skin tone. For Liz’s bronzer, we used the deeper mauve hue to contour her cheekbones, along her hairline and down her jaw bone. This shade actually blends in nicely on both deeper skin and a more fair complexion.
Step 1: Find Your Contour Color
For your blush, think bright pinky, peachy colors. We chose the brightest pink hue out of the bunch, and it works great as a pop of color on the apples of her cheeks.
Step 2: Choose Your Blush
To highlight, you can go for any of the lighter, transparent pigments. We chose the light yellowish color and tapped it onto her upper cheekbones, down the bridge of her nose and above her cupid’s bow. You can see how the light reflects gorgeously on her skin.
Step 3: Highlight Right
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Apply the same pigment you used as your highlighter, or go for a lighter brightening pigment.
Step 4: Get Your Eye Game On
Crease:You’ll want to go for a neutral tone here to add a little depth. Here, we used the lighter mauve color with a fluffy shadow brush.
Lash Line + Partial Lid:We wanted to get a pop of pastel in this look, but in an unexpected way, so we used the greenish color around Liz’s lash line and slightly onto her lids.
Lower Lash Line: To add another element of depth to this look, we added the silvery gray pigment along her lower lash line. It looks really beautiful with the green. You could go in any direction here though — have fun with your palette!
Apply a coat or two of your favorite mascara and then tap on any of the pinkish pigments of shadow over a clear lipgloss or lip balm to get a pop of color that will pull the look together. On Liz, we used the brightest hot pink for this move.
Finishing Touches: Mascara, Eyeliner + Lipgloss Hack
Obviously, this takes a little thinking outside the box, but the idea is that you can totally do this! For example, I sometimes throw a purple or lilac translucent eyeshadow on as my highlighter, and people LOVE it. Have fun with your makeup ;)