Right. I’ve been testing out this little smokey eye technique over and over again to make sure that it is absolutely fool-proof. And I’m pretty sure that it is – quick, easy and doesn’t require a load of different products. All you need is some soft eyeliner and one little makeup brush and the perfect smokey eye look from your wildest dreams will be yours. There may be similar brushes to the Real Techniques one that I use, but the quality of this is great and it doesn’t cost the earth. It’s just the perfect size and shape for getting right up to the lashline and smudging things out – it’s not all flippy-flappy so that you don’t get a good blending action, and it’s just about soft enough to not give you sore eyes if you need to blend, blend and blend again. Which you do.
Here’s the brush: it’s the Real Techniques “Smudge Brush” which comes as part of the Eyelining Set. (The whole set is currently £9.99 on Amazon here, I think it’s about £20 usually.)
And here’s what I do with it. (It might not be everyone’s cup of tea, this look, but I like it for its sultry-but-not-too-over-the-top appeal. I focus on smouldering around the bottom lashline rather than smudging all of the way around, and use a softer shadow on the eyelid to balance things out. I find that a lot of kohl or eyeliner on my upper lashline makes my eyes look old, but maybe that’s just me..)
Step 1: I line my waterline with a soft kohl pencil. Here I’m using Chanel Crayon Kohl in Noir (here) which just happens to have the right amount of smudgability. You can choose whichever eyeliner, in whichever colour, you want.
Step 2: I take the liner over into the lower lashline making sure that I have my Smudge Brush at the ready, because you need to get on in there while the kohl is still soft and easy to move about!
Step 3: I use my smudge brush to go over the kohl, working backwards and forwards in little motions to soften out the line, but not straying too far from where I’ve applied it.
(Sometimes I wing out the liner a little bit at the outer corner of my eye, but to be quite honest this does introduce a bit of opportunity to go very wrong, so if you want to keep things simple then just follow the line of your lower lashline and keep it at that!)
Step 4: I take a shadow, something nice and sultry and I apply it all over my lids. (This is Tisse d’Automne by Chanel, it’s on sale at FeelUnique at the moment here.)
I just apply with a fluffy brush over the lids, past the crease a little bit but keeping things very straightforward. There’s no complicated blending or shaping here!
You can take a little bit of shadow underneath the eye too, if you want, but there’s no real need.
Step 5: I apply lashings of mascara. This one is the Diego Dalla Palma one I mentioned a few times recently – you can find it online here. It’s really buildable – I do two or three big coats.
Ta-dah! Sorry, no smiles here – face like a smacked arse, as they say, but I never remember to look happy when I’m concentrating.
So, an easy smokey eye with just a few quick steps. Do let me know how you get on if you try it – sorry that the smudge brush is part of a set, but all of the brushes in it are useful and it’s not too expensive at all.
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