Are you hoping to make a spectacular entrance at the club this weekend? If so, you may want to try using a combination of liquid and pencil eyeliners in order to make your eyes look more dramatic. It is a technique that I learned while I was working behind the scenes at a dinner theater in New York. It would help to make the actresses’ eyes capture the attention of patrons sitting in all areas of the room. Here’s how you can achieve the same effect for yourself:
Lining the Upper Eye Lid
Start by gently pulling the skin of your upper eyelid taunt. Then draw a thin line with the liquid eyeliner that extends from just before the inside corner of your eye towards the middle of the eye. If you have small set eyes, I would avoid placing eyeliner at the inside corners of your eyelids because it will tend to make your eyes look smaller instead of larger. Once you get to the middle of your eyelid, increase the thickness of the line as it extends to the outer corner of your eye. If the line looks too severe, you may want to take a cotton swab and smudge the edges of the eyeliner so it blends in more with your eye shadow.
Afterwards, close your eyes and lightly dust your eyelids with translucent setting powder. Make sure that you do not add too much setting powder because it could end up in your eyes once you open them. The goal is merely to dust the eyeliner enough to keep it from smudging. You’ll also want to make sure that you don’t accidently hit the eyeliner and smear it. I’d suggest placing a little bit of setting powder onto a wide bristled makeup brush and lightly tapping it near your eyebrow. This allows the powder to fall onto the eyeliner without disturbing the line itself. You may want to keep a blow dryer on a cool setting nearby for emergencies. If you accidently use too much powder, hold the blow dryer at an angle and gently blow it away from your eyes.
Lining the Lower Eye Lid
Next, turn your attention to your lower eyelashes. Take a sharp eyeliner pencil and outline the bottom of your eye. I’d recommend starting your pencil line just before the corner of your eye. I would also suggest that you try to make sure that it matches with the line that you drew on your upper eyelid. Once that is done, use the eye pencil to add another line inside your water line. I would recommend that you make the water line mark thick. If need be, heat the eyeliner pencil in order to get the right thickness. Then, draw the final line right to, and slightly past the outer edge of your water line. When you get to the end of the water line, smudge the eye pencil in an upward sweeping motion. I find that doing so helps to give the eye the appearance of openness. Afterward, finish the job by touching up your eye shadow and adding mascara.
Killeen Gonzalez took a stage makeup class in college and worked behind the scenes at a NY dinner theater. In addition, her parents were licensed cosmetologists and owned their own full service beauty salon.
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