A Purple Smoky Eye for the Brown Eyed Girl

June 21, 2012

Purple is my absolute favorite color to play up with my eye makeup – and the color beautifully compliments all brown-eyed girls. Because it’s summer, I like to incorporate bright purples. I also wanted to achieve a natural and wearable look, so I decided to use this bright purple “pop” only in my crease as opposed to all over the lid.

Start by applying a purple base to the lid and a bright white base to the inner corner. These base colors do not need to match any future colors you will be applying – they will mainly serve to make the shadows more pigmented. Use any liner or cream eyeshadow you have in your collection for this step.
Apply a deep purple shade to your lid using a lid brush – any shade that you have and are comfortable with will work perfectly! Make sure the shade is not too bright – a deep grey-purple would be the ideal option.
Apply a bright white or beige color to your inner corner with a flat shader brush to highlight this part of your eyes. This will make your eyes look brighter and will help neutralize the darkness of the lid color. Feel free to densely pack this color (and even reapply it at the end).
Using a crease brush, take your bright purple shade and apply it to your crease. Use windshield-wiper motions to bring the color around the perimeter of your lid and blend it out and upwards.
Taking a blending brush and your highlight shade from step 3, blend out the bright purple to make it more smokey and less harsh. This will make the bright purple fade out into a much nicer gradient.
Using the same crease brush from step 4, take a little bit of a black shadow to define your outer corner. Lightly blend this color into the outer “v” of your eye to dramatize the look.
Apply a black liner to your top waterline and add a wing if you’d like! I did this step using a gel liner and a pointy brush, but use whatever liner you feel comfortable with.
Apply a purple liner to your lower waterline to really emphasize the purple in the look. Follow with two coats of mascara.