Easy Evening Make-up
Is your make-up ready for a night out? With a few simple tricks you can add flare and drama to your evening make-up.
Colour
- Stick to colours that occur in nature. You’re trying to enhance your natural beauty, to highlight and add focus without being overtly obvious, so look for colours that work with your natural colouring.
- Avoid blue frost eye shadow and purple liners. Strong unnatural colours can make you looker older, particularly for those over 40.
Eyes
- Lower light levels in the evening are the perfect time to wear your make-up a little darker, smokier and more dramatic. Chocolatey browns, deep greys, and burgundies are great for night time.
- Line with a pencil as they blend more easily and look more natural.
- For added eye-enhancing dazzle, line the top lid and lightly on the bottom.
- For extra drama, try extending the upper lash line liner out 1/8″ and swept slightly upward. This mimics and enhances the sweep of your lashes and creates that smouldering “Marlena Dietrich” look.
- Use brown mascara on the bottom lashes, even when you use black on top. Most people’s lashes are lighter on the bottom, and brown tends to create less of a “racoon eyes” look after hours of wear.
- Don’t forget to blend, blend, BLEND. The secret to keeping make-up natural looking, even when dark and dramatic, is to conceal obvious lines where colours meet.
Cheeks
- Choose a colour suited to your complexion.
- Apply blush to the places where you would colour if you were blushing — the apples, cheekbones, and a little at the temples — and BLEND!
Lips
- Choose a lip colour suited to your face — skin tone, eye colour and teeth colour are all very important when choosing lipstick. Yellow skin tones may want to avoid overly orange shades, while ruddy complexions should steer clear of very pink shades.
- If you have thin lips, lighter shades may work better for you.
- Fuller lips work better with darker shades.
- Match your lipliner to your lipstick as closely as you can. Make sure to fill in the entire lip area with liner. When the lipstick comes off (on your napkin or glass) hopefully the liner won’t.
- Avoid trying to match your lip colour to your outfit, your hair, your husband’s tie, your car, or the Jell-O mould you are taking to the neighbour’s (particularly if it is lime Jell-O).
Like day time make-up, evening make-up does need a focal point. Drama does not just mean more of everything. If you go for really dramatic eyes, tone down your lipstick a shade or two. If it’s all about red lips, consider a subtler treatment for your eyes. Play around with it a little before the big night to see what looks best on you, and then get ready to get noticed.
