I do love a smoky eye.
Before I learnt how to use liquid eyeliner I used to use a variation on a smoky eye look almost every day. Some quick smudgy black eyeliner for an every day rock and roll look, or add eyeshadow and glitter for a more intense evening look.
Where as women’s magazines always used to tell me to disguise hungover eyes with light white colours, lots of creamy textures and no powders, I always liked to hide them by wearing as much eyeliner as possible, thus making those eye bags look like they were there by design, rather than accident. I know, I’m such a rebel.
Anyway, all this rambling about eyeshadow is leading up to the fact that when I was wandering around Boots earlier this month I espied the Bourjois Smoky Stories quad eyeshadow palette. It comes in a huge array of colours, so you can create a smoky eye in shades from rose through to a traditional black (or Noir). I picked up the “Good Nude” palette, which was smoky shades of browns and taupes (I word I seem very fond of, if you watch the video) and decided to give it a try.
In the palette you will find a light shade for your base, a medium shade for contouring and shadowing, a darker shade for lining and defining, and a glitter for highlights.
The lightest shade also contains a built in primer to make the shadow last longer.
The colours of the kit all work together really well, I found I had to layer them quite a lot to get an intense colour, which might just be because of the shade of kit that I chose, but it created a really nice, smoky eye effect without any other products apart from mascara.
Normally I would use a black pencil eyeliner to create a smoky eye look, but I decided to try it out with just what is in the palette. Using powder shadow means the finished effect is a lot softer, so works well if you like the look for day as well as evening, if you wanted a stronger look for evening you could use a pencil, but I don’t think it’s completely necessary.
A few people have asked me to make video tutorials for things I’ve talked about. There are a few reasons I don’t do many videos. One is that personally I rarely watch them, I am far too impatient. The second is they take me an age to make and edit as I am fussy, and the third is that even after all my fussiness I think there are a million people out there who do them better! Still, I decided to have a go at a smoky eye tutorial using the Bourjois palette. I talk a little more about the palette, and the techniques and brushes I use to do a smoky eye, as well as a few tips for blending and fixing any mistakes. The lighting in my front room isn’t great, and despite my best efforts I keep ending up with my hand over my face, but here, now I’ve put you off watching, is how I do smoky eyes!
You can buy the Bourjois Smoky Stories Palette for £7.99 from Boots.
