Let's talk basics. I will tell you I went to school for Basic Makeup, Advanced Makeup, sat through many seminars, many with famous artists I admired and always learned something from, even if it was the fact that they work exactly in the manner I do. I have owned my own line of makeup and skincare, and worked in a variety of retail environments, the biggest Sephora built in NYC, for Vincent Longo at Henri Bendels, for the prestigious John Barrett Salon, but learning color therapy on the job over time (as well as some class time), will teach you there is nothing like doing something over and over to gain confidence in life. You can sit and learn anatomy...learn that the mandible is the jaw and the orbital cavity the eye area, but the main secret to all makeup, to all symmetry is this: Makeup is the play of light & dark on the face! That is it! You have to look at your face, or the face you are going to be enhancing, & see, and it needs to become instinctive, which will take time, but it will happen if you love it and do it over and over again. So study your face & love it!

Basics: Light enlarges, brings features forward, and widens. Dark minimizes, sets back, and brings features closer together. If your eyes are wide set, meaning farther apart from your nose, you would balance by making sure your eyeliner is fully lined into the inner corner and by using a mid-tone color blending in towards your nose. Dark to the outside of the eye would widen it more. You would be able to do a smoky eye, of course, but that may not be your best look, and if you do want to do a smoky eye, you must balance color inside the eye in order to not exaggerate the wideness of your eyes. You would also make sure to coat every lash with mascara (which I will talk about more at another point in time...)

If you have eyes that are set close to your nose, you would be great in a smokier eye, because light inside the lid would widen/balance your eyes, and dark towards the outer corner would widen them. You wouldn't need to bring your eyeliner in to the very inner corner of the eye, just til where your lashes begin.

Many people are confused by the idea of smoky eyes, and there are just so many ways of achieving that look. I will talk about that in another blog, but the main thing I find is that people are confused about what colors look good on them. There are so many wonderful kits that combine different tones of like colors to make this process easier for you, but here is something that always works for me....Since I always begin with the eyes, (and I do always ask what the client is wearing, where they are going, etc.) I always look in to the iris, because if you do that, you will see that everyone's eyes are not just blue, brown, green, etc. Eyes are made up of many flecks of color and the rim of the eye is always black or charcoal, which is why black mascara alone always pops the eye color, and if wiggled in to the base of the lash, will always make it look like you have eyeliner on. They work together. Mascara (always my favorite makeup over the years, and great for Moms or anyone with little time and on the go, and who of us isn't on the go??) makes us look like we have eyeliner on, and eyeliner makes us look like we have more lashes....symbiotic makeup....

So, back to the flecks in the eyes. If you have blue eyes, you will usually have taupe flecks, white flecks, perhaps gold, perhaps grey, you just really need to look. So many people have hazel eyes, and they always think their eyes are 'brown', but they are not...they have brown, green, gold flecks, etc. Brown eyes can be light and amber colored with gold and bronze flecks or dark and black looking, which means they can wear any color really.

So, first thing, look in your eyes and study the colors you see there and decide whether or not your eyes are close set, wide, or very luckily balanced, meaning the width of your eyes is the same as the width between your eyes...and I will teach you more next time.

Sweet dreams, and love your face!!

SimplyCocoBeauty