it's not what it seems...

I know there are some eye shadow colors out there that seem "scary" to some. Usually, its blues, greens, and yellows. I'm about to rock your world about that, those colors might not be what they seem in the jar. In my experience  9 times out of 10, the color in the jar is not what you get when you initially put it on your eye. Really, you have complete control over how dark (or how light) a color goes on by the amount you put on the brush, if you buff it out on your hand before you apply it (sometimes I do that when putting colors that are "liner" colors on my crease),  and how many or little times you go over the color and reapply it. 

A great example of this is one of the colors from the Bare Escentuals "Year of Beauty" Kit. The color is called July, love this kit, 12 colors one for each month. At first glance it looks like a moderately dark blue:

I have swatched a little bit out on my hand, using my ring finger and gently rubbing it back and forth on my hand, this took about 3 small dips in the mineral color:

As you can see, it really isn't as dark as in the jar. This is with any color, not just what you may deem as "scary", so my advice, before you say "no, that's too whatever..." about a color, try a little bit on your hand to get a feel of it and I grantee you will be able to control how much pigment you actually get. If you happen to make it too dark for your liking just throw any whitish eye shadow over it, blend it in and voila! it's lighter!

Now here's the look I created using July and some other colors in the Year of Beauty Kit.

I started by sweeping December under my brow with the Eye Defying Brush. This I was more "heavy handed" with because it's a very light white.

With the lid I used the Heavenly Liner Blending brush to apply January in the outer most part of my lid, working in inwards about half way. Then I moved on to using my Tapered Eyeshadow Brush to apply April. (I used the same techniques used in creating the Brown look that's a few posts below)

Now, time for July, applying it with the Tapered Crease Defining, this time I started in the inside and worked my way out, in small sweeping motions. Basically following above the line created by my lid colors. As you can see, on my lid it is still not as dark as in the jar, and this was after a few reapplications!

The first liner used was Round the Clock Eyeliner in Noon. I took the eyeliner and lightly brushed it on the lash line starting from the inner corner to the outer. Once that was done I took my Full Edged Liner brush to make sure the line was blended and as neat as I wanted it. I used Light Show Eyeliner in Galaxy as my bottom liner, sometimes I love having the contrast of 2 (or even 3) liner colors. The light shows are lighter liners (as if you couldn't tell by them name), and i just lightly swept it right on my lower lash line until I was happy with the pigment. Then I threw the Round the Clock eyeliner on my waterline, added mascara and that's all she wrote :)

until next time,

janine :)