Brown Eyed Girl

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Some of you ladies may be quite daring when it comes to applying various hues of eyeshadow. This can look amazing if you have the right complexion and eye colour. However, for pale skin tone and blue eyes, it is sometimes best to stick with more neutral shades. Now, please don't get me wrong, I do love a dramatic eye, but makeup should flatter the features, not compete with them. At least in my humble opinion, it makes me look washed out and any blue in the colour matches both my eyes and my bags. Not a good look!


My go to colour is brown. Boring I hear you say, wrong! You would be amazed at the variety of looks that can be created with different types of browns in different finishes. There are browns that suit me i.e neutral-cool browns and browns that make me look like I've got pink eye i.e. warm browns. A good neutral brown can be worn for day as a crease colour or over the lid with a peach/deep cream and it looks soft and natural, even a dark shade doesn't have the unfortunate side effect of making the wearer look like they have a black eye. For night, this could be dressed up by foiling (mixing shadow with a little water to intensify the pigments), although for novices, this could be more difficult to blend.

Personally for day I generally stick to a routine, makeup that can be done in 10 minutes is generally more easily achieved this way. A highlighter shade for the brow bone and corner of the eyes (I use NYX Loose Pearl in Nude), followed by a shimmery mid brown (Loreal have a couple of nice shades) for the lid and blend, blend, blend.

For night, the same highlighter shade, followed by a dark brown ( MAC have some great shades) and a slick of bronze gel liner ( such as Clinique ) and lashings of a dramatic brown mascara (Lancome, Hypnose ). It's quick, easy and goes with everything.

Convinced? In my opinion, shimmer can be worn by just about any age group and is generally flattering to everyone. However, it should be shimmer and NOT glitter. Glitter is best kept for the younger ladies out there. Matte colours can be a little less flattering and seem to be more difficult to blend. Neutral colours can be identified by the greyish undertone they tend to have and anything with red undertones is more flattering to those with a warmer skin tone.There are plenty of pallets available out there with ready made combinations of ready to wear shades, which makes things easy for beginners, you simply could not go wrong.