Tips and Tricks: Loose Powder Shadow

So I talked about this blog with a couple of friends and the conversation got around to how I've been using loose powder shadows for the last year and a half with a fair amount of success, and that is how you got this tutorial. Tips and tricks, even though it's a start-to-finish sort of a guide because they're all bullet pointed and I don't actually pretend to know what I'm doing here. Photos to be included once I can get home and edit them in! I finally took photos. I finally found my damn camera.

• Do your eyeshadow first, before everything except washing your face. Do it even before you prime the rest of your face; if you use the same primer for your eyes as for the rest of your face, just dab a little onto your eyelids and work it in extending out to where you'll blend it with the rest of your primer later. Even with experience there's a lot of fallout from loose powder shadows, some more than others, and trying to clean up after you've put on your foundation and concealer and so on is a massive pain.


• (This is time consuming. Ish. I don't know, how much time do you usually spend on your makeup routine? For me, my eyeshadow when I want the real sparkle glam of loose powders is half the time it takes to do my makeup routine, usually. Five to ten minutes the rest of my face depending on what I'm using, and then at least ten minutes for my eyes if I'm using multiple colors. Only five, starting from the primer stage, if I'm using one single color. Duochromes do not count as two colors, they're one powder, so that's a fun way to cheat for time.)


• Lay out your kit first. This applies to a lot of things that aren't makeup, and is good for your loose powder shadow too. Especially if you want to be finicky and use two or three colors instead of swiping on just one, definitely lay your kit out first. My kit includes: 


• primer (I use Nyx Eye Shadow Base in Skin tone, obviously you can use whatever primer you like best, I plan to science the shit out of some primers later on if you like that sort of thing.)
• shadow jars, usually 1-3 colors


• at least one flat shadow brush and one smudge brush, you might need more brushes depending on what you're doing. I use EcoTools Six Piece Essential Eye Collection but what you basically want is a flatter rounded end shadow brush like the petite eye shadow brush, and a smaller smudge brush. 
• makeup remover
• cotton swab
• cotton ball

• Prime your eyes. The Nyx shadow base is a very creamy primer, so I let it set for a few minutes before I do the next layer. If you use one that doesn't transfer as easily you may want to go straight to the next step, but before I put on the next layer, which is a sticky base, I like to let the primer settle. One thing I've noticed also is that if I don't let it dry and just go straight to the sticky base some of the primer transfers to the sticky base wand. I haven't noticed that it has any real effect on the shadow color, but it looks icky, so if that bothers you let your primer dry and have a sip of water, do a round of exercise, listen to a song. Give it five minutes. (I hit my daily asthma inhaler and brush my teeth while this happens.)


• The next step is your sticky base. This is, as I learned, the key ingredient to getting a loose powder shadow that doesn't entirely fall off your face by the end of the day. Or so it felt to me; actual duration may vary, and Shiro Cosmetics includes carnuba wax in their shadows that might make it last longer and makes it more difficult to apply with a sticky base (I'll cover the different companies I've used products from in another post) but in my life experience, sticky bases are good. I've used the Pixie Epoxy exclusively since I discovered this, after reading reviews online. I can also say that I've put it through a severe sweat workout at the end of a long day of day job and it did stay near perfectly intact! For sticky base you want to apply just a dab on your eye and then rub it around over the coverage area, usually the lid, if you want to do the whole eye including browbone and off to the side maybe use two dabs.


• (If you want to do the whole eye including browbone and winging it out to the side, do the top and side first. Because as I said, there's a lot of fallout on this, and you don't want to find out after you've got your lid perfect that you didn't tap off enough excess of the browbone color and have it all fall onto your lovely lid.)


• It takes a second for the sticky base to dry enough to get fully tacky, so give it a bit. Recite the Sparkle Warrior's mantra if you like: it is by glam alone I set my mind in motion.(1) That ought to be long enough. Take a petite eyeshadow brush and dip one flat end into the jar, tap off the excess, and start patting it onto the lid. Using a patting motion gives you more control than brushing or swiping it on, and you get faster as you go.


• If you just wanted one color, congratulations! You're done with the application. Give that a second to settle, rinse your brush, dip a cotton swab into the makeup remover and press-and-roll it around the inside of the bottle a bit to make it less drippy, then wipe off the excess. Use the tip end to clean up any rough edges along your shadow line; this is why we squeeze out the excess remover, because if that drips down onto your freshly powdered eye you have to do it all over again and it sucks. It may help to use one end for the shaping and then one end that's considerably soppier to clean the under-eye fallout, and then mop up with a cotton ball. (It's a good idea to mop up with a cotton ball regardless, and you can leave it by your station and use it to take off the whole shebang at night.)


• Let the remover dry for anywhere between two and ten minutes before you put on any undereye concealer. Again, this is when I usually do some stretches, exercise either my body or my brain with a language phone game, the point being to find something you can do in five minutes that won't take you far away or occupy too much of your time and mind. Read a book, sing a song, dance like no one's watching.


• And you're done! Put on the rest of the makeup and flaunt your sparkles.