alexa chung eyes how-to

every picture i've ever seen of alexa chung has me green with envy about her eye makeup. how does she do it?? it's magical. it makes her eyes look such a cool steel blue. 

selective potential

see? she has the same makeup going on. it makes her blue eyes look bright and sparkly, without having to use anything sparkly at all. how??

well, i've been playing around with it for a while, and i may have come pretty close. and let me just say, it looks more dramatic in real life. i'll let you be the judge.

wanna know the secret? you first make a thick line of chocolate brown shadow over about half of your lids, and then black liquid liner close to your upper lashes. see?

i finally figured out that you need that smudgy stuff to get the look i was going for. the liner of liquid liner just wasn't enough. at least for me, because i have huge eyes, apparently. some would even go so far as to say i look like a precious moments doll, which i do not.

some products you need (which you probably already have anyway):

1. matte chocolate brown shadow (mine is from the japanese Y100 store from like a billion years ago. i used the darkest one is the tiny pan. my point is, anything will work).

2. an angle brush. i used my ecotools one to apply the brown shadow. wet, in case you were wondering. i suppose a regular applicator would work too, but probably not a fluffy eyeshadow brush.

3. black liquid liner, of course. this is absolutely essential. mine is from n.y.c. and it's $2! more about that later. 

4. cotton candy pink blush. have you noticed that in all of the first 3 pictures that the girls have that perfectly-pinched pink cheek thing going on?? this shade of blush does that. it's from the japanese revlon line, also from a million years ago. but i think sonia kashuk's pink flamingo blush is almost exactly the same.

5. a swipe of pink gloss. again, alexa always pairs her smudgy eyes with pink gloss. the one i used in the pictures was covergirl's lipslicks in cutie. at first i thought i hated that gloss, but now i realized i love it. more about that too!

in other news, i dyed my hair with coffee last night. in the bathtub. i've smelled like coffee all day, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. it turned out ok, so i may not dye my hair with store-bought dye anymore. i'm getting tired of it. when i get it all figured out, i may do a tutorial on that.