The Face Shop Four-Minute Smokey Eyes Challenge

When it comes to makeup, I've always considered smokey eyes as this huge enigma: It's like EDSA without the 24/7 traffic or Brangelina without Jennifer Aniston; Twitter minus the incessant flow of TMIs or dial-up Internet in 2012. And for the ultimate punch, it's like Fifty Shades of Grey without all the explicit sexual content. It totally perplexes me out.

Anyway, back to makeup.

I was walking around Glorietta last week when I chanced upon Face Shop's Face It 4 Minute Smokey Kit, which promises that people like you and me would be able to create smoked up eyes faster than the commercial breaks during your favorite TV drama.

The kit contains four shadows (L-R: Black; Golden Khaki; Light Pink and Medium Brown), a couple of double-ended brushes, a black eyeliner and a mascara.

So, I thought maybe I'd try the product out and see for myself if I could achieve the smokey eyes goal within four minutes.

Start out with a bare face - prep your skin then proceed with the eyes:

Using the angled brush from the kit, fill in your brows with the medium brown e/s.

If you have dark hair, keep the brows a couple of shades lighter than your natural hair color.
Otherwise, set the brows one or two tones deeper.

You can also opt to use a brow pencil if you want

First: Rim both the upper and lower lids with a black eyeliner, making a slight cat-eye shape at the end. This doesn't need to be perfect since we are going to smudge it out.

Second: Achieve this by rolling a q-tip along the lines you just made.

The liner would served as the base for the main lid color, which would make it appear darker and more pigmented.

Of course, don't forget to blend, blend, blend

Third: Place the golden khaki eyeshadow on your lids with a flat brush, pressing along the natural contour of the eyes. Finally, use the mascara provided to add drama to your lashes.

For added flair, I used Prestige's liquid eyeliner to line my upper lid and an orange gloss from Laneige for my lips.


The Final Look:

 

In case you're wondering, I went over the four-minute mark when I did this look (insert facepalm here).

It took me between 8-10 minutes to do each eye. Well, maybe because I was so focused on doing it right that I ended up reaching for the makeup remover to start over  twice. Who knows, maybe you can do better.

Anyhoo, I am pretty happy with the result.

Please give the look a try and let me know what you think about it. You don't have to use the Face Shop palette, just utilize whatever you have in your makeup bag.

By the way, I think the Face Shop kit is a pretty good buy, just because you get quite a lot of products for just around P1,450 (US$34). Plus, you can also create a natural look with the palette - you don't have to stick with smokey eyes alone, as the box suggests.

I'll leave you now with a quote from my love, Marilyn Monroe:
“Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.”

Cheers,