Going ahead with the second part of the eye make over story, we now come to the most highlighting aspect of eye makeup. Eye liners give a well-defined shape to your eyes as you desire. Shades of liners complimenting your eye shadows can provide that dramatic touch to your face or soften the look of your eyes. Also, this particular part of eye makeup can be worn with or without eye shadows, making it an easy way to highlight eyes. But do take care about matching it up with your hair colour and eye colour alike.

Eyeliner is meant to create depth to the eyes and give thickness to the lashes. Confused, how it gives thickness to lashes? Well for the purpose there are different types available in market. So choose one appropriate for your eye type.There are four main formulas available in the market: each produces a different effect.

Liquid eye liner - is an opaque liquid that available in small bottles applied with help of brush resulting in sharp precise line. This is the most common and easy way to highlight, if going for daily use no need of eye shadows can stand alone beautifully

Powder-based eye pencil – is eyeliner in a wood pencil, comes in matte shades. Rich, luminous, seductive powders to enhance the eyes with intense colour and luminosity create dramatic effect and softness of the powder. Isn't it a two in one effect?

Wax-based eye pencils - are softer pencils when compared with powder based ones and contain waxes that are easy to apply and are better to use for smudging. They come in a wide variety of colours as well as pale shades such as white or beige. Wax-based eyeliners also come in a cone which has very fine point making the application more with an ease, these also come in compact with brush applicator.

Kohl eyeliner - A creamy-smooth pencil for lining, defining, colouring and contouring eyes. Formulated to glide on easily and blend beautifully for smouldering effects, mostly comes in dark matte shades.

Application Techniques

When talking about technicality let's not forget about perfection which is hard to achieve when it comes to liquid eyeliner. So I will try to make it easy for you to understand with the help of some tricks.

The main difficulty is to apply a straight line close enough to the lashes to avoid leaving that visible strip of skin. So while coping with this difficult task tilt your head back slightly and keep your eyes half-open to let you see yourself in the mirror, raising the eyebrows at the same time as you are applying the liner. Now to start, the line must be drawn on the upper lid from the inner side of the eye to the outer side, extend the top line a little past the corner of the eye for a Cleopatra effect or to give it a 70-80's look.

Now come to lower lid, line it from outer edge tapering to the inner side of the eye. Too thick eyeliner does not look good so go for thinner lines. The only difficult part of this is liquid liner has to be applied in one smooth stroke which really calls for regular practice. A secret I would like to reveal that if your hand is shaky, stand close to the mirror to provide it support from the mirror.

That is all about liquid eyeliner. Now come to the easier way to apply liner with the help of eye pencils and powders. Dark hard eye pencil can serve the same purpose as a liquid liner if the combination of eye shadow is not going to be there. It draws a clean, precise, matte line, emphasizing and enlarging the eyes. For a line that does not smudge, choose powdery pencil that is just soft enough to glide on your skin. Apply in the same manner as liquid eyeliner. Softer eye pencils contain waxes that ease application.

These are the very basic of using liner products. But there is always a question arising that why don't we use these in some other way? Proceed with the idea, match up with your eye shadow colour and give it that smashing look with the use of eyeliner, no matters whether it is liquid, pencil, powder or wax. Mix and match the way you like and whatever your creativity desires.

Always remember the golden rule that eyeliner is meant to create depth to the eyes and give thickness to the lashes. Next step towards achieving that perfect eye makeup has to be mascara, which I will be covering in the next issue.

Shampa Saha

BA (Journo, Psy & Eng)