DIY Neutral Smoky Eye Look: Sultry But Not Over the Top?

If you follow me on Facebook you may have seen a little preview of this neutral smoky eye last week, and I had promised a tutorial on how I did it. Finally, the day has come!

This was a simple day at home for me. I really wanted to do something a little bit different, and luckily, it was a long nappy morning for my toddler. When toddlers are napping, mommies will play with (loose) eye shadow!

It's a pretty long tutorial, so I've added a jump for those that don't want to scroll past it for forever. So, read on to see how I did it!


First, I had to prep my eye area for the rest of the shadows. In all of my talks with my friend Phyrra, who is my guru in all things loose eye shadow, she's said that she needs a slightly tacky base to the eye to grab on to the shadows. She like Too Faced Shadow Insurance for normal wear, and she goes to Fyrrinae Pixie Epoxy for when she wants something to be really blingy. As well, she says not to sweep the brush too often, do some dabbing instead (apparently this makes things a bit muddy and can hide some of that pretty shimmer!)

So, first I prepped my eye lid area with Shadow Insurance, it's pretty much from the lash line up and onto the brow bone. I also added a very light neutral shadow to the area I'll be putting crease shadow later. You can see that it really just barely shows up, but it's there to help things blend later on.

Next, I started to deposit my color. This was the first layer, a pretty neutral tone all over the lid. I did dab this a bit. You can't see it, but this was just the start of the fall out on to my cheek bones. I no longer to a look like this after putting on the rest of my makeup- eyes are first now!

Time to make things a little bit smoky! I used a darker brown cocoa color in my crease. This was also dabbed on into the correct area, though with blending things will even out quite a bit. Once I had it applied to my crease, I grabbed the little smudge brush and applied the same color like a thick liner to both my upper and lower lash lines.

I added a light color with very pretty shimmer to just above the crease color. This was perfect for blending into the crease color, and I fully admit that I may have cheated a little and added some to the inside corner of my eye during blending as well. It's not pictured here, add a little extra shimmer and blend as you need to during the next step!

I used a brush to lightly blend everything together! I wanted to make the transitions less obvious between colors, but still have them be different. Too much blending and things become a muddy mess, so be careful!

Finally, I finished my eye look. I have a gel eye liner to my top lash line (be sure to really push the brush into the lashes for a better look), and a light brush of the lower lash line with a eye liner pencil.

I curled my lashes and applied 2 mascaras for a more dramatic look. This is a trick that I love! By applying 2 mascaras instead of 1, the look is much more dramatic and seems to last all day. I did apply the mascara to my lower lash line, but really I just barely touched the lashes with the brush. It looks much more finished in pics with a little mascara there, but in real life it can smudge and make me look more tired.

Now that my eyes were done, it was time to finish my face! The shadow fall out on my cheeks was crazy! I removed it with a makeup remover wipe (I like the new Aveeno ones), and then applied a little Milk of Magnesia to my t-zone to prevent shine. Once that had dried and I rubbed off the white excess, I used a primer to help my foundation look perfect over it (Fyrinnae Velvet-Gel Silica Primer). I then applied my foundation (CoverGirl), concealer (Make Up For Ever), and a little cream blush (Maybelline) before setting everything with my powder (Make Up For Ever). I filled in my brows with my favorite brow pencil (NYX). Finally I finished it all off with MAC Girl About Town lip glass!

This is the finished look! For some reason the pics made my foundation look like it was a bit too dark for me, though in person it blended in perfectly. I'll need to pick up a different shade maybe for pictures next time.

What type of look do you do when you have extra time to play around?