1. Use a thin angled eyeliner brush. This is key. The one pictured is from the paint section of a craft/hobby store and cost approx. $7.00. Wet the brush and rub the edge in an eyeshadow powder or use dry with a cream liner.

2. Touch the brush to the outer corner of the eye, using the length of the brush to create your wing. A positioning tip so that each side is even is to line up the end of the line with with a point on your eyebrow.

3. With the long hairs of the brush touching the tip of the outer line, connect it to the top of the eyelash line. Now you have a wing.

4. Fill in the wing so that you have the outer portion on your cat eyeliner complete.

5. Delicately draw the brush edge over the lid to complete the liner. Whether you start from the inside or outside depends on what you’re most comfortable with. Alternately, if you’d like to switch to pencil liner or liquid liner for the lid portion, that is totally cool too.

6. If you’d like added precision and intensity, go over the easy cat liner you’ve already created with a liquid line.

Finit-0! From here you can play it up or play it down to make it just right for you. For me I think next time I’ll make my outer line more vertical for a bewitching whimsy.

While mind control is important to any endeavor, so is basic sanitation. Mind control can’t actually stop an eye infection from your nasty mascara. Here’s a few basic tips for a clean makeup kit:

-Wash your brushes. When they start getting stiff, that’s not just product build-up in there. That’s bacteria. If you’ve been breaking out, especially in areas where you use the brushes, that’s probably why. Use shampoo and warm water for natural bristles and something a little stiffer like dish detergent for synthetic bristles if need be.

-Wash your grimy hands before putting on makeup. From touching other people and places to pets and the potty, you definitely don’t want to bring the mix to your face.

-Buy new mascara every month even if the one you have hasn’t gotten chunky yet. Drug store mascara matches up to any premium brand, so you don’t have to spend a lot to achieve good sanitation.

-Sharpen your pencils before every use, especially if you’ve lost or broken the cap. This will help you get a great point, and also remove whatever’s on the outside. This includes the gunk that was in your eye yesterday and any dirt build-up on the pencil cap.

-Periodically clean the makeup bag itself. Just throw it in the washing machine or dishwasher, depending on what it’s made of.

-If you’re using a friend’s product, be courteous and don’t use the applicator directly on yourself. Put it instead on the back of your clean hand or some kind of palette type surface.

-Most makeup should be tossed in a year. Powders can last the longest at 3-5 years, and gels and liquid liners the shortest at 3-6 months.

The following are some makeup ideas that it’ll really set your face apart from the fireworks.

-Glitter lid. See the previous post 80s Makeup For 2010 for a good how-to.

-Super bright lip gloss. Pink and tangerine are great summer BBQ colors.

-Red+white+blue themed eye shadow scheme. Sounds heinous, I know, but this chick pulled off a pretty sassy look on her youtube tutorial.

-Body shimmer. Fabulous for beach and lake body bearing environs. Use a shimmer lotion along the collar bone, shoulder caps, and like a straight line down your arms and legs. Add a little shimmer fairy dust to your cheekbones too.

-Blue mascara. Making  a come-back in general, blue mascara is a subtle and cute way to show some 4^th of July enthusiasm.

Have fun! Just be sure not to light yourself or others on fire (it’s terribly hard to cover burn scars), and I’ll be back blogging on Wednesday!

P.S. In case you didn’t notice, this photo is of a dummy. It’s not a real person. No one got their face blown off to take this picture.