HOT FOR TEACHER: Cut Crease Eyeshadow Look

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to Hot For Teacher: the tutorials feature! Today, I have spent an unseemly amount of time taking photos of my own eyes to create a cut crease eyeshadow look.

ONE

I used the Urban Decay Naked I and II palettes, but since this look is all about contrast it can be easily adapted using any shadows or colours you like.

STEP ONE: Prime your eyelid (I used Smashbox Photo Finish Lid Primer) and then cover your lid up to the crease in Booty Call from Naked II.

 * I would actually recommend not using primer the first time you have a go at this as some eyelid primers (particularly the famous Urban Decay one) are so good that they make it very hard to correct mistakes without making you look like you’ve punched yourself in the face. I speak from experience, both of fucking up my eyeshadow and punching myself in the face.

TWO

STEP TWO: Using an eyeliner pencil (I used black but dark brown also looks nice, or gold if you want a little sparkle), trace along your waterline and tightline (ie above your lower lashes and below your upper lashes). Then use a thin eyeshadow brush to trace Dark Horse (a dark gold colour from Naked I) along your lower lashline, and a crease brush to add Sin, also from Naked I, to the outer half of your eye and blend in.

STEP THREE: Shade the outer edge of your crease in a matte neutral shadow like Naked, from Naked I. Using an angled liner brush and Blackout from Naked II, draw a line along the inner edge of your socket along the lid crease. The exact shape you want to make this largely depends on the shape of your eye, but I follow the line of my socket until I get to a point roughly parallel with the outer corner of my eye, when I trace it down into a wing as you can see in the picture.

THREE

STEP FOUR: Using liquid liner, paint a thin line along your lashline and extend out to meet the wing of your cut crease. I also trace along about the outer 1/5^th of my lower lashline. And we thought we’d never need fractions outside of school.

STEP FIVE: Using your angled liner brush, smudge some of Blackout out into the space between the lines of the cut crease and the eyeliner. I recommend trying this without adding any shadow to the brush at first, and then adding a little bit at the time until it’s blended enough, because if you start with too much on the brush it can smudge too far and the cut crease won’t look as dramatic.

FOUR

STEP SIX: Using a smallish clean brush (I prefer rounded ends), smudge your cut crease line out away from your eye – it should begin to blend in with the matte shadow from step three – and then build some Dark Horse up around the crease line and out towards your browbone.

STEP SEVEN: Add a highlight colour to the inner corners of your eyes and your browbone. I used NARS highlighter in Albatross, but Foxy from Naked II works just as well. If you want to use a liquid highlighter, though, do this BEFORE the eyeshadow, because liquids added on top of powders will fuck your life right up.

FIVE

STEP EIGHT: Curl your eyelashes – make sure your liquid eyeliner is dry first – and apply mascara. I like using specific lower-lash mascaras when I’ve got shadow under my eyes, because it means it’s less likely to smudge and ruin everything. I used Clinique Bottom Lash mascara, but Maybelline Big Eyes mascara also as a lower lash brush at a much lower price range. On my upper lashes I used Max Factor Volume and Length Fusion. The rest of my base is made up of L’Oréal Lumi Magique foundation, Benefit Hoola bronzer, Bourjois blush in Rose D’Or, Essence lipstick in 07 Natural Beauty and Benefit Speed Brow.

SIX

 STEPS NINE AND TEN: 

LOOK HOW GREAT YOU LOOK. 

There are no real steps nine and ten; I just wanted a nice round number. 

This is my first tutorial so please bear with me with the weird eye angles, but I hope you enjoyed it anyway and make sure to tweet us pictures if you give it a go!