How to Apply Eyeshadow like a Pro, Even if You're a Beginner

Eyeshadow can be complicated, but it doesn’t have to be! Regardless of whether you’re using 1 shade or 4, the key to any eye look is blending. You want all the edges of the shadow to look softly diffused around the eye.

Pauline is sharing all of her best eyeshadow application tips in this step-by-step tutorial. Here’s a sneak peek:

• Start with a transition shade. A transition shade acts as a buffer between your skin and your eyeshadow. It creates a soft and warm base for eyeshadow application. Our go-to transition shade? Bronzer!
• Always tap off any excess eyeshadow pigment before applying. You can always go back in and build up pigment, but it’s far more difficult to tone it down if it’s too intense.
• Start with small brush strokes to better control where you’re applying the eyeshadow. Once the pigments start to blend with the skin, you can start sweeping your brush across the eyelid and into the crease.

Pauline demonstrates these eyeshadow tips and more in this tutorial!

Shop the products featured:
Dual-Ended Eyeshadow Brush
Warm Glow Bronzer
Jelly Eyeshadow Duo
Champagne Highlighter

Transcript

Hey guys, Pauline here from Zilch Beauty. Today, I’m gonna be showing you how to use some other pieces of your Subtl Stack to bring your eyeshadow looks to life. So as you all know, Subtl recently launched their Eyeshadow Duos, which hopefully you all are loving as much as I am. But I wanted to show you today how you can incorporate a couple other of their products into your eyeshadow application process. Specifically, I'm gonna be talking about how to use a bronzer and a highlighter in addition to your eyeshadow duo. 

So as a makeup artist, I've seen lots of different ways to apply eyeshadow, but the one thing that seems to be consistent across the board is using a transition shade. Now, a transition shade basically is going to act as your buffer between the skin and the eyeshadow pigment that you put down.It's typically a formula that's gonna be a little bit less pigmented than an actual eyeshadow shade. And that way you're just creating a soft base for your skin to really pull that pigment in once you apply it. So I love using a bronzer as my transition shade. You basically want to get a shade that's a little bit warmer than your natural flesh tone, but it's not gonna be as pigmented as your eyeshadow. So a bronzer is perfect for that. The Subtl Bronzer is a little bit lighter in the pickup — the payoff isn't as strong as their eyeshadows, but that is absolutely perfect for a transition shade. 

So I'm gonna use the Subtl Dual-End Brush and I'm using this end. That is a little bit more slanted, and I'm just gonna pick up my warm bronzer and the transition shade should really be focused starting from the outer edge of your crease all the way in. So I'm just kind of windshield wiping this back and forth. And I like using this end of the brush because it just has a little bit of a wider surface area and it just fits right in that crease so nicely, you can see it's very, very minimal. I'll go over a little bit more. We wanna get in the crease and a little bit above it and a little bit below it. And all that's gonna do is help the shadow. 

So you can see here that this bronzer is bringing a little bit of life to the eyes, but it's not gonna be the main product that we apply. So from there, I'm going to go into the actual Duo. Now I'm gonna use the shade Jelly today. I love this Duo and I'm gonna pick up that matte light mauve purple. With that same brush end — reason being, it's prepped and primed with a little bit of that transition product on it. And this is just gonna help apply it really seamlessly without it being so blotchy and intense. So I'm gonna flip the brush so that the tallest point of the brush is on the outer corner. And I'm really just gonna focus in little strokes to pull that throughout my crease. And as I get the pigment down, then I will start to really just buff it out, pull that a little bit closer to my lash line, kind of making a diagonal line from the outer corner. And then from there you can either keep going or switch to the other eye. I'm gonna switch to the other eye. I'm just gonna clean up tiny bit of fallout.

I have a really nice base of that matte shade down. So now I'm just gonna go in with my finger and pick up that shimmer shade. This is such a pretty shimmer and I'm just gonna focus that shimmer right in the middle of the lid. And I'm gonna just kind of start to swipe it back and forth, but you want the majority of the product to live in the middle. I wanna leave a little room on the inner corner for the next Subtl product that I'm going to incorporate, which is going to be the Champagne Highlighter. So the highlighter is a little bit more gold than this shimmer in the jelly duo, but I'm just gonna use my pinky. And I'm just gonna pop that right on the innermost corner of my lid. What that's gonna do is just bring a little bit of brightness to that inner eye, which will help make them look wider, more awake. And it kind of just brings the look together for me. You can even pull a little bit of that highlight right under your brow bone. I don't love to be super shiny up here, but this champagne highlight is just so natural. It's not like overly shimmered, which I love. And then from there, you can just go ahead and apply your mascara and your eye look will be complete.

And there you have it. I love using these three together, the bronzer, the highlighter, and the eyeshadow duo to bring the look to life. It's such an easy way to make sure that everything looks seamlessly, blended and just extra beautiful. Hope you guys found these tips helpful, and we'll be back with more videos soon! Bye everyone.