Teaching Myself How To Do Makeup At The Age Of 19

Over two months ago, Britain went on lockdown because of coronavirus. Before then, I was in college, studying for what would have been my exams. After college closed, I had no idea what I was going to do with all of this free time I had now. 

Late one night, while browsing through YouTube, I chose to watch Shane Dawson’s documentary on Jeffree Star: ‘The Beautiful World of Jeffree Star’. It was after watching the extensive process of making an eyeshadow palette that I felt the urge to not only buy everything Jeffree Star has made, but also to teach myself everything about makeup. Watching Shane Dawson throw himself into the industry by investing his time into teaching himself how to do makeup as well as investigating every detail into how makeup is made, the importance of makeup and what it is like to be a beauty influencer and entrepreneur inspired me. I felt the passion and dedication that Jeffree Star had to his business, and I felt reassured that if I bought his products, it would not be a waste of money. I was right. I’d started with the ‘Blood Sugar’ and ‘Blue Blood’ palette, then building my collection with the ‘Conspiracy’, ‘Mini Controversy’ and ‘Blood Lust’ palettes. After building my makeup collection so that I had all the essentials, I set myself a challenge: to do a look every day for a week. 

My main goal in teaching myself makeup was eyeshadow. I felt like if my eyeshadow game was strong, everything else would come easily. For my first attempt I went bold, with a deep blue smokey eye, focussing on the ‘Blue Blood’ palette. 

Day One 

Starting with the shade ‘Blue Monday’ I made a small smudge in the upper corner of my eye, shaping the peak of the smoke. Using the shade ‘Deceased’ I blended the shade out into a peak, making a smooth ombre blue. Using the same shade, I blended the peak into the corner of my eye through the crease of my eyelid, and then smoothing along the edge. Building onto this shade I smudged the shade ‘Blue Blood’ over my eyelid. I finished off the look by pressing the shade ‘Ocean Ice’ into the inner corner of my eye, spreading it outward to create an ombre faded look with the illusion that my eyes are bigger. To add a bit more glitter I dabbed the glitter ‘Cullinan’ into the corner of my eyes to highlight the shape of my eyelid. 

For my first attempt at makeup, I was pretty impressed with what I had accomplished. At the time I had no makeup brushes of my own, I was using one of my mum’s old angular eyeshadow brushes to apply every shade and blend the shadows into the angular shape that I wanted. Looking back, if I had all the skills and supplies, I would have added a set of lashes, and a thick winged eyeliner to enhance my features and create the illusion that my eyes are bigger than they actually are. My error was doing a bold eyeshadow look, but not taking it all the way. I could have done my eyebrows, make my eyelashes look bigger, and even darkened the lips into a dark nude. Without all this, my eyes are drowning in these big blue blobs. But. The whole reason I chose to do a look each week is to learn from my mistakes and build on this experience to improve each look every day. 

Day Two

After doing such a bold look, I honestly didn’t have the confidence to do another bright smokey eye, especially since I’d need eyeliner and eyelashes to improve the look of the shadow. So instead I wanted to try something neutral but fun. 

I’d seen a lot of Pinterest posts from different beauty influencers using bold colours as eyeliners, so I thought, ‘why don’t I give it a go?’

I chose yellow because it is one of my favourite colours. Whenever I see the colour yellow, I feel like I’m absorbing a bright, positive energy. And, I’d just bought Jeffree Star’s Rainbow liquid lipstick bundle with the perfect yellow tone, ‘Honey Queen’, to use as an eyeliner.

I started by prepping my eyelid with the nude shade ‘Celebrity Skin’ from the Blue Blood palette, spreading it across the crease of my eye. At the time, I didn’t have an eyeliner brush, so I used the liquid lipstick’s applicator to spread the lipstick along the edge of my eye outward, flicking at the end. My first attempt was a mess, there were yellow splodges all over my face and eyes. But I’d figured out that if I started in the middle, moving the lipstick outward, and then overlapping toward my inner corner. Despite the fact that even with this new technique I had mastered, the line came out messy and splodgey. To attempt to fix this, I used the shade ‘Priceless’, again from the ‘Blue Blood’ palette, blending on top of the yellow lipstick to sharpen the end of the liner. Despite the look still being messy, I was pretty impressed with my first attempt at eyeliner, and I know now, looking back, that if I had the liner brush I have now, it would have looked a lot better.  

Day Three

For my third look, I wanted to try something different this time. I’d just bought Shane Dawson and Jeffree Star’s ‘Conspiracy’ and ‘Mini Controversy’ palettes and fell in love with the shade ‘Trisha’, a bright pink glitter that has this sort of dewy tone to it. Using the shade ‘Cavity’, from the palette ‘Blood Sugar’, in the upper corner of my eyelid, I used the same technique I used for my first look, blending the shades ‘My Pills’ and ‘Tongue Pop’ from the outer corner of my eyelid into the shape of a smokey eye, blending both shades across the crease and edge of my eyelid.  Using the shade ‘Pig-ment’, a warm matte pink, I blended the shadow across my lid to even out all the colours the soften the smoke and under my eyes, creating a soft pink smoke instead of the harsh bold shape I had created on Day One. To finish the look, I pressed ‘Trisha’ onto the inner corner, smudging outward.

This is the first time that I’ve been so happy with the makeup that I have done that I wouldn’t change a thing. I love how soft the edges of the smokey eyes are, and how they blend into each other. The soft pink lips combined with the pink eyes gave me this barbie doll aesthetic, making me feel a lot more confident in myself and my makeup skills.  

Day Four

Another shade I fell in love with from the ‘Conspiracy’ pallet was the neon yellow: ‘Food Videos’ and I wanted to utilise the shade whilst also being subtle. I started with the same nude prep of the eyelids by blending the shadow ‘Celebrity Skin’ into the crease of the lid. 

Using the neon yellow shade smudged under my eyes, I felt like I was able to tone down such a bold colour in a way that would mean that my eyeshadow wasn’t overwhelming. But after a minute of looking at what I had done, I felt like I was going too neutral now. So, by dabbing my finger into the pan and pressing into the inner corners of my eyes, I blended outward, drawing attention to the shape of my eyes. After finishing the look with a winged eyeliner, I felt like I had accomplished a fun, natural look that I could wear any day of the week.      

Day Five

By Day Five, my new Jeffree Star palette, ‘Blood Lust’ had arrived, so of course I was eager to use it, but at the same time, the purple colour scheme intimidated me. I was apprehensive of a bold purple look at the risk of making myself look like I have two black eyes. 

So instead I went for a subtle pastel look, blending the shade ‘Vivid Mood’ along the edge of my eyelid, to create a soft liner look. Using the eyeshadow shade ‘Deviant’ I blended out the line into a soft shadow along my eyelid, to create a purple shadow when I then added eyeliner/

Despite this look being super simple, I was really happy with how it had turned out. Along with doing my eyeshadow, I was trying out a new technique on how to contour with concealer. I chose concealer because I’ve never really liked the heavy weight of foundation on my skin whenever my sister had done my makeup. Plus, my skin is pretty pale, and I have quite a few freckles, so most foundations end up looking orange on my skin. 

So, by using the lighter and darker concealer I followed the traditional guide of contouring by putting the dark shade under my cheekbones, at the top of my forehead and down the sides of my nose to create shadows.  Using the lighter shade, I blended above the darker shade, under my eyes, along the forehead and on my chin. The first time I tried this, my face was an orange circle. What had gone wrong was that I had put way too much of the darker concealer and too little of the light. After washing off my first attempt, I tried again and was actually happy with how it turned out. Looking back, I can tell that my blending is a little patchy and uneven, but after practicing it will get better.

Day Six

By Day Six, I was getting pretty tired of doing all these subtle looks. At the time, they were essential to teach myself the basics and boost my confidence when using bright colour palettes. I’d been scrolling through ‘Pinterest’, getting a taste for some of the different bold makeup looks that are out there when I spotted someone doing a rainbow triangle over their eye. I know this sounds wacky and crazy but for me it reminded me of the colour spectrum that comes from the Pink Floyd album ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ meets David Bowie’s aesthetic. 

Using tape, I created a triangle shape across my right eye, trying to make each line as straight as possible, which is so hard when you’ve got chubby cheeks like me. But after making sure I was happy with the shape that I had made, I used my Jeffree Star concealer to prime the skin, blending over the tape. I then removed the tape to see if there were any uneven lines, using my concealer to straighten them out. I then added a new layer of tape and began the process of adding colour. 

I started with red at each peak, knowing that this is where I wanted the blending of each colour to reach, blending inwards to orange and then yellow. After mixing the reds, oranges and yellows, I moved onto the colour purple that would start on the eyelid, blending outward to blue and then green. Once I had put the base of each colour, I layered each colour again and again, blending one into the other trying to make the juxtaposition from each colour as smooth as possible. After taking off the tape, I had noticed that my eyebrows were visible under the shadows, so instead of trying to hide them, I wanted to highlight them, using my brown mascara.

After finishing the triangle, I didn’t want to do another look that would take away from all of the effort that I had put into the first, so instead I created a sharp deep red smokey eye, using tape sharpen the edge of the blended shadows. This was the boldest I had gone with any makeup, and it made me feel like I could go bolder and be more creative in the future.

 

Day Seven

 I wanted to finish of the week with a challenging nude shadow with a cut-crease cat eye. Starting with the shade ‘Celebrity Skin’ I blended out the brown with the shades ‘Diet Root Beer- and ‘Tanacon’. To create the cut crease look, I used my concealer as a primer, smoothing it over the nudes and shaping into the cat eyeliner wings at the end of each eye. To finish off the look I used the shade ‘Wealthy’ to create a matt finish over the concealer and used a glossy nude lip that gave me a Lana Del Rey aesthetic. 

After a week of practicing makeup, I could honestly feel myself getting more and more confident after each day. There is still so much I need to learn, like putting false eyelashes on, perfecting my eyeliner application, shaping my eyebrows, etc.