Smoke gets in your eyes

I joked in an earlier post about how you can read up on just about anything - including how to apply a smokey eye. I see this on the cover of magazines while in line at the check out: 10 steps to the perfect smokey eye; how to get Eva's smokey eyes; smokey eyes like the pros do... and so on. I realized I didn't know how to do a smokey eye like an amateur, let alone a pro, and I began to worry about it a little - as if I would be quizzed on it the next time I got my hair cut, or stood in line for tea at the Hockey Player's Coffee Shoppe.

Thinking it would be fun to try, and that it would be good for me to have it in my repertoire in case I ever had the chance to go to a Smokey Eye Event, I dragged out my collection of eyeliner and eyeshadows, and attempted to demystify the process.

Reader, it is harder than you think. I chose brown, because black eyes are yucky (Remember Vespa in Casino Royale? Her smokey eyes looked like she had tried to light a campfire in the rain, and that's because she used black.) Without reading anything about how to do it, I just went for it. I drew a brown line in the rough vicinity of my eye lashes and ended up looking like I traced around a pop bottle bottom. The addition of dark brown shadow all over my eye lids did nothing to alleviate that impression. I didn't feel exotic, or alluringly feminine, or mysteriously foreign; I felt like a victim (of fashion, apparently) which is not at all what I was hoping for. Never mind!

I don't use eye makeup removers, because they are basically baby oil. Have you ever gotten oil in your eye? It's not very nice: you have to peer at the world through a film for roughly a day before it dissipates, and you have to blink about 30 times more per minute. On average. So while I can see perfectly well today, I am, however, left with a brown stain all around my eye which will not budge. I look like I'm recovering from pink eye, or have been crying for days, or am a convert from Goth.

You know I'm going to have to try this again. Different colours maybe, or I might try to stay inside the lines - I haven't quite figured out yet where it all went wrong. I have learned, though, that this is not an endeavor for the faint of heart.