I'm tired of looking so fresh-faced and goody-goody. I want to try a sultry, steamy look ‑- nothing severe, but seductive enough to turn heads. What can you recommend?
It's a bore being fresh-faced all the time! And you were right to note the distinction between sultry and severe. A sultry look smolders, while a severe makeup look just might eat you alive! And while there's a time and place for both, here we'll concentrate on sultry, with seductive eyes, sensual skin and sheer lips.
- Start by lining the perimeter of the eyes in a jet-black pencil. Line around the entire border, then just at the edge and just inside the lower lash line. This is a tender area, and not everyone is so comfortable or daring, but results are dramatically sultry!
- Now, trace over the line you just made on your top lid (not the bottom lash line) with an intense steel-gray or gray-blue powder eye shadow. Use a pointed shadow liner brush to apply, and just trace over the penciled-in line you made previously, allowing the powder to stray from the line just a bit. That's what'll give that smoldering look.
- Highlight just under the arch of the eyebrow with a see-through peach shadow.
- Follow with two coats of the blackest lash-lengthening mascara you have.
- Next, apply a liquid foundation that features a "radiant" or "luminous" finish. Apply with a moistened makeup sponge from the center of the face outward, using tentative, sweeping strokes.
- If you tend to have oily skin, follow with a loose, transparent powder to absorb a shine overkill, but you don't want to absorb all your shine, not even most of it, because you can't be truly "steamy" without it!
- For blush, try an almost transparent peach with just a bit of sheen in the texture. Apply to the cheekbones and blend outward so as to give a diffused appearance.
- For a dangerously seductive mouth, go with a velvety sheer pinky-peach.
