The cheat's way to get rid of tired looking eyes in the morning..

Many a morning I wake up, look at myself in the mirror and wonder why I didn't go to bed earlier the night before.  Then I get distracted by what to wear and what the weather looks like outside and of course, the typical English dilemma of whether I should or shouldn't take a coat with me.

When I'm truly tired, I get puffy eyes that don't really look too sexy.  Until recently, I didn't really know how to get rid of them and to make myself look half awake.  I'd pile my makeup on and just get to work but you could see the underlying tiredness from a mile off.

I recently lost a lipstick and whilst searching for that, I came across a product that I haven't used since I got it as a freebie in Glamour magazine. And if you think it's a Benefit product, you'd be right.  Now I have never been Benefit's biggest fan and even now, I'm still not a fangirl.  I like some of their stuff but wouldn't go as far to call them must haves.  This might the closest I ever get to calling a Benefit product a must have.  Click here to see what else of Benefit's I have reviewed.

Anyway, the product I found was Benefit's eyebright.  I have used this a few times in the past as an inner corner highlighter but the colour was just far too stark against my skintone.  If you're white or Chinese, you can easily get away with using this as an inner corner highlighter but for us Indian, black and olive skinned gals, it's a no go.

I decided to try it on my waterline to see what it did and to my surprise, it managed to look quite natural.  I think Benefit are missing a trick not marketing it that way, I've read on their website and they say that you should apply it to the inner and outer corner of your eyes and blend.  Well, I say do that if you're not of a darker skin colour.  If you are of a darker skin colour then whack it on your waterline.

I team this product up with my trusty eyelash curlers (reviewed here and going strong on their second pad replacement), any mascara that is close to hand (I've been using the Prestige one as my other bottle finished and this is the last one I have left..and seeing as Boots have discontinued it, I won't be able to buy more, despite it being a fantastic thing and one of the first products I ever reviewed on this blog).  I also use this Natralift Firming Eye Roll On from The Body Shop which I feel makes a difference..and the ball is very cooling on the skin.

If you've got more time then you could always put a decent inner corner highlighter on too, but as I am yet to find this, I have a bare inner corner.  The other thing that I tend to do once at work is line my upper lashline with some black eyeliner.  No flick though, I'm at work, not out knocking back the finest cocktails known to man.

And here's how it looks in its most basic way..

I'm not apologising for my eyebrows, I'm growing them out after someone f**ked them right up...

Now you might remember me hyping up Stila's Kajal pencil which is still all well and good but in the Summer months, it tends to be a bit too soft.  Fantastic for Winter though!

Talking of cocktails, I must warn you that if you like a decent citrus-y mojito, don't go to the Smollensky's in Canary Wharf as the people working there can never ever get this right.  Every time I go and ask for more citurs than mint, I end up drinking liquid toothpaste.  It's horrible and I have now given up asking for mojitos and I just stick to a bog standard glass of Chardonnay.

The easiest way to turn eyeshadow into eyeliner: A tutorial!

I have an Indian function to attend soon and I want to wear a pop of blue on my lids.  There's no point kidding myself that I'd have enough time to blend any shadows on my lids so I've decided to go for something easier.

Someone mentioned that mixing butter and peanuts does really give you peanut butter.  For some reason, my mind equated mixing peanuts and butter to get peanut butter with mixing eyeshadow and liquid to get eyeliner.  This is where the idea was born..

What you will need:

• An eyeshadow colour that you want to wear as a liner
• A facial mist/setting spray (you could just use water in a spray bottle)
• A angled/non angled eyeliner brush (the cheaper the better because you don't want to be buying a NARS one that falls apart because you've gotten liquid into the ferrule and the glue has weakened).  All the brushes I have used will not break the bank and I can say that as I paid for two of them, one (the Revlon one) was a PR sample.
• A small bowl (if you're Indian, a standard koli will do)

I used the following:

Regarding the differences between an angled and non angled eyeliner brush, this is what I mean..

The Ruby and Millie and Models Own ones are angled brushes and the Revlon one isn't.  It's also naturally two toned, it's a bamboo shade.  The only reason it's a bit black is because I've been using it to apply colour to my waterline.  I've reviewed the Revlon one here and the Models Own one here if you want to take a look.

How to turn eyeshadow into eyeliner:

Practice this a few times before you wear it out just to ascertain how much colour you need.  You don't need to coat the whole brush in colour, it's enough to just coat the tip and a tiny bit of the sides.  I find it easy to do a thinner line first and then build it up but that's just me. 

The result:

I'm so pleased this worked out as well as I saw it in my mind.  You know how sometimes you have an idea in your head and then it doesn't work out in reality? I had a worry that this might be the case here but it worked out well.

I can't say I'd do this before work because I'm always rushing but I'm definitely going to be wearing these as liners when I'm on my own time.

If you want to go one step further and have two/three angled eyeliner brushes then you can be a bit more creative.

I could have worked it in a bit more on my inner eye area but it was dark, this was a practice run, the dog ate it, it was like

For this, I decided to utitlise my other eyeliner brushes.  You could do this look with just one brush but because I go back over and build colour up, I found it easier to use two. 

If you only have one angled brush then doing this kind of look might take you some extra time but it's easy to remove the colour from the brush.  I spray the brush with the ELF spray and wipe it on a tissue.  The faff is worth it because it does get people asking questions as to how you did it.

By the time I've finished, my eyeshadows are wet so I just dab at them with a tissue to take some of the moisture away.  I leave the palette open for about 10 minutes in a vain attempt to air dry it a bit.

This just goes to show that you don't need to fork out for coloured liquid liners (as these are easier to apply if you're new to liner) and that you don't need to spend a fortune buying products that specifically turn eyeshadows into liners.  For my eventual look, I've decided to mix the pink with the purple and that's given me a pretty good shade.

The colours in the Sleek palette when used dry are notorious for producing a lot of fallout but when you use them in this way, you don't get any fallout.  The ELF spray (which has been featured here before) is £3.50.  I did say that it smelt of cheese farts when you applied it to your face but in this context, you smell nothing. The Ruby and Millie i-Define brush (also featured here before) cost me about £1 with the Boots vouchers.  It might have even been free actually, I can't remember..  You can use any angled brush for this but if you really want the Ruby and Millie one, I'd suggest you get to Boots sharpish because Ruby and Millie is soon to be pulled from their shelves and the brush is currently on for £1.66.