Hooded Eyes: Finding Your Crease

Ok, I'm going to start this off with a little rant. Sorry if I sound nuts, but I'm annoyed.

Last night I watched a Youtube video by Pixiwoo, and I normally really love their videos but this one bothered me a bit. Here is the link, in case you want to see for yourself. Basically, the video I was watching was how to do a smokey eye if you have hooded lids. The actual tutorial was well done as usual, but at the end she warned anyone with hooded lids to stay away from trying to define their crease, saying it won't look right on most people.

This is so wrong! Anyone regardless of eye shape can pull off a look if they want to. All it takes is some practice and confidence! She also said that people with hooded lids should stay away from putting anything shimmery on the hooded part as it will accentuate that. This also really bothered me as it seems to me that she was subconsciously pointing out a western ideal of beauty. Why shouldn't you want to accentuate your hooded lids? They can be just as pretty as any other eye shape, so why not call attention to them?

Now, I'm not trying to say she is a bad person for having this opinion and I'm actually still a big an of their Youtube channel. I just think that a lot of this is more of a symptom of western beauty ideals that most of the world just can't seem to shake. That doesn't make it right though. People with hooded eyes, listen up! You can do whatever the hell you want to your eyes. If you want a cut crease, go for it. If you want to shimmer up your lids, you should! Heck, if you want to turn your entire face into a disco ball, no one should tell you it's wrong.

So, after watching this video and getting only slightly irrationally upset over it, I have decided to start writing tips for people with hooded eyes. In this series I will of course start with the basics: How to find your crease, or where your crease would be, rather.

This is actually really easy. Take your pinky finger (I used a Q-tip so my hand wouldn't cover my face in the picture) and place it right under your eyebrow. Now, slowly slide your finger down until you feel your brow bone end. You can then run your finger back and forth lightly along that bone edge. This is your crease.

Familiarize yourself with where this is on your face so that you can find it without feeling for it. This is not a straight line and you need to get to know how it curves. This is where you will be placing eyeshadows to give yourself a defined crease and you want it to look like it naturally follows the lines of your face. If you find that this ridge runs directly under your brow and seems too high, instead fill in right underneath that ridge not along it, but make sure to keep the curve the same as you would have. From this you can either trace this line with pencil for a defined cut crease or fill it in with a shadow for a smokier look, which I did here.

Start by taking a darker shadow and a fluffy brush and work it into your crease like this:

I used Macabre Moon from Impulse cosmetics for this. Next pat a lighter colour all over the lid, right up to the blue. For this I used the creamsicle orange colour from my Lunatick Labs AlieNEON Stacker. I topped that off with another bright orange that had a ton of shimmer in it from my BH cosmetics 120 Shimmer Palette. It kind of made it a really pale orange though, but I don't mind.

Next, highlight the inner corners with a light shimmery colour and add a matte brow highlight. I used a light shimmery yellow from the BH 120 palette and a matte beige from my BH 88 matte palette to do this. Then, take a clean fluffy brush and blend everything out. Take an angled shader brush and go over the outer v of the blue to make it more intense. Finish off with eyeliner and mascara. Here is the finished look!

Please excuse the giant smudge on my cheek in this one, I have no idea what happened there.... This showed the eye makeup the best though.

The smudge on my face is driving me nuts... I don't know how I missed that before I took the pictures! Anyways....

That's it for my first hooded eye tutorial. I will have more of these up soon, as well as some looks that I think look best on hooded eyes! This look can easily be modified to have any colours you want in it. I hope some of you found this useful!

What do you think? Will this be a helpful series?