Makeup Tips: 4 Ways to Making Your Eyes Look Bigger

Kendra Richards, Los Angeles Celebrity Makeup Artist:

Hi I'm Kendra Richards. I'm a Los Angeles based celebrity makeup artist and I'm going to demonstrate on Rachel how to emphasize your eyes.

So I'm going to focus the lighter colors predominantly on the inner part of her eye and the darker colors on the outer part of her eye. But just to begin with I'd like to go ahead and put the base color all over her whole entire eyelid. The important thing to remember here is what I'm going to do is taking this darker color and focusing it on the outer 3/4 edge of the eye. So I put that down and then I use a blending brush to blend it out and up. And again going over it again -- the same thing, going out and up. it helps open up and elongate the eye.

I like to layer a lot of times. It just really looks better when you can go over it several times in another color.

Another really important step in emphasizing eyes is false eyelashes. I'm going to curl Rachel's eyelashes. I'm going to have you look down. Also a really important step is to do a quick little test making sure you don't have a skin in that curler before you clamp. And you want to clamp and work it all the way up the eye so you don't just have a short bend, but you want to have a nice curl, a nice roundedness to the lashes. Do the same thing on the other eye again testing to make sure I don't have her skin in there.

Now I'm going to go ahead and put some lashes on the outer edges. These take a little bit of practice. You're going to have to try these probably a few times before you can really master it at home. It's a little trickier to do it on yourself than it is to do it on somebody else. But they're really fun to use especially if you're going out go out or have a special occasion and you want to have a high impact look. This is a really big celebrity secret. I don't think people realize how much celebrities rely on false eyelashes to really give them a thick full lash. So far I've put six of these little cluster lashes on the outer 3/4 corner of Rachel's eye and that's going to really elongate and extend the look of her eye.

The glue can be a just a little bit tacky. It's helpful if you can go ahead and put a 'lil dollop of glue out as you're starting so it has just a couple moments to get tacky before you go to apply the lashes. It will help with the application and then later when you go take them off in the night. All you need to do, if you're using a glue like a medical adhesive that I'm using, is just take a nice warm washcloth and hold it over the lashes. It'll soften it and they'll come off lightly. You don't want to yank the lashes out without softening them first, because otherwise you can take your own lashes and that's really not good.

Let's do some eyeliner. And again the same concept applies to the eyeliner. We're going to focus on the outer edges of the eye and not carry the line all the way in. Right in there really close to the eyelash line. And I'm going to blend it out, softening that line just a touch. I'm using just a very small soft, rounded makeup brush -- it's more of an eye detailing brush just to blend that eyeliner out. If it doesn't go as far as you want it you can just put a little bit more and just focus it out. Kay I'm going to soften that and blend it in with what I've already done by going it over again with an eye shadow brush.

I'm going to finish that off with a coat of mascara or two or three. That may seem like a lot, but that's another trick to having a high impact look. Sometimes I can use three maybe four coats of mascara. I'm going ahead and just putting a coat on each eye and then I'm going to go through that with an eyelash comb. I like to use an eyelash comb between each coat, because it just takes the clumps out and gives a really natural look and also helps separate these lashes. I'm going to go ahead and do the second coat and I'm going to go as close into the base of the lash as I can. I'm not going to go all the way into the inner eye area, because again I'm trying to focus on the outer edge of her eye and that'll be a good place to put a third dab of mascara.

I also like to use a volumizing mascara. They have lengthening mascaras, but the volumizing one really thickens and gives you that full lash, which I think is a key part to this. And just one little final bit of mascara just on those outer edges. So I like to go in and about the outer 3/4 edge and put a little eye shadow under there. Then take a blending brush and gently blend that out, softening that line under the eye.

So one final way that you can take this a step further and make it into an evening look instead of a daytime look which we have now is by adding mascara on your bottom lashes. And I'm going to go ahead and do that now. I'm going to hold the mascara wand a little bit more vertically to do that. And again coming in with that comb and getting those clumps out and primarily focusing on the outer edges, taking out those little bits. And do the other eye and same thing on this other eye. Holding the wand vertically and just brushing it lightly over the lashes. And a nice trick with this too is to take that mascara wand before you go up to the eye and run it through a Kleenex just to get some extra mascara off cause you don't want too much mascara on your lashes on the bottom. And those are the 4 steps to emphasizing your eye.