Saving Face : Kind of a how-to

So. Usually when I do a tutorial, it's either something I'm completely comfortable with or a look that I've been testing out on my own. This time, when I saw the picture of Olivia Wilde, I thought "Oh... that looks easy to recreate, I'll just do that". And honestly, it should have been easy to recreate, but I just did everything wrong to recreate it. Therefore, I present to you this tutorial; how to save your makeup once you've really started to (pardon the language) fuck it up. Is this my favorite makeup I've ever done? No. But keep reading if you want to see the "process" behind this.

Before we begin, this is the picture that I was using as reference. Very pretty makeup (although her foundation looks a few shades too dark, but meh, who cares?).

Started with a bare face, as usual. I'm not even going to bother giving you guys product photos or a list, because everything about this was wrong.

Primed the lid! Still good so far :)

I started with Vamp Gel Liner from Smashbox... which was definitely the wrong color. This is a very warm, plummy color and that's not what was on Olivia's face. First step to the fail.

Olivia definitely has winged liner, but not like this. I don't even know what I was thinking at this point.

I at least got this part right; I lined underneath the eyes and tightlined both top and bottom waterlines. 

Just for a record, here are both eyes. 

Then I thought, "let's add some matching shadow on top of the gel liner to make it look smudgier!". Still the wrong color. Also, still not working.

And then I thought, "let's add some shimmer!". I mixed a pearly beige and purple shade together and put it in my inner corner. You guys... the purple I started with was very warm toned and this new purple was very cool toned. Not a good combo.

It looked like Olivia had a bit of pink in her look, so I decided to add some pink. But it wasn't pink that I added, it was coral... and it was badly applied. At this point I was super frustrated and hating myself. This was also the point that I looked at the picture and realized that I need to take a breather and figure out how to salvage this look. Let me reiterate what's wrong here: Warm toned plummy liner/shadow in a wing shape that it not flattering to my eye shape, added cool toned purple that doesn't match anything else, and haphazardly applied coral shadow to the whole lid when I really only want PINK in the crease. 

So... I started blending. The only way to get that coral to work was to make it look like it was supposed to be there. Also, the only way to get rid of that horrendous wing was to blend up and up and up.

As you can see, I just really extended everything up (there was more blending done on the eye on the left, don'r worry). I didn't even want to touch the cool toned purple I put on the inner corner, so I just left it. I didn't add any extra liner since this was already shaping up to be a dramatic look and just added mascara, which with my lashes makes everything dramatic.

I kept everything else very simple. I did do bronzer and a warm blush to keep everything in the "warm" family and then put Jordana lipliner in Tawny all over my lips and did Revlon Lip Butter in Crème Brulée on top.

You can see here that I did, in fact, blend the eye shadow out more! I didn't want it looking so wonky.

Like I said at the very beginning, this is not my most favorite makeup look ever. Hell, it's not even really in my "like" pile, but it was good to mess up and try to salvage this so that I could show you guys the process. We all mess up our makeup and sometimes, time doesn't allow for the whole process to begin again aka wiping it off and reapplying. 

Also, obviously, we all make mistakes when applying makeup. Somedays, your makeup is going to look horrible, but other days (and hopefully most of the time) it's going to look awesome. I hope this gives you guys some ideas of what to do when you completely fudge up your makeup or, even better, what to avoid doing with your makeup! :) 

Questions or comments? Leave them for me below!

(all photos copyright Allison Richardson Photography and not available for use without permission)