Navy Eye Liner - Shouldn't Work But Does

Ray Morris's book and Robert Jones Color Theory for Makup video and lots of other makeup experts say I should be able to wear navy blue around my eyes because it will do nothing for my greenish hazel eye color.

Well they are wrong.

Navy blue around Eyes; Should work, but does

I love navy blue around my eyes. It works better than purple, because purple brings out the un-pretty shadows near my inner eyes and under my eyes.

Why does navy work?  Take a look and see if you can tell me. I think it has something to do with the golden undertones of my skin.

You can really see the blue here, which I sheered out

Here's what I used:

Skin:

• Skynn Iceland Eye Pen under eyes
• Embryolisse Lait Creme Concentre

Face:

• Skin79 Hot Pink Super+ Beblesh Balm Triple Functions

 Cheeks:

• NYX butt naked palette terra cotta blush
• NYX butt naked contour shade

Eyes

• UDPP (except this is starting to get cakey on me. How about you?)
• Cover Girl Ageless Concealer in second lightest shade
• Smashbox Photo Op Palette: lashline to crease—Butter; V on outside of lid—Peacock; At lashline and below eyes—Azure; in crease—Sable
• Liner 1: Picasso gel eyeliner from the Smashbox Photo Op Palette applied with flat wide tight lining brush
• Liner 2: NYX slide on glide on pencil in Sunrise Blue, drawn on and sheered out with short flat smoker brush
• NYX butt naked fawn shade on brows with angled Real Techniques brush.

Lips:

• NYX Red lip pencil, filling in the outer third of the lips
• NYX Lip Gloss in Salsa. Why is salsa a nude pink?

Which brings me to a bone of contention: Naming of Shades

So, Smashbox.  Here are the shades I"ve used so far from your gorgeous lovely, Holy Grail Phopt Op Mega Palette:

• Butter: a soft yellow cream.  Good. No problem with that. It says what it is.
• Peacock: a cool Samsonite '50s luggage blue with a silvery finish. Huh? Have you seen peacock feathers? They have intense deep blue greens, ranging through teal blues, to irridescent purples. This shade is not at all peacockish.  It's lovely, but misnamed.
• Azure: A deep greenish navy, matte. Again, lovely, but what does Azure mean? It means blue, of course, but its a Romance Language word, which means the Ancient Romans spread it around. Along the Mediterranean we have the Cote D'Azur in France, and in Elba we have Porto Azzurro.  Been both places, thanks to Mom the Travel Agent. So I'm going to tell you that the water there looks like this (See Below.) It's much lighter and more intense than this shade. The Blue Grotto in Capri is Grotto Azzurro in Italian. Again, a greeny intense saturated blue. Not a navy.

Bermuda on the South Shore—see the pnk sand?
Azure is that deep greeny blue shade in the middle out toward the reefs, which are deep navy blue in this shot.

 So I quibble with manufacturers about color naming. I do. It's really really important. A great shade name can evoke your dreams, your fantasies, your dirty little secrets. A bad shade name can be hard to remember because it just doesn't make sense.

NYX made the same mistake with their royal blue eye pencil, which they called Sunrise Blue, which I would expect to be a lot lighter in shade and less saturated. And Salsa lip gloss shouldn't be this awesome shade of nude pink that goes with everything.  It should be a hot orangey red, like salsa is, maybe with some yellow or green shimmer to evoke the cilantro and onion needed to make the stuff.

See what I mean?

Which shade names just don't work for you? Which ones are so awesome you can barely stand it?

Have a great day, everyone!

Today I'm going to try more of those awesome colors in the Smashbox Photo Op palette.

:)BeautyJones