Do You Really Need Eye Primer?

okay so today we're gonna be talking about eyeshadow primer and why you use it I received a lot of questions from a lot of different people about eyeshadow primer if you need to use it why it's necessary which ones are best if you can use a concealer if you should be setting your primer if you should be setting your concealer with translucent powder with eyeshadow there's a lot so we're gonna get into all of that quickly I just wanted to say quarantine how to take off the claws so so I'm gonna start off with showing you the difference between eyeshadow with primer and without so if you're someone who is like why is mash I don't not last thing I don't understand why doesn't it look good why can't I blend and you're not using concealer primer anything this could be the problem so the primer that I'm gonna be showing you is the one by Anasazi of Beverly Hills this is a little bit of a controversial controversial product because it only comes in one shade which is quite light it works for my skin tone so I'm going to be using that I'm going to show you a well I'm gonna go through a bunch of other ones so just whatever so first up is unmount you don't need a lot you really don't this primer is tinted this very light shade and I believe the point of this primer was to make your eyeshadows very vibrant when you used it so the lighter the color that you use the more vibrant your eyeshadows are going to be obviously if you are like medium to deep skin tone this is going to guarantee that all of your eyeshadows are like super bright so it's probably not ideal if you're going for something that's gonna be a little bit more subdued anyway this amount that I just showed you is pretty decent let's start putting it down it might be a little too much actually yeah it might be a little bit too much so you can see it is obviously much lighter than my skin tone so what I like to do when I'm patting it out is depending on how much I apply it's always best like this is too much the amount that you apply it's always best to start off with a little bit and then go in and build it up from there so I definitely just put down too much but what I'm gonna do is lightly Pat and cover this whole area and then I'm gonna wipe off my finger so that I don't have any more product on there and then continue to Pat so if you're using this product you're gonna feel that like as you're patting it out it starts to set it starts to kind of lay mattify a little bit but you can also feel like a little bit of a grip if that makes sense still got a little bit of stick to it which is why I shadow primers are so different from using concealer because they're meant to be able to hold the product while being able to blend it as well so if I kind of run my finger over it I feel like a little bit of a grip but once we let that set it actually creates a kind of a velvety layer on our skin so it's going to be much easier to blend I shadow so anyway obviously the tinted ones are meant to get rid of any pigment you can see the veins and pigment on this eye and the great thing about see now that I'm touching it it's actually modifying even more you want to make sure that you're blending it out or a lot though you do not want this area to be wet at all now with an eyeshadow primer typically you do not need to set it you can if you feel like you need a little bit help of help blending it also depends on the like I was gonna say the formula the skin on your eyelid whether it's oily whether it's dry there's a lot of factors and I do have this crease right here so typically like any kind of product will build up there eventually so no matter how much I put I blend this out I always try to make sure that I'm blending it out right before going in and placing my eyeshadow down but the more I touch this the more you wait it's going to feel less like a little less sticky a little bit less wet it's gonna set a little bit more alright so I'm gonna be using the dominique cosmetics lotte two palettes I'm gonna go in with this color right here this is strawberry milk and I'm gonna apply it to both sides okay so I'm loading up my brush and then I'm tapping it off and then I'm going to just start tapping it in my crease and then once I have that product down I'm gonna start blending okay so that's my first pass decent blend held on to the product I'm gonna pick up a little bit more and kind of build it up in the crease and then blend up to my eyebrow now I'm gonna do the same thing on the other side okay so you can see obviously you can see like all of my veins coming through you can also see that like the color isn't quite as vibrant in this area it has mixed a little bit with my skin tone and it's looking less true to the color and more a little bit more warm a little bit more salmony it's also kind of patchy like here here a little bit in here let's add another little bit I am tapping my brush off for this side as well so what's going on a little bit less like evenly it's not really blending out as nicely as it was over here it's a little bit more like evenly distributed and it's kind of like sticking to certain areas the blend itself isn't like terrible but you can see how uneven the distribution is now I tend to have like slightly more oily eyelids they're not like so bad but over time the natural oils from my skin will just kind of like come through and then I'll end up getting crazy creasing and transfer so that is primer versus without pretty big difference concealer so stupid I'm doing this again because I was gonna show you primer over his concealer for some reason I took this off so a little bit different another question that I get all often is can I use concealer you can use concealer if it's the only thing that you have the problem is using too much concealer so one of the concealers that I suggest is a matte mattifying concealer because it's not going to stay too wet if you are going to use a concealer please don't use something like it cosmetics by my under-eye way too thick way too wet it's not going to set correctly I think some of you commented and said that is what you use so again if you have like ridiculously dry eyelids then maybe it works for you the one that I would suggest is Tarte something like Tarte shaped tape the makeup revolution one is a little bit less pigmented but it's also it's like a similar formula so anything that's like a little bit more mattifying so this is in the shade light sand and needs a tiny amount like that much to begin just discord it everywhere padding it all over my lids what's nice about this is again it's going to you know cancel out the pigment on my eyelid bit more and it's always good to start off with a smaller amount now again the nice thing about concealer is it cancels out any pigment that you have on your lid and you're probably already using it to begin with so it's probably like close to your skin tone or whatever it means you don't have to go out and buy another product so I understand that if you're are using a mattifying concealer or a more matte formula then there's a possibility depending on your lid that you can get a similar effect as the eyeshadow primer so as I'm touching this I do feel a little bit more stick than I did with my honest Asya primer it's not really like setting like this I don't really feel that velvety finish it's a little bit more stick so I'm going to show you how this blends without setting it again always tapping off my brush doing everything the same on at all sides okay first thing is first I don't know if you can tell when I put my brush down it kind of holds on to the brush a little bit more there's kind of like a little bit more pull on my lids it's not really like smoothly moving over it so I'm feeling a little bit more pull which makes me want to hold my brush back a little bit further so that there's less like pressure and here because if you do that then the bristles can kind of get like stuck against the skin and that's when you get the like uneven distribution of the products and hold it back a little bit and start blending out and then I'm gonna try to build that up a little bit alright so again for comparing these two sides this is a lot better than nothing at all obviously it's a little bit better blend the pigment isn't showing up as as well as the prime decide it has blended a little bit better it's a little bit less gonna say pigmented say that and it's slightly more it's slightly more patchy than this side like they're little there are certain areas that are just kind of like holding on to the pig more than others but this is decent however again because this is not something that is like meant for this I think you can kind of tell I don't know for sure when I look in the mirror this area looks quite like satin to Matt and then this area has like a little bit of shine to it so again similar to like if I wasn't using anything my natural oils are gonna kind of kind of like come through and sort of break down that concealer over time so it's not gonna last as long all right now I want to show you what happens when I use too much concealer so I'm using that same Tarte shape tape but I'm gonna apply a lot like when you look at those Instagram videos and they just like paint it on its feel so wrong alright so that's obviously like way too much and like it feels very wet so I am gonna give it a second to set a little bit if it does and then I'm gonna blend it out all right let's pop that out now let's try to build up that shadow oh God again do you see how much the brush is being pull as pulling the skin because the concealer is like grabbing onto those bristles there's no like smooth blend at all the bristles are just like being attached to that pigment and they can't like glide over the product you can see all this pulling right here it's also all the pigment is just kind of like focused in that one area it's not really blending so the more I try to blend it it's just kind of like moving this like blocky shape outward now obviously building up the pigment a little bit more because it's much lighter you did make the pigment of the eyeshadow stand out a little bit more like it looks a little more true to color but the blend is terrible and you still have that like shiny look right here so I know that I'm gonna get creasing it's not gonna last it's gonna end up kind of like breaking up throughout the day I'm just reapply amount of concealer it's similar to what I did on this side and I'm going to show you how it blends when you set your concealer with a translucent powder personally for me the translucent powders that I like to use are something that are loose I like the translucent powder by Kylie cosmetics this is my favorite one again if you want like the pigment to be really in Henson you can use something a little bit a little a little bit lighter this is light medium from LC cosmetics but it's quite all you guys can tell but it's a it's a lot lighter so now I'm going to take a big fluffy brush this is the morphe m-52 one brush tiny bit of translucent powder I'm gonna dip it into the powder and then tap off my brush so I'm not going in with way too much and then I'm gonna focus this in the crease because like I said my eyelids can get like a little bit oily throughout the day so this is the area that I would need that and then I'm gonna lightly just kind of blend it all over everything now like I said this is a good option if you you know don't want to have to buy a primer if you already have a concealer if you already have a translucent powder you're sort of like repurposing products to you know get the same results but again it's only gonna work if you're using very tiny amounts so so I'm getting a similar feel when I go to blend this out that I do with the guess this is just concealer but I do with the primer it's maybe a little bit more matte a little more smooth for the blending so I feel a little bit less grip which in my opinion probably holding onto less of the pigment so it's probably going to make it a little bit harder to build up the wow I'm so sick of saying pigment the pigment of the eyeshadow but if you're having a really hard time blending going in with a tiny bit of translucent powder particularly in the areas that are very difficult like your crease it's probably going to help so that blends really nicely and I always suggest that if you are having a hard time blending especially up in this area to at least set the crease of your eye because especially if you have like a crease in your eyelid like I do it can be really hard to get in there without like you know doing this kind of thing and then when you do that you sort of like manipulate where the eyeshadow is going it's not gonna look the same when you drop that and you look straight ahead so this is a really good option and you can see how much better this blends when we set our lid with the translucent powder versus just the concealer now I'm going in again with that small amount of concealer on this because I want to show you how the translucent powder compares to setting it with like a bone colored eyeshadow because that is something that I heard from like everybody when I first started doing makeup it was everything especially Jacqueline Hill she used to always talk about that now this process has never made any sense to me I don't understand why you would put down a superlight eyeshadow because it's super pigmented so what's the point I don't get that like why an eyeshadow why not a translucent powder it makes more sense to me to use something that's gonna be light that isn't going to overpower the actual eyeshadows that you're using but we'll see so I'm gonna use that same fluffy brush from morphe and I'm gonna be using the shade frothy from the dominique cosmetics latte 2 palette I do have a coat with so many cosmetics just saying it's Alex you get 10% off so I'm gonna do the same thing that I did with the translucent powder I'm gonna pick it up on the brush and then tap it off so I'm not going in with way too much make sure that this is padded out and again I'm gonna set the crease first and then kind of like blend it out alright so that's obviously a lot lighter than my skin tone you can use anything that's like close to your skin tone a lot of the time I see people use bone colors because they want the colors to be a little bit more vibrant yeah so let's show how this blends alright so it does create like a more matte finish similar to the translucent powder but I think maybe you can see that because the eyeshadow has our the eye shadow that we set with has pigment already and it's a much lighter pigment there kind of mixing together in creating like a very very light shade so I'm actually kind of changed my tune a little bit on this if you're using not too much like if you're using a small amount of the concealer and then a small amount of the bone colored eyeshadow you might actually help you do a little bit of blending because it's kind of creating a lighter shade than what you're putting down so it's kind of creating like a middle step between the priming color and your or your skin color and then the eyeshadow color that you're going in with which might actually help blending if you're having a problem with like the jumps between the values in those shades it actually is blending like pretty nice the only thing that I do notice is that it's a little bit because of the lighter pigment it is a little bit harder to build up the pigment of the shadow so like I said before it depends on like if you're trying to lighten the color that you're going in with if you are then this actually works pretty well yeah I don't mind it actually obtained I'm sure I've changed my opinion about this a little bit however it has to be done correctly like if you're going in with that thick ass amount of concealer and a shitload of this actually I'll show you that next it's not gonna go well let's do that on the other side oh yeah I'm doing I forgot so I'm gonna go in with a ton of concealer like all of those videos so just a fuckload of concealer which this it probably isn't even as much as they usually use and then I think I'm gonna switch it to the brush because we're gonna use a lot so I'm gonna go in with the Sigma e25 blending brush which gets a little bit thinner as you turn it so I'm gonna pack on this eyeshadow all over this concealer then let's see how that blends already looks like a lot of product can you see how like dry and creepy my eyelid looks not a fan of that okay so picking up that same shade topping it off look do you see that hmm so it is I mean it's not blending perfectly it is gliding over the shadow not horribly however do you see how dry this looks right here alright so this right here is with that thick ass concealer and powder so also keep in mind like if your eye just the skin around your eyes in general is incredibly delicate and if you have dry eyelids and you're placing down all of this concealer and then all of this powder and then all of this eyeshadow on top of that it's just gonna dry out your skin even more so if you feel like you're doing these steps and you're like why I don't understand why my eyelids are so dry or irritated or creepy then that might be the reason I'm just gonna leave this on right now okay so a couple suggestions that I would make for eyes shadow primer are obviously the Anasazi one if it works for your skin tone or if you want your eyeshadow to be super vibrant I love that one like I said it's got a nice grip it's nice and velvety this is the one that I've been using for a while now another one that I really like is this one by japonesque this is the Velvet Touch I shadow primer I think it's a little more sheer it is and it's a slightly more of a nude shade yeah it's much more sheer actually so as I blend it out it's got way less pigment and it becomes a little bit more doesn't have the best smell becomes maybe even a little bit more Anasazi at one but yeah it really shares out so if you don't need a lot of pigment covering than that is a nice one but another one drugstore is the elf cosmetics what the is it called I don't know but it's there I shadow primer I use the shade translucent I don't have it here now but it didn't have any extra pigment and it was great drugstore like it didn't really it was like maybe tiny bit of blurring of the pigment on your eyes like maybe lightened it a little bit is mostly sheer but beautiful formula like held onto the pavement really well super velvety and blendable I've never used Mac Paint Pot I know that's big amongst makeup artists like professional makeup artists if there's a primer that you think I need to try that is the best I have we used one by Urban Decay not the biggest fan of that one let me know again concealers go for something's gonna be a little bit more matte but you can adjust for your skin type on your lids yeah that's pretty much it I hope that this was helpful and educational informational all the above and let me know your thoughts in the comments down below what primers that you would suggest videos that you want to see next all that make sure you subscribe and I'll see you in the next one see told you how to do it in every single video

Channel: Alexandra Anele

Views: 96,905

Rating: 4.9662919 out of 5

Keywords: alexandra anele, eyeshadow, eye primer, eyeshadow primer vs concealer, blending eyeshadow, makeup, beauty, makeup hacks, how to, how I blend eyeshadow perfectly, makeup tutorial, eyeshadow tutorial

Id: k1h0K-Dikxg

Length: 19min 30sec (1170 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 05 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/MGDlikethebeer]

Man no matter what, I always end up going back to UD eye primer. It just works.

[u/adjblair]

Loved how thorough and informational this video was! And that she showed each combo in action. Here were her results...

Nothing: eyeshadow didn't blend evenly, pigment was not as bright, and the discoloration on her eyelids came through which muddied the color.

Eye primer: She says that the purpose of eye primer it's to give you a base that is mostly matte/velvety with a slight grip so that your eyeshadows appear pigmented while blending well. She also stresses that you only need a small amount and taps the primer in with her finger until she feels it is mostly set. She demos with the ABH primer which she likes, but points out that it only comes in one shade so might not be ideal for darker skin tones.

Concealer (with and without translucent powder): She says that the problem with concealer is that your natural oils will eventually break down the eyeshadow in your crease. Another issue is using too much. She suggests that it you do want to use concealer, only use a small amount and set it with a small amount of powder to achieve a similar effect as eye primer.

Concealer with bone-colored eyeshadow: She demos this method since she remembers this being the go-to advice in the early days of YT. She shows that using small amounts of both products actually does work well, but because you're essentially mixing a light eyeshadow in with your other shades you're going to get a lighter look and you'll have to build up more pigment for a brighter look. She points out that this might actually be helpful if you struggle with blending. When she uses heavy amounts of concealer and eyeshadow the blend is okay, but the amount of product looks and feels cakey and can cause dryness.

What eyeshadow primer does everyone recommend? Right now I'm using one from NARS that I like but I went with the translucent one and kinda wish I'd gotten the tinted one.

[u/dcr108]

I’ve been using MAC painterly for a couple of years and like it, but my shadow always creases. I’ve been working through a sample of the ABH primer and actually really like it. It’s super matte white so not at all POC friendly tho (unless you’re going for a bright colorful look)

[u/99nudelipsticks]

Super oily lids - I've tried it all and best one for me is the NARS smudge proof base! Expensive but it lasts a long time and does the job well. I have 16 hour days so I need it to hold up, this ones the best for super long wear!

[u/qaganoficeandfire]

Thanks for linking this video -- I like watching her tutorials.

I prefer using the ABH primer and recommend it. I'm also panning a MAC Paint Pot, which does the job well too.

[u/Silvasister]

I've never felt the need to splash out on eye primer, my concealer seems to do the job and eyeshadow holds up well for me even with my hooded lids but I have always wondered if I am missing out on something by not getting into eye primers.

[u/bbbleu]

The best primer I’ve ever used is the Makeup Revolution cut crease canvas. I use it in all of my looks.

[u/themomerath]

I have super oily lids and I always use a tiny bit of Becca’s Ever Matte face primer on my eyelids, THEN use a primer/paint pot. My eyeshadow lasts all day without any creasing!

[u/vaskabjorn]

Hooded, textured, downturned, deep-set eyes here. With oily lids, so pretty much a recipe for eyeshadow disaster. My experimentations so far seem to agree with Alexandra:

​

Primer: I use the Smashbox 24H eyeshadow primer. It is a life saver. It is a pale nude colour that blends into your skin colour, so it does not conceal or colour correct, but it is great for eyeshadow. It has supported multiple 14-hour days of makeup, with sweating, and even crying. It is slightly tacky, so you do need to make sure that you use some nude eye shadow as base colour to help blending.

Concealer: not working, as Alexandra says, because eventually your lids will break it down. I even tried Shape Tape and it has creased.

MAC Paint Pot: will also crease if that's the only thing I am using, but it works great if you use it over a primer. My go-to neutral smokey is Paint Pot in Constructivist, blended and diffused.

NYX glitter glue: life saver for glitter, I am not so certain about regular shimmers/metallics. The most important step for me is wetting my brush with Fix+ for them, as this always gives my shadows a better grip, not to mention all of the shimmers/metallics look gorgeous.