I wore crazy eye shadow looks to work for a week and this is how it went

While my makeup is usually minimal on a day-to-day basis, I’m used to wayang makeup thanks to six years of putting on heavy makeup while I was working as a stewardess for SIA.

Being able to create the SQ girl makeup aside, it’s given me enough skills to to be confident when blending eye shadow – something which I believe many are still uncertain about.

I’m probably not the most qualified to teach makeup application since I’m not the expert in that field, but I think it’s a fun experiment to test out different eye makeup looks every day to see how everyone responds to them in the office.

For the record, most of these eye shadow palettes have been lying unused in my drawer and I have bought two palettes because I’m in a pastel phase.

DAY 1: SAD CLOWN

After applying the red eye shadow, it looked like just how I would’ve done a regular eye makeup, just with bolder colours, so I decided to take it up a notch and reach for a Stila Glitter & Glow Liquid Eyeshadow in Kitten Karma, $38, which normally sits at the bottom of the drawer.

One thing lead to another, and suddenly I have blusher on my nose and I looked like a clown.

Sort of like a “sad clown but make it fashion” kind of way.

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It was the first day, and I went into this experiment not know how far I should go, but let’s see how I’d push some buttons throughout the day.

I had more than one person who asked if I’m ill.

Turns out, red blusher on the nose does make you look like you have the sniffles.

Features Editor Natalya Molok thought I had allergies. Even Editor-in-Chief Barbara Koh thought that I had been crying the night before.

I guess red blusher on the nose is not great for an everyday look. Noted.

DAY 2: EVIL CLOWN?

I’ve been wanting to try out purple eye shadow cause it’s one of the colours I hardly touch in the Urban Decay x Kristen Leanne Kaleidoscope Dream Eyeshadow Palette.

The pigments were wonderful and easy to blend. I went for the glitter liquid eye shadow from Stila again (in the shade “Into The Blue”), just to make a point again about clown makeup but skipped the coloured nose this time, just in case people thought I came to work despite having a cold.

The look was completed with a darker lips to complement the rich purple.

During the course of the day, I asked my boss, Editor-in-Chief Barbara Koh, if I should make it a wearable clown makeup story instead, but was promptly shot down cause it was encroaching into costume territory.

Maybe she wouldn’t have turned me down if I wore the sad clown look today.

DAY 3: COLOUR SPECTRUM

Since I’m not allowed to do clown makeup anymore, I went with the next best way to wear as many colours on my eyes as possible.

I used the BH Cosmetics Take Me Back To Brazil Palette and went nuts.

In fact, I decided that I would be able to put a lot more colours on my face if the eye look was asymmetrical so each eye had a different set of colours.

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A lot of people started catching on to my daily eye shadow looks as I’ve been posting them on my personal Instagram, and all of them pretty much look forward to updates by the third day of this experiment.

This look seems to be a hot favourite among The Weekly team.

Digital Lead Elizabeth Liew and Features Editor Natalya Molok both commented that this one is their favourite look.

Even Editor-in-Chief Barbara Koh, who generally didn’t like these over-the-top makeup looks, found this one acceptable and *gasp* pretty.

While it may look like a lot of work, this one was actually the easiest, without much skills or precision required to pull it off.

DAY 4: MERMAID SCALES

I started off with a pretty teal and cobalt blue eye look but it didn’t seem OTT enough, so I went ahead and added a layer of chunky glitter from Tarte’s Treasure Pot Glitter Gel.

It was a mistake on my part because the glitter made my double eyelids all weird and wonky. I had to take off some of it.

It did add some sparkle and made the eye look a bit more interesting than just colours on the eye lids.

Editor-in-Chief Barbara Koh was worried about the glitter flakes falling into my eye but I have to say, they held up pretty well and only came off when I wanted them to.

DAY 5: 10 POINTS FOR GRYFFINDOR

I’m a proud Ravenclaw but I’ve been tasked to try out the M.A.C Art Library Palette in Flame-boyant which meant an eye look using mostly reds and gold.

I decided against putting any other weird embellishments on my eyelid just in case I run into the same problems the day before.

Plus, I’m out of fresh new things to add onto my eyelids.

Out of all the looks so far, my boss said that this was the most office-friendly one.

I would have to agree – which annoyed me a little since I was really trying to go for crazy eye looks.

DAY 6: ON CLOUD 9

Following the rather safe option the day before, I turned to a teal and blue combo from the Beauty Bay x mmmmitchel Palette and embellished it with cloud doodles all over the eyelids.

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I will not lie, the white eyeliner was a challenge to put on. If you were to use the Urban Decay Razor Sharp Eyeliner in Bump to draw a regular eyeliner, it’s really easy, but to draw curves and doodles all over the eye… not so much.

I’m quite happy with the colour pay-off of the eyeliner though, I’ve used some that were translucent, didn’t glide on very well or just simply flaked off if you go over it too much.

The eyeliner took me at least 15 minutes to do, which is not great if you are rushing in the morning.

DAY 7: STARRY-EYED

I decided to end off the week with a more toned-down look, but can’t seem to bring myself to skip the embellishments.

The star was created using a double-ended eyeliner from shu uemura’s Holiday Collection last year, it had a regular eyeliner on one end and a star-shaped stamp on the other.

You could go nuts and stamp all over the eyes if you wanted, and would probably only take a minute.

CONCLUSION

I had a lot of fun creating all these looks for the week, but trying to come up with fresh new looks every day gave me a bit of a burnout on day five, but I quickly bounced back from it.

The rainbow eye look was definitely a hit among the team, and I found that the more embellishments I put on my eyes, the more my boss hated the look.

So the lesson here is: Playing with colours is fine for the office, but reserve the embellishments and glitters for costume parties.

I hope I’ve inspired some of you to pick up a colourful eye shadow palette and experiment with it.

This article was first published in Women's Weekly.