Over on Working With Monolids, Francesca has been doing a sample challenge. She draws two random eyeshadow sample bags from her stash and creates a look using both of them. She brought the idea to /r/indiemakeupandmore, and asked people to list the eyeshadows they own. Then other users would choose two random colors to make a look with, without looking up pictures of what the shadows look like. I love pretty much every type of make up challenge there is, so I jumped on board. Half an hour of typing out names later, I had my list. /u/three8six9, of Butabanasaurus, gave me my first pairing, Blanche Neige’s Little Mermaid and Dark Matter Makeup’s Pisces. From the sound of the names, with their aquatic references, you’d think the colors would go together easily. However. Little Mermaid is red orange. Burnt red orange. And Pisces is turquoise. Super bright turquoise. Not really colors I would have paired up. But it was a challenge, so I knew I had to figure it out!

I wasn’t sure what to do, and wound up going full on avante garde. I actually like this, in a “I wish I had a weirdo gallery opening or an experimental theatre opening night to wear this to” type of way.

A glasses shot and a close up. To show off the weirdness in all possible ways.

Eyes:

Blanche Neige Little Mermaid

Dark Matter Makeup Pisces

Shiro Doge

Stila Desert

Tarte Hot Stone Massage

Urban Decay Primer Potion in Anti-Aging

Fyrinnae Pixie Epoxy

Sephora Collection Black Lace Eyeliner

Buxom Lash Mascara

Face:

MAC Face and Body in N1

Laura Mercier Secret Concealer in 1

MAC Mineralize Skinfinish Natural in Light

Tarte Exposed

Lips:

MAC Viva Glam V

I wasn’t quite sure what to do with this combination of shadows so the look sort of developed as I put it on my face. My original plan was to use Pisces in the inner corner, Little Mermaid in the Outer Corner and Doge in the middle as a transition, so I started by applying Doge, a shimmery champagne, all over my primed lids. But Then I wound up covering it all up with Little Mermaid, a burnt orange-red, which I applied up to my crease and below the outer half of my lower lashes. I used a matte orangey nude to blend it out and up to my eyebrows. Then I applied Pisces, a bright turquoise in my inner corner, and blended it up and a round the corner into the red. However, it wasn’t turquoisey enough, so I applied a bot of Pixie Epoxy and added some more on top. Then I lined my upper lashes and both waterlines with black pencil liner. With the black liner on, I decided there needed to be still more turquoise, so I used an angled brush to blend it across my entire lower lash line and along the bottom outer edge of the red shadow. To finish I applied Doge underneath my brow bone, curled and mascaraed my lashes. I did the rest of my face makeup, with slightly reddish brown nudes for both my cheeks and my lips, and realized the amount of crazy eyeshadow I had on was overpowering my brows. So I used a grey brown eyeshadow to fill them in with an angled brush. Weirdo look complete!

Have you ever paired random samples? I had a blast with it and am looking forward to doing the rest of the pairings I was given.