INTENSIFY YOUR EYE SHADOWS!

You all may have some eye shadows in your make up collection that do not show up well when applied but look beautiful in the packaging and are exactly the color you want. This happened to me: I bought H&M's blue eyeshadow, but swatched it only after I got home, and all I was left with was a pale blue eye shadow and a sad face. But I found a solution: The left swatch is the original eye shadow and for the right swatch I used my "mixing medium".

This is the original eye shadow in its packaging:

If you are familiar with MAC Cosmetics, you may already know about Mixing Medium, a liquid product that enhances the color pay off of bland eye shadows or that you can use when working with pigments, but their products in general are a bit too pricey for my taste. So today I have an alternative that anyone can make at home for an extremely low amount of money.

 What you need is:
- an empty container,
- water,
- glycerin.

Glycerin is the main ingredient which makes this "mixing medium" so effective. It is a colorless liquid that you can get in any pharmacy for a small amount of money. Glycerin is widely used in soaps because of its hygroscopic features, which means that it absorbs water from the air and thereby gives your eyeshadow even more vibrance than regular water and better staying power as well.

NOTE: always make small amounts of this mixing medium and exchange it every two weeks since we're not adding any preservatives that would prevent it from going bad. I made a fairly large amount this time to show you how it's done.

You're going to be making it from 1 part glycerin and 3 parts water, which means: multiply the amount of glycerin you are going to use by three to get the amount of water you need. Eventually, with time, you will figure out how much amount is enough for you for two weeks so you won't have to throw away any. I used 20ml of glycerin and 60ml of water (which is 20 times 3) and got 80ml of mixing medium.

How to use: just like watercolors. You simply dab your brush into the "mixing medium", tap off the excess and then pick up eye shadow from its container, and repeat.

So let's look at the price and how efficient it is. I bought 100 ml of glycerin for 5 dollars, and I can get 300 ml of mixing medium while you would pay $108 for the same amount of MAC's Mixing Medium. I love it! :)