Tutorial: A Unicorn’s Daydream 🦄

My favorite emojis include the cherry, the upside down smiley, the moon face, and of course, the unicorn 🦄. Growing up, I was obsessed with rainbows. When asked what my favorite color was, I would respond “all of them.” Thankfully, I’ve narrowed it down to red, but I still love all things color. With that in mind, I wanted to create a colorful but bold rainbow look inspired by the rainbow horn. While unicorn colors on children’s toys and books are often pastel and shimmery, I based my tutorial off a more badass unicorn with bolder matte shades.

So grab your rainbow palette, your brushes, and a mirror and let’s make some magic!

Products Used

• Karity 21 Shadows in Matte palette, $29
• Kat Von D Tattoo Liner, $20
• Ardell false lashes in 114 Black, ~$3.89
• MAC x Julia Petit in Cranapple (limited edition)
• OPTIONAL: scotch tape to create a sharper look
  • Tape a small piece of tape from your corner of your outer eye upwards in the same angle you would wing your eyeliner at for a sharper look.

Tutorial

The Base

First, prime your eyelids with whatever product best suits your skin texture. For me, that is either eyeshadow primer, concealer, or foundation. You can use any of those or even a white or neutral toned cream eyeshadow/eyeshadow stick. Since this look is all about color, we do NOT want to skip this step! This will intensify the look without overloading your eyelids with product.

Afterwards, we’re going to dip into the color that matches your skin tone the most. For me, that is Luxuria.

Dip your brush into your respective “skin tone” match and apply it all over your eyelid.

Next, take the lightest “skin” color that matches your skin tone and highlight under your brow bone. For me, that is Caress. If you have a darker skin tone, I recommend using Unsafe. After you highlight your brow bone, highlight the inner corner of your eyes with Caress regardless of skin tone.

This is what it should look like once you’re done creating the base for your look (forgive me for looking like a hairless cat without mascara on):

The Warm Tones

In this next part, we will apple the first half of the look on the top eyelid. This will consist of all the warm tones in the rainbow. I like to start with the middle color, orange, as that sets a base for the other two in the spectrum, yellow and red/pink.

Dip a medium-sized brush into Coquet and apply it over the center of your lid, leaving 25% of your lid “blank” on each side. Then take a smaller brush and add Tweety (the yellow color) over the inner half of the Coquet shadow you just applied. By layering the yellow shade onto the peach shade, you’re creating depth in your spectrum of colors and allowing the two colors’ border to blend together naturally.

Taking the same sized brush (or even the same brush), add a layer of Vegas to the outside corner of your eyelid, slightly overlapping the tip of where you ended with Coquet.

Afterwards, take either a small eyeshadow brush and a dash of Cancun to the area right above the tail end of your lash line. This will deepen the orangey-red intersection later on, making the color look like it’s natural “glowing” out of your eyelid.

If at any point this is not enough pigment for you, keep repeating these steps until the colors are as vivid as you’d like it to be. This is me before I added the second layer on:

Now the next step is so subtle that you can either skip it if you don’t care enough/are lazy (like I usually am) or have a little fun with adding dimension into the “smokey” corner of your eye.

Taking a smudging brush, dip it into NSFW, the vibrant fire-engine red in this palette, and softly smudge it into the very corner of your eyelid. Draw the color slightly upwards along an angle that you’d wing your eyeliner at.

For the final step in the warm tones section, we are going to add pink and bright purple. Like I mentioned earlier, we want to create a glowing outwards effect from your eye. When doing so with any eye look, matte or shimmer, you do so by adding a color into the crease, blending it out, and then layering the main color over it on the lid.

Take a small crease brush and apply Lumbia into your crease gently in windshield wiper motions. Blend it out softly into the other oranges and reds in the outer half of your eyelid. At this point, you may have lost some of the orange pigment in the blending process. Pat another layer of Coquet and/or Vegas on top of the center of the lid focusing mainly in the center. DO NOT apply it over the yellow or the reds.

Then, take your crease brush and continue amplifying the crease with Lumbia. Next, take a denser round crease brush and apply Alexi into the center/top corner of your eye in circular motions. At this point, your eyeshadow may no longer sit in a perfect angle where your winged eyeliner will go. That is perfectly ok! We can always take a makeup wipe or Q-tip to make the angle sharp and clean in the end. Personally, I prefer this because it gives me more freedom to blend out the colors properly.  

The Lower Lash Line

We are temporarily done with the eyelid and moving onto the lower lash line, where all the cool colors will sit. At this point, check to see if you can still see Caress (white) on the inner corner of your eye. If you cannot, reapply and be sure to not cover up Tweety, the bit of yellow near the corner of your eyes.

Taking a flatter brush or a liner brush, apply Feign (mint) close to the inner corner of your lower lash line. Be sure to not get too close to the inner corner, as this is where Caress is supposed to highlight your eye. Feel free to drag Feign out towards the middle of your lash line and even slightly downwards past the lash line to the under-eye. We want the cool toned shadows to also glow out from your eye.

Repeat with Wicked and Medusa in even smaller sections along the lash line. I have each color pictured below from left to right (Reign, Wicked, Medusa):

Now you may notice that I’ve been drawing the colors far out from my actual lash line, creating a shadow effect. There is a very small area between Medusa and my actual lash line where we will now take a liner brush and add Enchant, a bright aqua. Bring it up to the lash line through the end of your lash line. Then repeat with Ego, the navy blue, but focus it on the outer quarter of your eye. We will be using this corner to blend the blues into the indigo and purple shades.

With the same dense round crease brush we used for the bright purple Alexi, we are now dipping into Phantom, the dark indigo shade, and applying it to the corner of our upper lid and lower lash line. It is ok if it slightly blends too far out, as we are cleaning the look up later. If you have used tape up to this point, don’t worry about it blending out off your eyelid.

After blending in Phantom, you can go back in with Alexi to light up the area. Don’t be afraid to bring the darker colors up into the crease like my left eye below (your right).

The Finishing Touches

At this point, add winged eyeliner on top, clean up the shadow that pasts your winged liner, clean off a bit of the lower lash line that got to your under-eyes, add mascara, and you’re good to go! If you’re feeling ~extra~ you can even add a bright pink lip and some false lashes. Forgive me again, as I am reusing a pair of older lashes and didn’t realize that my lash glue had not completely dried before I started taking photos. 

This is what your completed look should look like! Notice the depth of the peach/orange/red-orange lid, the natural progression of the yellow to the pink, and the way Phantom and Alexi mix into a true purple in the corner of the crease. This is what I meant about layering and adding dimension to your look.

And a look from underneath:

There you have it! My bold and vivid Unicorn Daydream look. If you try this look out with another palette or shimmer eyeshadows, please tag me in the comments of Instagram or tweet me them! I would love to see your take on a unicorn inspired eye look.

I hope you had as much fun as I did. Be sure to stay tuned for more tutorials and leave a comment below for any requests!

Bisou, bisou, mes amores.