Beauty 101: "Like I Fell Face First Into An Impressionist Painting"

This week, our Beauty 101 series is all about eyes, and your fellow commenters have questions about everything from brow grooming to smoky eyes to false lashes to eyeshadow application:

As always, I’d like to remind you that this is a reader-generated series: you ask the questions, and you provide the answers. And now, a few concerns from your fellow readers:

My biggest fail is always eyeshadow. I have never gotten the hang it and suspect I never will.

I’ve learned it’s best for me to not attempt to groom my eyebrows. There’s always just one more hair to pluck to get it right…and 5 minutes of “fine-tuning” later I may as well have drawn them on with a fine-point Sharpie.

My eyes. there are often three colors in my eye shadow containers. But where do I put the three different colors? Whenever I do it according to the diagrams on the eyeshadow, my eyes look, well, terrible.

Fake eyelashes. They never look natural and they always look they are half falling off when I apply them, so it looks like each eye has two sets of lashes. Ridiculous.

Eyeshadow, yes. I am a master of eyeliner, and can do the goth-racoon eyes thing, but show me colours and I have no idea. However, I have discovered cream eyeshadows and they seem to be working well so far. *crosses fingers* They don’t look like I fell face first into an impressionist painting.

eyeshadow! ive tried and tried but always failed, most other things are fine, but i guess im doomed to be incapable of applying eyeshadow forever

I am really, really near-sighted, and thus have never been able to pluck my eyebrows properly. Without my glasses on, I have to get so close to the mirror to see that the hand with the tweezer in it no longer fits between my face and the glass. It’s really only in the last couple of years that I’ve learned how to do eye makeup despite this problem (I keep it really simple), but I fear the brows will always be beyond me.

Do other glasses wearers have solutions to this eternal problem? Besides contacts, that is?

I cannot do a smoky eye for the life of me. It just looks like I’ve gotten in a fight, especially with my skin tone. Or a perfect set of cat eyes. Or shaping my eyebrows…I can sure as hell pluck them. But plucking with a plan? No.

I’ve got everything down but false lashes. I CANNOT DO THEM.

As soon as I get the left side perfect, the right side pops up. And so on and so forth.

To sum up:

1. How do I properly groom my eyebrows?

2. How do I apply eyeshadow? Are there certain tools I need?

3. How can I apply false lashes?

4. How can I get my makeup to stay in place?

5. Any eye makeup tips for women who wear glasses?

Think you can help? Feel free to leave your answers in the comments below, or email them to me with “Eyes” in the subject line. A roundup of tips and tricks will be posted tomorrow.