Hi there Tiffany! Thanks for the lovely compliments! And yeah Milani and Prestige are both very good brands that are quite inexpensive, that is why I now have the whole line of their e/s and I only have 20 or so MAC e/s... Now that I have good makeup in my palettes, I am free to buy MAC whenever I want and build that collection a little more slowly...
Let me tackle all your questions in order, K? :icon_bigg
- I don't use e/s wet, I will most often if not always use them dry, the only thing I use with a wet brush is the eyeshadow as eyeliner. Then I will wet my brush, rub it in a corner of my e/s, and apply it wet to line my upper and lower lashline.
There are a couple of reasons why the colors look so vivid: 1) I use a fantastic eyeshadow base, otherwise eye makeup will crease, fade and look like crap on my within an hour! I use MAC Paint all over my lid and up through the crease, blend it with a sythetic EOB brush (the white one in my Notepad), then very lightly apply MAC Cream Color Base over the Paint. This allows the e/s to stick very well and get intense color, not crease, and not fade all day long. 2) When I apply the color to my lids, I will load up my brush with eyeshadow, and "pat" it on the lid rather than "sweep" it across the lid. 3) I never apply e/s on top of each other, I rather "block out" my design first by placing the e/s colors I want to use on my lids in the places that I want them, and then I just blend the line where the colors meet.
- My favorite brushes for applying color on the lid go like this (they are attached in order): EOB Angled Brow Brush for inner lid, EOB Small Shadow for middle lid, SK angled e/s brush or no-name angled brush for outer lid and the "cat eye" look, EOB Crease brushes for the crease, and SK Large and Small e/s brushes for browbone highlight, SK Pointed Blending Brush for blending the lid and crease, EOB Touch Up brush for blending the top of the crease with the browbone color.
- I LOVE LOVE LOVE the EOB eye brushes the best, I reach for them the most, and they are lovely quality! But that being said the SK brushes I love the best are the Pointed Blending brush and the Goat Hair e/s brushes...
- For a starter set, I would recommend getting as many EOB brushes as you can... They are starting to get hard to find, I can't find some of the ones I already have anymore...:icon_roll I also would rec. the EOB large powder brush, the EOB Angled Blush Brush, the SK Blush Brush, and the SK Pointed Blending brush the most...
Did that help? I know I wrote A LOT! :icon_redf
SK Face brushes are pretty good, but then so are EOB. Over all, I would say I like EOB better, but there are some real gems in the SK line!