If you've grown tired of your retro cat-eye or your smoky liner, then the new invisible floating liner trend is going to make you very excited: It's a whole new way to rock eyeliner, without actually using any of the stuff. By incorporating negative space, Instagram's hottest makeup artists, beauty vloggers, and general makeup addicts have created a fun and creative way to shake up your look.
If you like to play with colors or create a smoky eye using a blend of shadows, then this trend is worth experimenting with. It creates a fierce eyeliner flick by tracing the wing with shadow, but never actually filling it in — hence the "invisible liner" moniker. It looks a lot like you put tape down, painted over it, and then lifted it to reveal a perfect and naked line.
"To put it simply, invisible liner, as we like to think of it, looks like someone Photoshopped out the black winged liner from a typical Instagram-worthy look," Allure explained. "The entire lid has perfectly blended colors, but where liner is usually drawn on appear to be completely bare."
And the results are gorgeous, and apparently not that impossible to recreate in front of your own bathroom mirror. The woman that created it is Stacey McDonald, a professional makeup artist based in England, and she did it with the help of tape. "Instead of placing it diagonally along the outer corners of your eye, stick it at the middle of base of your lashes, going in the same diagonal direction. It should cover up the area where you typically draw on winged liner," Allure explained. Then, brush on your shadow, pull the tape off, and you'll have a crisp, sharp line.
To give you ideas on how to play with the trend yourself, here are some amazing takes on the look. Get ready to be inspired!
1Accent It With Glitter
To help make your wing tip really pop, accent the dramatic line with a heavy dose of glitter. This way you use a dramatic amount of negative space, and it contrasts in a playful way against the glitter.
2Make It Wing
You can rock the invisible liner by creating a traditional, retro outline like this one. Simply put the tape down at an angle halfway through your lid, and then close the "flick" by drawing on shadow underneath, from the outer corner of your eye.
3Accent With Colorful Liners
To really help your invisible liner pop, outline the edge where shadow and your lid meet with an unexpected eyeliner color, like electric blue.
4Keep The Invisible Liner Subtle
You don't have to make your negative space huge — in fact, you can use it subtly to accent the other colors in your makeup look. Take this eye look for example: She used a tiny bit of negative space to highlight her yellow liner with some white from her lid.
5Outline It In Black
To make the look more prominent, outline the gap between your lash-line and shadow with a dark swipe of black liner to make that negative space really stand out.
6Fill In The Gap With White Shadow
If you don't like that the negative space uses bare skin, you can also fill it in with white shadow to give it a smokier, less choppy look.
Feeling inspired? Try it out yourself this afternoon!
Images: @houseofsienna/ Instagram
