Pop of Pastel Makeup Trend: Floating Shadow (Before)

Graphic eyeliner is nothing new, but creating a floating crease [9] — made popular most recently by celebs like Lucy Boynton and Marsai Martin — is a twist that feels like hitting the refresh button on an old classic. Swapping liner with pastel eye shadow, however, takes the trend into Spring.

POPSUGAR's social media editor Rachael Edwards was the perfect person to try out the trend: "I love experimenting with makeup on the day-to-day and also on the weekends," she said. "Whether it's a meeting or I'm headed to a party, playing with bold-coloured glitters like reds, pinks, or greens is never a problem."

Before taking the look for a whirl, Edwards started with a fresh base, evening out her skin with the Nudestix Tinted Cover Foundation [10] (£32), and defining her brows with the Benefit Cosmetics Precisely, My Brow Pencil Ultra-Fine Shape & Define [11] (£22.50).

Huda Beauty Pastel Mini Obsessions Palette in Lilac

The season's softer take on the floating crease trend requires a lighter colour, so we decided to use the Huda Beauty Pastel Mini Obsessions Palette in Lilac (£27, available March 1) — a mix of shimmers, mattes, and duo-chrome shadows.

How to Do the Pastel Floating Shadow Makeup Trend

Creating a floating crease requires three things: a good blending brush, pigmented eye shadow that doesn't fall, and a steady hand. (If you don't have the latter, you can always buy stencils [12], or clean it up afterwards with concealer.)

Rivera started with a subtle wash of the duo-chrome purple across the entire lids and then swept the lavender shimmer hue below the brow bones to create the crease. (The top two shades stacked on the right of the palette.) To accentuate the colour, he then used a thin dense brush to outline the crease with a fair-toned concealer, followed by a layer of the light then dark matte purple shades on top to intensify the shape.

In working with a shimmer and matte duo, he suggests you first lightly mist your eye shadow brush with a setting spray before applying the shadows to really lock in the colour. "That way you don't have to worry about any fallout," said Rivera. "Plus, when you're working with deeper skin tones, you have more propensity for contrast, so you want to get the colour really saturated and build up the shadow that way, so it doesn't look chalky."

Pop of Pastel Makeup Trend: Floating Shadow (After)

In the end, the look was as cool as it was simple — and Edwards had one takeaway: "I've never tried a floating crease or pastel eye makeup, and I can see why the kids love it," she said. "A pop of colour goes a long way in elevating a look, and it's supereasy to do. I can't wait to try out the look myself with the shimmery shades from the lilac palette."

Pop of Pastel Makeup Trend: Watercolour Eyes (Before)

Watercolor eye makeup can manifest in many different forms: swirls of rainbow on the upper and lower lids [13], gradient shades of tie-dye [14], or flicks of colour on the inner corners of the eye. For this rendition, we decided to go with the latter for a more natural approach.

"When it comes to makeup, a pop of colour is my perennial mood board (more specifically, a bold lip with neutral shades elsewhere), so the 'clean colour' trend felt like it was made for me," said senior beauty editor Kelsey Castañon. "I also always apply a brush of colour to my inner creases — it's just usually an ivory or cream hue versus pastel — so the idea of swapping that for a more playful shade seemed like a fun experiment."

Before we got started, we applied Lune+Aster CC Cream Broad Spectrum SPF 50+ as a base and swiped on a few coats of mascara.

Huda Beauty Pastel Mini Obsessions Palette in Rose

What's more sunny-meets-sweet than a few pops of yellow and pink? That's the vibe we aimed to bring to life with the Huda Beauty Pastel Mini Obsessions Palette in Rose (£27, available March 1), which blends a mix of warm and cool tones in shimmer, matte, and duo-chrome finishes.

How to Do the Pastel Watercolour Eye Makeup Trend

You don't need Vincent van Gogh's painting skills to create the this season's watercolour eye makeup trend, but you should have an affinity for swirls of pastel. For the best effect, Rivera says you should apply your shimmer or duo-chrome shadows first (which he did with the glittery yellow shade, alternating that with the pink-and-yellow chrome on the inner creases), then layer matte shadows on top.

Rivera applied a wash of the matte peach colour (on the top left section of the palette) across the entire lids with a blending brush, followed by the darker shade of pink to the innermost corners of the eyes, up and through the creases. He then highlighted the inner third of the lids and brow bones with the matte yellow hue using a concealer brush and pressed the yellow shimmer shade to the inner corners using a bullet brush.

To finish off the look, Rivera suggests you highlight the high planes of the cheekbones using the duo-chrome shadow to "create contrast and further spotlight the eye look."

Pop of Pastel Makeup Trend: Watercolour Eyes (After)

The result is exactly what you'd imagine from a scoop of sorbet: it's refreshing, colourful, and brings an instant dose of happy. "I liked the strategically placed mixture of pastels here," said Castañon. "While I'm not typically a fan of pink eye shadow — something about the colour doesn't look quite right against my skin tone — I found myself loving (and using the next day, and the next. . . ) the pops of yellow on my inner creases. That is a look I can get behind all Spring."

Pop of Pastel Makeup Trend: Bright Lines (Before)

Eyeliner, like lipstick, is perhaps the easiest punch of colour you can add to any makeup look, which is why POPSUGAR's assistant beauty editor was just the candidate to take this trend for a whirl.

"I tend to keep my makeup relatively simple," she said, adding that she typically sticks with a medium-coverage foundation (she started with the Physicians Formula Healthy Foundation SPF 20 [15] (£13)) and black winged liner. "I like to reserve putting eye shadow on my lids for special occasions, although sometimes I put a metallic shade in my inner corners to brighten things up a bit. Or, when I'm really feeling fancy, I'll apply my regular winged liner in a different colour, like blue, or I'll top it off with some glitter."

The only difference in this iteration is that Rivera used eye shadow in lieu of liner — a slightly softer take for Spring — and then laid it on thick along the lash line.

Huda Beauty Pastel Mini Obsessions Palette in Mint

Like newly grown grass in Spring or pistachio ice cream, the Huda Beauty Pastel Mini Obsessions Palette in Mint (£27, available March 1) brings a refreshing hit of green to the table. The copper additions help warm everything up.

How to Do the Pastel Bright Liner Trend

Applying a stripe of eyeliner sounds simple, but getting that pigment to really pop can be tricky. That's why Rivera recommends you first outline the line along the upper lash line with a lip brush and waterproof liquid concealer in a light shade for "a more intense colour payoff."

First, he blended the blue-and-white duo-chrome shadow across the entire lids with a blending brush before using a bullet brush to sweep the mint hue atop the concealer outline. This is where your personal preference comes in: you can either intensify the look with the deeper green or lighten it up with the pale pistachio shade (Rivera did a mix of both).

The best part about this makeup look? It's pretty easy to course correct: "Use a concealer and concealer brush to go back in and clean-up or sharpen your coloured liner looks," he said. "It's easier to erase than draw."

Pop of Pastel Makeup Trend: Bright Lines (After)

After a few flicks of the Maybelline Falsies Lash Lift Washable Mascara [16] (£10), et voila — a bold, bright eyeliner look.

While Jackson admitted the teal colour was "very different" from what she was normally used to wearing, she loved how easy the look was to create — and would love to DIY [17] with Huda's subtler pastel palettes. "I thought the rose and lavender palettes were gorgeous — I'd 100 percent be willing to play around with those shades a little more," she said.