Many brands offer a variety of hues, textures and types of eyeliners; ideally suited for different situations, weather conditions, shape and color of the eyes. Eyes are quite delicate and need to be handled with care. Soft eyeliner pencils, liquid eyeliner, felt tip eyeliner that works like the liquid one and the cake eyeliners are the most common types available in the market. Pencils and felt tips must glide easily on the eyelid area and must not require pressure. Using eyeliner properly needs a lot of practice and a steady hand to avoid smudging it. Pencil and felt tip eyeliners are easier to control as you can use them like pens to sketch the desired look and define your eyes while liquid eyeliners need more practice just like using pointed brushes in painting and may smudge easily but they make better, brighter and clearer lines.

Cake eyeliners were previously considered an asset for professional makeup artists but women have picked up the trend and are now using them increasingly. Eyeshadows can also be used effectively as eyeliners and in fact offer many more colors and shades to experiment with. Eye pencil is perhaps the easiest to apply and to make the application easier, it wise to open one's mouth slightly so that muscles of eyes get telexed and one does not have to pull the lid for lining it. It is also advisable to line the lid as close to the lashes as possible to avoid a white line in between. The earliest archaeological evidence of using an eyeliner as a cosmetic, can be traced back to Egyptian and southern Iraqi women. They used to paint kohl, a thick black ointment, around their eyes to make them look larger. It was also believed to have powers to ward off evil eye.

Sometimes, eyeliner looks too sharp or harsh for our taste, especially when we are try to achieve smoky eye effect. In such a case, you can soften it by dusting a powder shadow of similar shade on your eyeliner using the eye shadow brush. Eyeliner plays a great role in creating optical illusions to give a new shape and size to your eyes. Gray, black and brown liners can be used to line outer third of upper lids of the close set eyes and then smudged gently. Liner of a lighter shade should be used at the inner side of the eye to add the look of the width between eyes. Small eyes can be opened up by lining them with a dark shade that thickens at the outer edge of the eye. Under lower lash, line with a very light shade such as gold, silver and white. Deep-set eyes can be controlled by lining the upper lash line with pale shade that shimmers while the outer edge of the lower lash should be lined with soft and neutral colors such as gray or taupe.

To add brightness to the drooping and tired eyes, line the outer third of eye almost touching the lashes and sweeping the liner slightly up at the corner of the eye. There is a procedure that can define your eyes permanently called micro pigmentation, also known as permanent eyeliner. Here, an organic pigment is embedded beneath the skin using a hand-held device that punctures the skin hundreds of times per minute with a very thin needle and pushes the pigment into the desired location. This procedure is also used to shape your eyebrows, color lips and add blush to your cheeks permanently. It can also be used to wear a permanent eye shadow. However, as this procedure is more painful and costly, most women prefer to do makeup instead of going for permanent procedures.