Eye Shadow Application: Wet vs Dry

For years I only ever applied eye shadow using a dry brush.  It never even crossed my mind to try using a damp brush until a few months ago, and now I find myself wetting my brush before applying quite often.

I stuck to one shadow through out this post - this is a current favourite of mine, Urban Decay Baked.  A lot of people are familiar with Half Baked from the original Naked palette (a gorgeous gold), but I think I prefer this warm-toned bronze shade.  It just seems to be a perfect shade to wear all year round, and I can't get enough of it!

In the photo above, I am wearing Baked applied with a dry brush on the majority of my lid.  I also have a darker shade in my crease, and obviously liquid liner on my lash line.  As you can see, the shimmer is barely visible, and the shade isn't particularly true to the colour in the pan.  I still like the shade, but it isn't what I hoped it to be.

In these pictures, I used the exact same eye-makeup apart from when I applied Baked, I used wet brush.  I spritzed the brush with the Urban Decay De-Slick setting spray before picking up the shadow from the pan and applying it to my lids using the damp brush.  As you can see, the shade is so much brighter and more vibrant and the shimmer is much more obvious.  Applying this shadow damp has made me love even further in love with it - it's the perfect intense copper shade!  I love how it looks for the current festive season, and this is a serious contender for my Christmas day make up!

I very rarely wear bold and bright shades, but I can imagine they would look incredible applied wet too, especially if you have a shadow which you wish was more pigmented - give it a go with a wet brush!

As you can probably tell, I am loving applying Baked using a damp brush, and actually I'm enjoying applying any shimmery/glittery shadow wet because it makes such a huge difference to the colour pay off!  However, I don't think applying eye shadow wet is always ideal.  I find it so much harder to blend shadow which has been applied wet, so it's not ideal for and shades you want to blend into the crease/outer corner/lash line.

So no straight answer here - I prefer wet application for intensifying the colour or vibrancy of the shade, but I like to blend dry shadows.  How do you like to apply your eye shadow?