Glitter eyeshadow

Glitter eyeshadow is glitter made to stay on the eyelid. The flakes are larger than the pearl in a shimmer shadow, so they catch the light as separate points rather than as a sheen, and most glitter is plastic, very often polyethylene terephthalate — PET, a polyester.^[1] On its own a flake has nothing to hold it to skin, so the real product is the binder: a clear gel that sets, a cream that dries down, or a separate adhesive laid on first.

The binder is also what separates glitter eyeshadow from its neighbours. A shimmer or metallic shadow uses finer pearl and reads as polished rather than sparkling. A liquid glitter in a tube with a wand is a liquid eyeshadow, and a pressed glitter in a compact is a powder shadow. The products here come in pots and jars, to be patted on over bare skin or over shadow.

Look first at how the glitter is held. Gels suspend the flakes in a clear, water-based binder that sets as it dries; they give the most sparkle for the least mess and need no glue. Creams and cream-to-powder formulas mix finer glitter with pearl for a softer shine that can be worn to work. Loose glitter is pressed onto a separate adhesive, which gives the most control over where each flake lands, and the most flakes on the floor. Then look at the size and the cut: fine glitter reads as shimmer with a spark in it, while chunky glitter, stars and holographic cuts read as decoration.

Above all, read what the maker says the glitter is for. Glitter is sold for crafts, for the body and for the face, and a gel labelled for the face and body is not necessarily meant for the eyelid; some makers say as much on their own pages. Choose one sold for the eyes, and follow its maker’s instructions for putting it on and taking it off.

Put glitter on last, after powder shadow and liner, so that the powder does not cling to it. Pat it on with a fingertip or a small flat brush, starting at the centre of the lid and working outward, and keep it off the lash line and the inner rim of the eye. For loose glitter, lay a thin layer of adhesive only where the glitter should go and press the flakes into it while it is still tacky. Tape, rolled with the sticky side out, lifts stray flakes from the cheek without smearing the base beneath.

Take it off the same way before cleansing — tape, or a remover pressed on and lifted — rather than rubbing across the closed eye. If a flake gets into the eye, do not rub it. The FDA’s general advice for eye cosmetics applies: stop using any product that irritates, and see a doctor if the irritation persists.^[2]

In the United States, glitter is regulated through its colours. Every colour additive in a cosmetic must be approved, however novel the effect, and a colour may be used in the area of the eye — the lids, lashes and brows and the skin around them — only if the regulation that lists it says so.^[3] The FDA’s table of permitted colours shows which qualify: aluminium, bronze and copper powders, mica, bismuth oxychloride and iron oxides are all listed for use around the eye.^[4] Combinations are another matter. Colours combined for special effects, the agency warns, may form new pigments that are not approved for the use intended, and its example is holographic glitter: aluminium, itself an approved colour, bonded to an etched plastic film.^[3]

The European Union regulates glitter as a plastic. Its restriction on intentionally added microplastics banned loose plastic glitter for uses such as crafts and toys from October 2023. Glitter in make-up may still be sold until October 2035, but from October 2031 it must carry a label saying that it contains microplastics. Glitter of glass, metal or other inorganic, natural, biodegradable or soluble material falls outside the restriction.^[5]

Sparkle on the face is ancient; glitter as a manufactured product is not. Mica flakes were used for their light-catching quality in cave paintings and by the civilisations of Egypt, China, Greece and Rome. In 1934, according to a short history in New York Magazine, a machinist in Bernardsville, New Jersey, Henry Ruschmann, found a way of making large quantities of glitter from plastic, and founded Meadowbrook Inventions to make it.^[6]

Not all cosmetic sparkle is plastic. In mica pigments, the historian James Bennett notes, the size of the plate decides the effect — smaller platelets give a sheen, larger ones glitter — and later substrates such as aluminium oxide, silica, glass and synthetic mica widened the range of sparkle a cosmetic could carry.^[7] The plastic flake brought a problem of its own. By 2019 environmental scientists were tracking glitter, used in large volumes in make-up and often made of PET, as an overlooked source of microplastics,^[8] and four years later the European Union began to restrict it.^[9] The flake on the eyelid is now judged twice: as a colour that must be approved for the eye, and as a plastic that must answer for where it goes once it is washed away.