Celebrity Beauty: Leona Lewis' makeup in "Bleeding Love"

I would be really surprised if you have not heard yet of Leona Lewis. She is amazingly talented and her powerful voice is spellbinding. Leona was discovered due to the British reality talent show The X Factor (similar to American Idol) which she successfully won.

Her current hit "Bleeding Love" has been leading the charts and is so often shown on MTV - I think I know it by heart. Having watched it so often I've had a chance to admire her amazing look in this video over and over again. She is beautiful – no question about that. But her makeup is just magical. Whenever I would see the video, I would think to myself: whoever created this makeup is a genius. So, finally, I decided to find out who is responsible.

Leona’s makeup artist is Jane Bradley. According to Jane’s blog, she first did Leona’s makeup in September/October 2007 and has been “almost permanently attached to Leona” since. Currently, Jane does Leona's makeup for all the numerous events she attends daily (and Leona has a lot as she is promoting her debut album and is taking the entertainment industry by storm). Jane also flew to LA to do Leona’s makeup in the "Bleeding Love" video.

Leona’s look in "Bleeding Love" has made some noise among beauty addicts worldwide and, of course, among beauty bloggers. There have also been a couple videos on YouTube in which people attempted to recreate her makeup in that video. Not only the makeup is gorgeous, but also the dress she is wearing is breathtaking. Just in case you were wondering, it is a Dolce and Gabbana creation worth £100.000=$200.000.
This crystal-encrusted forty pound dress is from Dolce and Gabbana collection Fall 2007.

Going back to Leona’s makeup in "Bleeding Love"… I decided not to post the YouTube videos here as, to my big regret, each of them has some kind of a presentation flaw – like a noisy cartoon in the background for example. I am not the one to give directions on creating a smoky eye as I am just trying to master it myself. I also tend to wear more subtle makeup so this look is new for me. However, I thought it would be fun to look into the details of this amazing makeup by Jane Bradley. So I took a closer look at Leona’s makeup and did a couple screen shots.


As you can see from the photos above – it is a dramatic smoky eye done in very dark (almost black) green shades. Dark green eye shadow, the base of Leona’s smoky eye, is applied with a bit of a tick on the outer eye corners. Light silver shadow goes right under the eyebrow to lift it up. I think there is also a golden highlight in the center of an upper eyelid. Finishing touches include fake eye lashes and a black eyeliner applied along the upper eye lashes.

I decided to give this smoldering eye a try myself. It was a very quick experiment and I am not claiming that I did recreate Leona’s look.
I used:
L’Oreal eye shadow in black: 163 Smoke;

Essence’s shadow in sparkling green: Jungle Queen 22,




Lancome’s silver eye shadow in 316 Pierre de Lune,




Chanel’s Liquid Eyeliner in black,




Estee Lauder’s Magna Scopic Mascara.





I did not have an eye shadow in the exact dark green but it appeared to be no problem at all.
Here is what I did:

applied L’Oreal shadow in black, then over it a shadow in sparkling green to achieve the extremely dark green shade. I liked the final color and how you can control the intensity of green and black shades by layering and blending. It took me some courage to really go faaaar beyond my outer eye corner. Not sure I achieved that upward tick – need some training here. To blend the eyeshadow well and to create a smoky transition I used a brush and my finger (which is always a reliable tool).

applied some shadow along the lower eye line and made sure there was a nice transition between the upper and the lower eye lids(along the outer corner).

applied a metallic-silver shadow under the eyebrow. Silver should be quite subtle not to stand out.

achieved a bit of a more highlight with a tiny touch of white shadow right under the eyebrow in the outer corner.

finished up with an eyeliner along the upper eye lid.

curled eyelashes and applied mascara.

did eye brows. This look needs prominent eye brows to be balanced. Since my usual eyebrow corrector allows just a touch of colour, here I had to use an eye pencil in dark brown.

You can see the results in the photos.

And, now enjoy watching Leona’s Bleeding Love videos. The second one is a US version. Check out a more subtle Leona look in that video.

Here are some links about Leona Lewis you may enjoy:

Leona Lewis web page with interesting facts about the singer, articles, links, videos etc.
Leona Lewis fan site.