How to define your eye make-up easily

I am probably the last person in the world to discover this make-up trick. On the slight chance that there are women out there like me, that missed out on the teenage years of girlie make-up experimentation due to being busy with something else (my teenage years were all about the dance classes), here's a fabulous trick I have discovered this week.

Whatever type of eye shadow applicator you use; be it the cotton bud style, or a brush; simply wetting it slightly, under a running tap, will enable you to pick up powder on the brush and position the powder so precisely that even a make-up ignoramus like me can manage to use shadow to create a neat line along the lash, eye-liner style.

I am a tactile make-up applicator. In that I mean I have always preferred to solely use my fingers. In reality this means that I have been walking around for years with the loosely smudged casual style. Now I actually am able to create a dark edge and use a different shade loosely brushed over the lid with a drier brush and blend the lot with my fingers if I wish.

And how did I suddenly acquire this knowledge? I asked for a beauty book for my birthday and duly received Jemma Kidd's Make-Up Masterclass: Beauty bible of professional techniques and wearable looks. It's a beautiful hardback full of pictures to show you step by step how to create different looks and is packed with useful information on skin type and how to pick the right colours for your skin tone. It is, most importantly, not in the least bit patronising, which for me, an ageing novice, is refreshingly unassuming.

So thank you Jemma. Thank you. I now stand half a chance.