DIY Rainbow Highlight

How To Make Your Own Rainbow Highlight

You may have heard the hype about the new rainbow highlight from Bitter Lace Beauty, and you may have also heard about how quickly it sells out every time it's restocked. Because the highlight is made by hand, this is understandable, but it's also understandable to want to get your hands on one immediately because it's absolutely gorgeous! I don't own the original product so I can't say whether or not this DIY makes an exact dupe or not, and I'm guessing it doesn't, but I can say that it makes something pretty darn cool. Reddit user The Kitten Butcher seems to be the original creator of this DIY from what I can tell, so all credit goes to her for this idea! I simply took her idea and twisted it a bit so that my highlight would turn out more wearable than the rainbow one (although I ended up making a few in the end, including a rainbow one).

These were all of my supplies. I used the muffin cups to keep the colors separated while I was mixing them, but you could use any small container. Muffin tins work well and are washable. You will need -

-A container for each color

-Eyeshadows in the colors of either the rainbow or the colors you want in your highlight

-A highlight you don't mind crushing up

-Isopropyl alcohol (mine is 97% because that's what I had on hand)

-A compact for the finished highlight

-Toothpicks, a spoon, or preferably both

I also used blushes in place of eyeshadows because I had more blush colors that I wanted in my first highlight than eyeshadow colors.

Choose your colors (I chose six for my first highlight) and crush them up as best you can, each in their own separate container, and mix them with your powder highlight of choice. Use an equal amount of highlight and eyeshadow in each container if you can. More highlight means less pigment but more highlight-y-ness/shimmer. Using a spray bottle or dropper, add small amounts of alcohol into each container until a paste is formed. Add the pastes into the compact in stripes in the order of the rainbow or whatever order you want. The great thing about this DIY is how customizable it is! I wanted my first highlight to be very wearable and warm tones so I stick with orange and pink shades.

If you want to you can press he top of the highlight gently with a paper towel to absorb excess moisture. The original creator of this DIY said to do this until the color stopped transferring but that was taking forever so I just stopped after a few minutes.

This is my highlight still wet. I let it dry overnight...

...and it was done! The swatch I show here isn't the best because it wasn't in great lighting and it's pretty subtle but in person this highlight turned out gorgeous. I love how I can just use certain colors, swirl all of them together, or layer them for different effects!

Here are two more of the highlights I ended up making.

This is a swatch of the rainbow one. It's more colorful than illuminating but if you want a rainbow on your cheekbones then this will do the trick! I would love to make tons more but I'm currently almost out of powder highlight so I have to wait until I'm able to get some more. I actually just use this giant eyeshadow from ShopMissA in the shade 4 as my powder highlight, but it's my only one so what little I have left after this DIY is for my face.