Five Top Tips for Achieving Your Perfect Feis MakeUp for Irish Dancers

Perfecting your ‘feis look’ can help any dancer feel more confident on stage. From the age of U11, Irish dancers can wear makeup to compete under the heavy stage lights. This aspect of Irish dancing can often come under scrutiny, but we believe that by learning to achieve the perfect feis makeup for Irish Dancers, your dancer will feel more prepared and confident at competitions.

As Irish dancing stages, especially at Major Championships, can have bright stage lights, the perfect feis makeup look is similar to those who will be performing on West End Stages. We asked popular MUA Ellie-Mae to give us her top 5 tips for achieving the perfect Feis Day Makeup Look.

 Five Tips for The Perfect Feis MakeUp for Irish Dancers

1. Start with the eyes

The first thing to do is to start with your eyes, the reason for this is because as you are applying your eyeshadow some of it can fall onto your cheeks. If you had already applied your face makeup then it would be much harder to clean this up without spoiling your face makeup - so always start with your eyes. Having said this, Ellie-Mae says she always leaves the eyebrows until near the end of the process.

2. Strong and sharp eyeliner

After you have prepared your eyes and applied your eyeshadow then the next step is to apply some eyeliner to the top lip. Ellie-Mae always uses an eyeliner pen to do this because it is much easier to achieve a sharp and clean line. One of the best ways to get a sharp and steady line is to rest your hand on your cheek - top tip from Ellie-Mae! 

3. Don’t apply eyelashes straight away

When sticking your eyelashes on, lots of people tend to forget that you need to leave your eyelash glue to get sticky before you apply it to your eyes. Make sure you cut your eyelashes to fit to your eyes (always cutting from the outside edge) and apply the eyelash glue. Once the glue is on the eyelash leave it to the side to get sticky whilst you finish the eyeshadow and add some mascara to your eyelashes. Once this is done, the glue should be ready and you can apply your eyelashes - starting from the center and then sticking down each corner.

4. Your foundation should be darker than normal

Now, this is why we mentioned the stage lights earlier on - but your foundation is going to be very dark when you are applying it to your face. This is because the stage lights will be bright and they’ll drain the colour from your face. If you are applying your makeup at home, then don’t be concerned when it looks super dark compared to your skin - this is what stage makeup needs to look like to be effective on stage.

5. Stick with neutral colours and a bold red/pink lip

Ellie-mae’s biggest makeup tip is to stick to certain neutral colours - such as browns and smokey colours for your eyes and a strong pink/red colour for your lips. Although it can be tempting for some people to want to match their makeup to their dress, this can be distracting and not as effective or striking on stage. These colours are the same colours that Ellie-Mae would use on every dancer, regardless of their age or dress colour.

We were super lucky to have Ellie-Mae give our World Sprint dancers an hour-long makeup lesson to help them achieve the perfect feis MakeUp for Irish dancers at the World Championships. You can still join in with the World Sprint and get three months of the Gold Club plus six additional bonuses (including the recording of the make-up lesson with Ellie-Mae) for less than £75!

You can sign up and join in with the World Sprint here -