A dark eyeshadow, a dark base

I was in the mood for some dramatic eye make-up the other day. I decided on MAC's Prussian, a colour described as a "deep sea blue" on their website.

I also pulled out MAC's paint pot (a cream shadow) in Blackground (black).

And out of curiosity, I swatched Prussian on my arm, with and without the dark base.

What a huge difference. Of course, it depends on the look you're going for but the real colour and depth of Prussian only comes out when applied over a dark base (which doesn't have to be black, by the way).

If you have eyeshadows that you're not happy with - maybe the colour or pigmentation is not quite what you'd imagined - experiment. If I hadn't known about using this black cream shadow, I might have tossed out Prussian...