Last week’s post about festival face paint had me dying to break out the Crayola colours for Electric Lightbulb. So I did, and it looked freakin’ awesome… and then I had to try and take it off. Turns out that GOSH Extreme Art extremely waterproof eyeliner is also extremely everything proof, and really blimmin’ difficult to get off in a field in the depths of Laois.

Face wipes can’t really cut through things like GOSH eyeliner or MAC Fluidline or waterproof mascara. (And I need hardly mention that you shouldn’t be using them anyway except in case of emergency or festivity.) If you favour a facial cleanser like Eve Lom that does double duty as eye make-up remover, great – just gently massage a small amount around your eye area and into your lashes to loosen stubborn day-old grime before removing as directed. Use too much and you risk it running into and irritating your peepers.

If you prefer to use separate cleanser and eye make-up remover instead, the same basic principle applies. You need to saturate but not overload a cotton wool pad with your chosen unction; cotton pads are less likely to shed than their ballsy cousins. Don’t rub. Instead, close your eyes and apply the cotton pad like a compress, pressing gently and giving it a few moments to get to work and loosen the layers of make-up before gently wiping it off. You want to dissolve as much make-up as possible before you have to start wiping that cotton wool pad around to minimise trauma to the thin skin around the eyes.

Work downwards from the outer corner in to avoid excessive dragging on the delicate skin around the eye area. If you find that the make-up’s not coming off easily, don’t rub harder – reapply your eye make-up remover compress for another wee while. To remove the last vestiges of mascara, wrap your cotton wool pad around your index finger and use a rolling motion to top and tail your lashes.

For really bombproof mascara, you may find you need to wriggle your encased-in-cotton-wool finger between the lashes to really get rid off all traces, which is fine as long as you take it nice and handy. If you’ve too much time on your hands, you could use a clean mascara brush to comb eye make-up remover through your lashes and then remove.

By the by, if you’re fresh out of eye make-up remover, try a smidgen of olive oil.

Et voilá – lovely clean pillowcases and nary a panda eye in sight!