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Well, if you wanted to start with a photo (as many artists do) and you're using Photoshop... if it were me, I would use the same technique that I use to make custom eyebrows, described here:
http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=184268
The techniques used to make eyelashes (or any makeup texturing) are pretty much the same as with clothing: your texture is the "paint" you apply to the sim's body, and the alpha tells the game how much "paint" to apply in certain places - where the alpha is white, it lays down solid texture. Where the alpha is black, there is no texture, and where the alpha is grey, it puts down texture at the same rate - 50% grey is 50% texture.
Take a look at some good custom eyelashes to see how their textures and alphas are done. I recommend Helaene, Barcelonista, and RenSim if you want to look at high-quality textures by well-known artists whose work is very much of the cool glamourous sim style right now, or whoever makes lashes you like. Select their items in Body Shop, and make projects of them to look at the alpha and texture separately. Examine how they have laid out the alpha and texture, the way the two interact, and how it applies to the sim's face to get a better understanding of what a good finished eyelash is going to look like. Don't use their textures - that would be stealing... but just look and learn, like a student of a great painter, examining the brush strokes on his teacher's masterpiece.
And then... just -play-. Tweak your alpha, tweak your textures, reload and see how it looks. Make sure you use a real sim skintone (and switch to several to make sure it looks good on different skintones) instead of the Body Shop mannequin while you do this. Making really good custom makeup takes a lot of time and effort, and many MANY reloads of your textures in Body Shop till you get something you like. Stick with it, experiment, learn from the greats, and you'll get it.
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“Dude, suckin’ at something is the first step to being sorta good at something.”
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