Quickie Halloween Look with lenstore.co.uk: Mermaid

You know I’m a big fan of Halloween looks that are quick – if Halloween was a public holiday and we had the day off get get ourselves mystical, spooky or whimsical that would be amazing, but it’s just not the case! With that in mind I tried to do a mermaid look with just a few additions to a regular ‘going out’ look!

First up, I have to mention these gorgeous lenses! lenstore.co.uk very kindly sent me some lenses to try out with some Halloween looks and I was pretty keen – I love lenses and I’d actually already bought costume lenses for my Halloween outfit already but I’ve never tried lenses that just change your eye colour before.



These are the Freshlook Colour Blends in Gemstone Green and I love them! I like how the change your eye colour enough to be eye catching but they’re not as in-your-face as, say, the Marilyn Manson style or Twilight style lenses. These also come in prescription strengths, so I think I’m going to try the turquoise next time!

Eyes: Sugarpill Tako, Velocity, Lumi, Afterparty and Darling. KIKO shadestick on the waterline. Brows, Sugarpill Dollypop, MAC Reflects pink glitter. Pearls are nail supplies from eBay and the sequins are from the pound shop.
Cheeks: Darling Girl Spectral Shift in Mystique
Lips: No-brand hot pink liner, MAC Viva Glam Nicki, Revlon lipgloss in Adorned

I’m really sorry for the lack of pictures – I hate doing makeup in the winter when there’s no good light, but I hope this gives an idea!

If you look closely, this isn’t that far off a normal going out look – a strong eye and lip, with a coloured instead of a regularly filled-in brow. Sometimes a bold look is really nothing more than switching up a colour or product, and the time and technique used is exactly the same.

As a Disney kid, of course I love the idea of mermaids as beautiful, fairy-like creatures like Ariel, but I also I really love the idea of mermaids as sea creatures with scales and barnacles and spiky fins, so I kind of tried to combine the two. I chose a girly colour palette, but added pearls to my eyes, overlapped sequins on my brows to represent scales and extended my eyeliner into long, wispy strokes to represent waves or seaweed. I also made sure there was a good dose of shimmer, to represent to sparkle of the sun on top of the sea, and kept as little colour as possible on my cheeks, adding a soft blue-pink highlight, to try and mimic the sort of washed-out look that skin has underwater. I added some bubbles using face paint going down the neck and the side of my face, and if I was going out wearing this and had a decent costume I would extend that down the side of my arm and up my face a little more. If you’re careful spraying it, you can use hairspray to set any small bits of body paint.

Hope you enjoyed this look! Have you tried changing your eye colour with lenses before? What are you going as for Halloween?

If you want to try some awesome coloured lenses, Lenstore.co.uk have very kindly given me a 10% code for you guys – add Robyn_Reader at the checkout before 30th November to get 10% off!


The lenses in this post were provided by lenstore.co.uk. As always, all opinions in the post are my own.

Quickie Review: Scarecrow Love Bites teeth

With Halloween coming up, I needed to buy a good but reasonably priced pair of fangs for my costume. After doing a bit of Googling and reading a few negative review of other brands of false teeth, I saw lots of recommendations for Scarecrow brand. After reading on Amazon that these are perfect for a ‘delicate ladies gob’ (seriously) I was sold and placed an order.

 

Your fangs come in a cute little carry case (it does have a clear cover as well)

The card is awfully cheesy with a vampire love scene and goffick font, but don’t let that fool you! The back has super detailed instructions on how to apply, as well as links to videos on how to apply them as well. Combined with the vial of powder and potion inside, I was a bit nervous about fitting them but ploughed on ahead, somewhat heartened that detailed instructions might actually mean they were decent! I was an eejit and didn’t watch the video beforehand.

Very basically, you mix the two parts together to create a paste, apply this into the centre of the fang, which is hollow and push it on to your natural tooth. Mixing it all up is a bit of a pain in the arse, and I won’t lie, it really stinks. There is more than sufficient product to fix your teeth, though, and to correctly fit them again if you bugger it up the first time. The top to the liquid part doesn’t go back on so once they’re properly moulded, you can’t keep it – so make sure you’re happy with the fit! I’ve heard that the paste does change over time and eventually you’ll need to refit them, so I don’t get why you get 6 vials of powder and one bottle of liquid you can’t reuse, but oh well.

The absolute worst part of this is waiting for the solution to set. You have to do one fang at a time, keep your lip away from your tooth and keep your head back so you don’t drool. For five minutes! I found it easier to hold my lip back with my finger rather than sit there with a flared lip. Once the first tooth is done, you have to fit the second and then leave *both* on for another 15 minutes, making sure not to drool everywhere or dislodge them with your lips.  A pain in the arse to be honest!

Fitting the teeth initially was also interesting. One went on pretty easily, and  other didn’t fit to my  tooth very well. It does say on the product that most people’s teeth aren’t symmetrical, but I almost felt like one of the teeth could have been bigger! It’s odd because when you have a larger tooth than normal, you can really feel it on your lips and mine don’t feel even! It’s odd. If I really flare my lips and you were looking closely you could probably tell they’re not even at the gum line, but that’s more to do with my natural teeth than the product and they look pretty even when talking and for photos. I would say that these particular fangs do seem to be quite small, and if you’ve got larger or broad teeth or you’re a dude this version might not fit you so well – try the Classic, Sabre or Shredder versions which are larger and scarier. This type however are the perfect size as fangs – they’re not too long so as to be uncomfortable or too ridiculous looking, yet not too small so that there’s no point in wearing them.

Trimming a little off the fangs, checking the fit each time.I’d not recommend doing this with your lips already made up, by the way! Lips are Darling Girl Don’t Teal me You Love Me.

You can see in the purple photo that after trimming, some of the glue is still visible. Lips are Sleek Matte Me in Fandango Purple with Rimmell Embellished gloss.

Once both are dry and set – it’s recommended to take them out and leave them overnight, you can trim off the excess mixture. The package says not to take it away from the sides of the tooth or the back, but the top can be taken away as an anything large. Nail clippers or really sharp scissors will do this and I checked mine as I snipped away to make sure I didn’t take away too much. As you can see from the blue-lipped photo, the gum dries roughly the same colour as the fangs so anything you do have to leave isn’t that noticeable unless you’re super close up. I still want to take a file to the glue because as you can see in the purple-lipped photo, some glue is still visible and it’s annoying me!

I certainly wouldn’t eat with these, but drinking seems fine. I’d worrying about them staining so I’d stick with clear drinks to be on the safe side! Talking is… well, I have a little lisp with them, but it’s not awful, and you can close your mouth comfortably and you’re not drooling everywhere – that’s about all you can ask for really isn’t it?  They seem to stay put really well and you don’t need another adhesive each time you wear them as they fit so snugly to your tooth – no chafing of gums or anything either.  You can sort of ‘click’ them off as well, which is super easy too. The colour also matched my teeth pretty well – they’re not a fake, sparkling white which is actually a good thing! I’d also advise not to wear lipgloss or anything on your lips that will move around or stain as your fangs *will* rub against your lips.

For £9.50, I think these are a pretty good deal and even  with the hassle of fitting, and even if you only wear them once for your costume, I think they’re well worth it as they stay in place and look fab! For mass produced fangs I don’t think you’ll get better for your money.

Last-Minute Works-With-Everything Halloween Look

If you’re stuck for a Halloween makeup or you get invited to a party last minute, this look is super simple, works with anything spooky and will also work with using any colour scheme. It’s also still pretty and a bit sexy if you’re not into gory stuff. If you keep the eyes and lips the same colour it packs a punch, but doing the eyes just black with an unusual lip colour, like blue, green or a crazy purple, is pretty fun and one of those looks that if you’re not confident wearing bolder makeup, you can get away with more easily as it’s Halloween. You also only need two eyeshadows for the eye and lip look and if you *really* wanted, you could do this whole look with six products – a black eyeliner for your waterline, lipliner and brows, two eyeshadows (a dimensional or multitonal shadow for the eyes and lips, and one cooler neutral to contour a little) white or lighter foundation, mascara and a setting powder.

Eyes: Darling Girl Don’t Teal Me You Love Me applied with Inglot Duraline, Fyrinnae Futuristic Glamrock in centre of lid. Rimmel Brown Black eyebrow pencil, Maybelline gel liner in black. No-brand lashes from Savers.
Face: Illamasqua Skinbase in 01, Sugarpill Tako, cool matte brown from Inglot, MUA Undress Me highlighter, setting powder.
Lips: Blue kohl pencil from Barry M, Darling Girl DTMYLM, Fyrinnae Futuristic Glamrock

I started out with a medium coverage white foundation to pale out my face – just pale it down, not look clown white. I was taking it off after to go to the gym so didn’t want to take it down my neck too far, but I would if I was going out. Contour with a cool colour and use a white shadow to highlight to keep the look a bit ‘dead,’ and if you want a little shimmer be sure to use something cool-toned as well – Sugarpill Lumi would have been good for this look actually! Draw your brows darker and more angular, or with pointed ends for a more evil look, and if you want to, overline your lips as well because if you can’t go OTT on Halloween then when the fuck can you? For the eyes, I mixed a loose pigment with a mixing medium to give me some fluidity when drawing the shape, and then filled in the space with the same colour. I patted a little of a lighter shadow on the centre, slapped on some lashes and liner and then copied the colour scheme I used on the eyes for the lips and I was done! Really, really simple, the hardest part was getting the shape of the eyes and overlining the lips neatly, but you really don’t have to do that part, I just enjoy doing it when I can get away with it. The hair took me about 40 seconds so looks bloody shoddy but if I were going out a few minutes teasing the top,  slicking down the sides and running a flat iron through the ends would make a nice quick faux-hawky kind of look.

The best thing about this look is you can throw on any generic Halloween accessory and still look like you’ve made a bit of an effort because of the bold shapes and colours – kitty ears look cute stuck in a big quiff or fauxhawk, fangs and a quick bit of makeup on your neck for a vampire look is easy and works well, stripy witch tights with a cute black dress and clumpy shoes is spooky too. I much prefer to plan out my costumes and make an effort but let’s be honest, a lot of us don’t have the time or cash so it’s good to have something up your sleeve that’s quick and dramatic.

Keep your eyes peeled for a review of the fangs by the way – they’re awesome!

Do I Need to Buy Different Makeup For Halloween?

Halloween is just around the corner and if you're like me, you'll want to have both an awesome costume and not spend any money. Sadly these hardly ever go hand in hand, but luckily for beauty bloggers, MUAs and makeup geeks, we have a lot of makeup at our disposal which can really help when Halloween or other fancy dress occasions come around. While I would never discourage people from buying funky special effects and theatrical makeup, it's not easy to get hold of good quality stuff and just isn't something most people are going to uses. This post is going is about what makeup is worth buying for very casual SFX use and what you can use that you probably already have.

 

White foundation: White foundation is *so* handy to have for Halloween! It can be hard to find, especially at this time of year, but Illamasqua and larger Barry M stands in the UK both carry them, and brands like Kryolan and Ben Nye both have them available online to buy fairly cheaply. A white foundation can be mixed with so many things - it can be mixed with other foundation colours to change them, or used all over the face or body as to create a blank canvas to allow you to colour your skin. To an extent, it can be mixed with loose pigments as well. Foundation is worth getting as opposed to greasepaint or facepaint as you can use it after Halloween is over - mix a little to lighten your usual foundation and you've got yourself a darn good highlighter! If you're planning on doing this, try and get the type of foundation you normally use, i.e, cream or liquid. I really dislike the nasty cheap cream makeup you get at Halloween – it smells bad, it doesn’t apply well, you can’t store it or use it more than once due to the packaging and it’s almost certainly worse for your skin than your usual makeup.

 

Eyeshadows used over a white base to create a fantasy look. (Yes, I know it’s pink.)

Matte eyeshadows: See above. It may take a little longer than using cream makeup, but blanking out your face and using shadows means that most of us won't be spending money on expensive theatre makeup and you avoid those god-awful cream palettes that pop in in costume shops. A good neutral palette can be really helpful at Halloween - a couple of deep browns, a black, a cream or white and a grey can be really helpful for creating undead or dirty looks or aged makeup. A matte plum, red and yellow can also be useful for bloodied or bruised looks. Always, always go with matte if you can - shimmery shadows don't tend to go well with spooky makeup, and shimmery makeup in photography can both look gritty and contribute to the makeup looking washed out.

Setting powder: If you're creating any looks with cream based products or even with just more makeup that you're used to, a translucent setting powder . For purposes of costume makeup, any old setting powder will do. Pressing a larger amount than usual over the makeup with a puff and then brushing the excess off will keep your makeup good n' fixed.

Using a felt liner pen to sketch out villainous eyebrows!

Felt tip liner pen: Seriously, these are great for everything. Liner, obviously. Drawing fangs, stitches, 'cracks' for creepy dolly looks. Freckles, eyebrows, 'shadows' for pop-art makeup, widows peak hairlines for Dracula, KISS makeup... everything. Plus they're cheap and intuitive to use.

 

Using eyeliners to sketch out a zombie jaw.

Cheap lipsticks and eyeliners: Or even your more expensive lipsticks and eyeliners, this one is really about thinking outside of the makeup box. Eyeliners easily double up as lip colours or to draw designs on the face - your black eyeliner will save you from buying a black lipstick you'll never use again! Lipsticks can be used in place of cream paints or to colour eyebrows.  Just bear in mind the textures of what you're using if and whether that will need to be set, as well as whether what you're using is eye or lip safe. Eyeliners easily double up as lip colours, lipsticks can be used in place of cream makeup, cream eyeshadows can be used all over the face, blah blah blah blah. I would add to do a patch test of your usual makeup to see if it stains – something that might not stain your lips may stay a different texture of skin, for example, so do a wee test!

Mascara: Mascaras are great for drawing beards, moustaches and darkening eyebrows. If you're a girl going a a dude, or a guy going as a pirate or someone who needs an odd beard shape, your mascara will really work wonders. Wipe the excess off your brush and dab it sideways gently on the face to get stubble.

Sponges: Sponges might seem obvious, but ripping and tearing the surface of the sponge can be really useful for creating mottled, gross effects on the skin.

A translucent setting powder and some lipliners that I use often for regular makeup lined up with some special effects goodies…

If you buy *one* thing from a special effects store or brand, some good fake blood will really be worth it and can be got fairly cheaply – I love Ben Nye's Fresh Scab/Thick Blood. Please, please steer clear of the cheap, 99p fancy-dress shop blood - it looks horribly fake and can really cheapen an otherwise good look. If you do get this, get a couple of tubes and try play with adding coffee grounds or pigments to get a more realistic, less syrupy-looking effect. It *will* look better than neon cheap blood, I promise! Another thing I see a lot at Halloween that is really awful is crappy ‘scar putty,’ often in kits with aforementioned crappy cream makeup, that mostly just falls off or  ends up looking like blobs of chewing gum on the face. If you need something to add texture, or to create scars or zombie flesh, buy a small cheap bottle of liquid latex from eBay or Amazon and play layering that with toilet paper and other textured stuff you might have lying around like cereal (srsly, porridge oats can be awesome!) Something that is even more fool proof but a little more expensive is a substance called rigid collodion, also available from SFX makeup retails. Please read up on this before using as it’s NOT something you want to get near your eyes, but it’s basically a liquid you paint on your skin and as it dries, it contracts and creates a puckered scar-like effect which you can then apply makeup over to look like really realistic scars!

While this post  may seem obvious to most of you, I've told so many of my friends that they don't actually need to buy all that much, or if they do, to buy something they will actually use again that I thought it was worth writing!

What are you going as for Halloween? *Be prepared* for my costume!

Creepy Princess

I don’t really know where I was going with this one… I had a vague idea  a while ago of a dusty, crusty old looking demon queen or princess with some sort of carving on her head and wanted to give it a go. I guess that idea doesn’t really make sense as an old, dead demon queen probably wouldn’t have a fresh or scabbed carving on her face, more of a scar, but I wanted to play with some SFX bits and bobs and this is what I came up with:

Closeups of the greasy, bloodied eye, crusty dried blood lips, dusty-looking skin and scarred marking on the forehead. The lips were really easy to do and so was the skin. I just pursed my lips super tightly and applied colour over them. For the skin, I didn’t do a base as I normally would, just contoured and highlighted some areas, darkened my eye bags and tapped powder in random areas for a dusty look.

This is pretty much all I used apart from a black and red eyeshadow from Sugarpill – Just a MAC pencil, some blood, powder, rigid collodion for the scar on the forehead and my PAM Medium Petite Concealer Palette.

Some things I like (fake blood on the eyelashes? I think I probably a genius) and some things I don’t (should have done something more with the nose/contouring perhaps) but it was fun to do, especially as it was a really sunny day outside and I did something so anti-summer!


I’ve also just been thinking that my use of the upside-down star might not actually be cool but I just needed a short-hand for “evil,” and that’s what came to mind.

Bat Romance

Another day, another time when I don’t stop and think to myself, “You know what colours you can’t blend nicely together? Yellow and black! Stay away from those!” So, there’s that, but also, BATMAN.

 

Black and white from Sleek Circus, blue from 120 palette. Sugarpill Buttercupcake. Collection2000 24/7 Extreme Pen liner. Inglot AMC Gel liner (yellow.) Eyelure Girls Aloud Festival Lashes (Cheryl)

I REALLY like these lashes – they have gold fleck on the top – but I kept looking at it and thinking I had yellow fallout on them! Overall, a cool idea but not very well executed on my part. Add a black lip and a cape and you’ve got an easy Hallowe’en look, though! SPEAKING of Hallowe’en, I really need to pull a costume out of my arse for tonight and I think I’m going to resort to something cliché and ‘sexy’ as my big costume night is next week and it’s not ready yet! Off to the shops I go…

PUMPKIN ALL THE THINGS

Hee hee, just a super quick one for fun! I will have to come back and do this properly!

Half-arsed Halloween: Pink Skull

Because why the fuck not, that’s why!




Sleek Good Girl Palette, Kryolan Aquacolours (applied with elf Mist and Set on a fine liner brush) in 070 (white) 082 (red) and R21 (pink)

I really should have done a face chart for this one before I sat down, but I couldn’t be arsed. I do need to do it properly (cover my brows, etc etc) as this was only a really quick look, it’s not finished and I wasn’t even going to blog about it, but I’m also lacking on any posts whatsoever, so… this is what you get from me today! I’d also like to say I never blog in my PJ’s normally but we all know that’s a massive bloody lie).  I’m tempted to do a pink skeleton look for my Halloween costume now, but I’ve got a much creepier idea in my head….

Ming the Merciless Inspired Look

With Halloween round the corner and everything, I’ve been wanting to do weirder looks at the moment and for some reason Ming the Merciless from Flash Gordon keeps popping in to my head. Now, not having a fabulous moustache and a bald bonce, this is obviously a loosely inspired look and I made the brows more feminine if not still, in my personal opinion, bloody magnificent. My pictures ALL came out awful, but with costume season coming up I wanted to show you guys how super-duper-easy it is to create a villainous look simply by switching up your eyebrows!





GORDON’S ALIIIIIIIVE?!



Eyes:  MAC Paintpot in Blackground, Sleek black and dark brown from Storm palette, Collection2000 Extreme 24/7 pen liner in Black, random indie highlighter Katie Price false lashes.
Lips: Urban Decay Perversion, Illamasqua Violate
Cheeks: Inglot AMC Cream Blush, Sleek Suede.


I did this very quickly and in the dark, so it’s not the best, but you get the idea. I’m lucky in that I don’t have to cover my eyebrows, so if I want to play around I can just draw over them. If I was doing this as an actual costume look, I would cover them so you can’t see any hairs. If you don’t want to cover your eyebrows (or perhaps if you’re doing this on a friend who isn’t used to wearing makeup and won’t sit still that long!) try drawing over them and playing with the arch and shape on the top of the arch to change the shape and thickness of the brow and make it look cartoony and obvious.

You can really use anything to draw the brows on as it’s okay to make them look totally fake – face paints, eyeliners, brow pencils, etc. Just make sure you set it well if it’s for a party or so on!



You know. Just for like, posterity.

Zombie Tutorial–Rotten Mouth!

Hey everyone! A reader contacted me a while ago and asked for a tutorial of a zombie look I did for Makeup Zombie’s blog a while back. Even though I’m not really an expert at this sort of thing at all, I thought I’d give it another go – it’s actually pretty simple, and it’s really fun.

I used Kryolan Aqua Colours (you can subsitute these with greasepaints, eyeshadows/eyeliners, or just halloween makeup) liquid latex (if you don’t have or can’t get this, Duo lash glue will work as well), a white pencil to draw the guidelines, some single-ply tissue (tear it up into small strips), and a red lipstick (optional, you can use whatever colour you want, or none if you’re a dude) and foundation. I also used two types of fake blood, because they’re new and I wanted to play. Thick Blood is an almost jelly-like substance, and looks like it’s just starting to scab, whereas, funnily enough Fresh Scab looks more like fresh blood. Again, you can use stuff from the Halloween store but be aware that that stuff more often that not stains. Make sure you have something like a small disposable spatula or a brush you don’t care about for the latex (I used one of the crappy little brushes from an eyeshadow palette.)

Sorry that I have awful acne in these photos, but I can’t be bothered to convincingly shop tons of photos for a gross tutorial.

Using the light pencil, sketch out your wound. Make sure it joins up with your real mouth – you want the design to cover one half of your lips.

Sketch in some teeth. It’s really hard to draw accurate looking teeth, but unless you’re a genius this isn’t going to look realistic, so just make sure you don’t add extra teeth. Make sure you draw the teeth in over your lips as well.

Start colouring that shit in! Remember, you’re supposed to be a zombie, so you don’t want Hollywood teeth! Add a tiny bit of brown/sand shadow/paint to them so they don’t look too pretty.

Latex time! Across the top of your ‘mouth’, add a thin line of latex/lash glue.

Place a thin strip of tissue along the glue, pinching it and rolling it where necessary. Remember we're not going for pretty. Work quickly so you can move the tissue over the wet latex.

Build up the latex/tissue until you're happy,but make sure that some tissue ‘flaps’ over where you’ve drawn your teeth in.

‘Poking’ up and under the tissue, fill in the wound with a red colour.

And start getting gory! Add your blood and scabs and whatnot.

Once that’s done, cover ALL of your tissue in foundation – including all the nooks and crannies - and blend it in to your skin. If you don't want to be skin coloured, you can go green, or add more blue/yellow/purple tones to make you look more rotted and bruised. Go back and add more blood if you’d like – I ran a little black shadow over some places to darken it.

If you want, you can paint thin layers of latex on other spots of the face. After 3-5 layers, you can peel it off and create flaps of skin and open wounds. Fill these in with blood/scabs as well.

And now you're pretty much done!

Just add some lipstick!
Sorry about the non-zombie make-up on the rest of my face – I was baking! Hee hee.

Variations:
1 – A smaller wound on each side, with ‘rolls’ of tissue – the Joker!
2 -Paint green aaaaall over the face for a more cartoon-y zombie.
3- A neater mouth, with less latex – Mobscene!

Let me know if you like and if you want me to try an attempt anything else for Halloween!