Let Us Burn

Hi! As promised, today's post is about a Halloween look I created to suit the Sharon Den Adel makeup look. Lately, to get some inspiration for Halloween, I've been watching a lot of Youtube videos and I came across a couple ideas that really sparked something in my brain.

I watched two videos about dragons and SFX makeup around the dragon theme and, after organizing ideas in my mind, I came up with the idea of doing a ripped skin look.

The idea was to create some sort of hybrid between a human and a dragon and I decided to do this by creating a sculpted piece that looked like dragon skin and scales and then using that as the skin underneath the ripped piece.

The reason why I chose to do a dragon is because Within Temptation's most recent album, Hydra, has two dragons in the cover.

Products used:

Clay
Liquid Latex
Cotton pads
Cream face paints in red, orange, yellow and black (I used oil based)
Golden pigment
Foundation

This list of products is very vague and not specific because you can really use anything you have at home. I used liquid latex because I haven't gotten around buying a silicon compound or scar wax.
Make it as realistic as you want.
When sculpting the dragon skin (if you're doing it that way) keep in mind that the mold would sort of fill the negative space of what you sculpted, so keep in mind what's over what and how it will look in the end.

The colour scheme is something you can tweak and twist to fit your preferences, I chose reds and oranges because I wanted to follow the Let Us Burn theme.

So that's it for this post, I want to give a major thank you to Rita for taking photos, sharing ideas and giving opinions during the process of making this look happen.

If you want a more in depth idea of how to recreate this, watch this video.

Love,
Anna

Halloween Night

Hi! I want to apologize in advance for not posting sooner but I just got the photos now, so yeah.
These are just some photos from my Halloween night, I hope you enjoy.

the stairs in the bar were filled with candles!

  

Love,
Anna

Halloween Special: Mz. Hyde

Hello! So I'm back and this week I bring you a Halloween look.
I'm really excited about this one because it is very special. This look is inspired in a song by Halestorm called Mz. Hyde. This song is about a hidden side of Lzzy, the vocalist, a much darker and evil side.
I figured I would do this look to show the appearance of my darker side, sort of like to show what is hidden inside of me.
Turns out that this look is way more on the punk side than I anticipated, nevertheless I love how it turned out.
This is the look I'm going to do for my Halloween night only with a few changes, so I hope you enjoy it!

"Welcome to the nightmare in my head,
Say hello to something scary,
The monster in your bed,
Just give in and you won’t be sorry,
Welcome to my other side,
Hello it’s Mz. Hyde!"

Meet Mz Hyde.

I imagine Mz Hyde as a "browless" all pierced character.
I didn't, although, picture her as someone so punk but I love how it turned out!

I suppose that the hardest part about this character is the concealing of the eyebrows.

That can be considered FX makeup because it changes your face to something that is not considered "normal" or "regular".
I used a glue stick over my brows several times until I achieved a minimally smooth finish. You can find videos on how to cover your eyebrows on youtube.
I then powdered them to get rid of the stickiness of the glue. Then I would suggest using a warm concealer color to conceal the color of the brows. I used my eyeshadow primer and it worked very well.
After you have finished the rest of your makeup, you will want to use concealer in the same shade as your skin to further erase your eyebrows.

For the actual makeup I did something very simple.
I used a dark blue eyeshadow all over the lid and just a bit of black eyeshadow in the crease. After I did the eyeliner on the top lash line, extending it quite far, I brought the blue eyeshadow together with the liner, blending it in in a triangular shape.
On the bottom lash line I also drew a little flick, pointing downwards and blended some black eyeshadow, again, in a triangular shape, leaving a space between the top and bottom flicks.
On the inner corners I extended the eyeliner on the top part of the eye as well as on the bottom, leaving a blank space between where I placed a white sparkly eyeshadow.

 Under the place where my eyebrows used to be, I drew a sharp line with black eyeshadow, which I blended down just to create some shape.

On my cheeks I used a black eyeshadow to contour and a black lipstick on my lips.

I drew a line down my chin and down my neck till my chest because I wanted to give the character a bit more of a personality.

When it comes to piercings, I used little silver beads that I placed in my cheeks to make dimple piercing, in the bridge of my nose and in the center of my lip. For the septum piercing I used a silver ring. I also added some silver rings to my ears.

In the pictures it is not very visible what I did to my hair but I basically pulled it up, very tight on the sides to simulate side cuts and teased it down the center of my head to create a hawk.

The look wouldn't be complete without a leather jacket and black clothes.

And the look is complete!
This is how I believe my inner darker self to be.
Apart from the song, one of my biggest inspirations for this was Nicole Greenleaf.

Little note: I would just like to thank my girlfriend for taking the photos. She's always in charge of all the photos in my looks, so thank you, babe.

That's all for this week's post, I hope you have enjoyed!
If I don't post anything before Halloween, my next post will be full of photos of my Halloween night and photos of everyone's costumes!

"There’s no way to be sure,

Which girl you’ll get to know."

Love,
Anna

Halloween Special: Little Evil Riding Hood

Hello! Today I bring you the look I'll be using for my own Halloween celebrations.

Since childhood I've felt this extreme fondness for fairytales. Some of my favorites are Beauty & The Beast, Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty and Rapunzel. I believe this love for storytelling that I feel to this day comes from these tales that we all know.

The original idea comes from my sophomore year, when I decided that I was going to use my most beloved black velvet cape as part of my costume on Carnival. I wanted to invert the plot of Little Red Riding Hood. Instead of the Big Bad Wolf chasing and eating Little Red, I wanted her to chase and kill the Bad Wolf. Why? Well, I do believe in pretentious statements, so in this case I wanted to show people that even little girls can destroy big bad wolves.

I hope you enjoy this look!

Make up for this look isn't too complex because it doesn't really matter if it's messy. I used my regular foundation but skipped concealer. I contoured my face with the same medium grey eyeshadow I used all over my eyes, to make them look more sunked in. I applied a little bit of blush on my cheeks, in this case the brightest red I have. I made my eyebrows much thicker and darker than they actually are. You can choose any eye look of your choice but I do love a bold, black, smokey eye. On my lips I wore a cherry red lip liner with Essence's XXXL Longlasting Liploss in the shade 07 Silky Red, which is a matt lip product; I then applied a little bit of the same black eyeshadow I used earlier on the center of my lips.

The blood you're seeing in the pictures is fake blood from a costume store, but you can make your own! I covered my mouth, neck and chest with it. Fake blood becomes a little bit sticky after awhile on your skin and leaves a slight stain so you should wash your face thoroughly when you take all your make up off.

I took some pictures of the accessories that I chose to complete my look. A red bow that I plan using on the back of my head, a pair of lace gloves and my cape. In case you're wondering I do use my cape during Winter, usually on top of a bigger coat.

GET THE WHOLE LOOK

• Since Little Red Riding Hood is, in fact, little, try to use clothes that reminisce children wear or schoool uniforms.
• All clothes that I chose are black but you can use any colors you feel like wearing. But have in mind that the traditional color palette is red, white and black.

As always, I hope that you liked this post! 

LOTS OF LOVE,
Tânia

Halloween Special: Shattered

Greetings! This week I bring you a Halloween look.
"Viewer description is advised".

FX makeup has always been something that fascinates me. After watching a considerably big amount of videos and experimenting with makeup myself, I have gained a little bit of practice with FX makeup, so I decided that I would show you a little bit of what can be done with special effects makeup.

For this look, I decided to go very bloody and graphic. I had this idea in my mind last year of creating something like an iconic persona or character that had classic pin up makeup but that was corrupted in some way. Last year I used this idea and corrupted the character with a shot in the head. This year I decided to use "glass" stuck to the face to corrupt my character.

The makeup itself was pretty easy, just a classic pin up look. Dramatic eyeliner and red lips will do the trick.

For the wounds you can use a variety of different materials to achieve the same result.

To create the texture of the ripped or pulled skin you can use liquid latex, neutral gelatin, 3rd Degree, which is a silicon compound, or molding wax. I used liquid latex as it is pretty inexpensive and you can find it in any art supply store you may have near you. If you cannot find liquid latex, neutral gelatin is even less expensive and you can find at the supermarket.

After I placed the liquid latex in the desired places, I waited for it to dry and once it set, I used scissors to rip through it to create that jagged effect on the skin.

For the next step you may want to visit an Halloween store and buy some face paint, since that's the least expensive alternative. 

Face paint is easy to find and not expensive at all but I personally used cream colors. Both will work. If you want to invest a little bit of money in this, you can even buy alcohol activated paint, which is much more expensive. You will need a rage of reds, some purples and bruise colors and a black color. Use the reds and black inside the wound and the purples and bruise colors around the wound. Also place some red on the outside of the wound.

For the glass I crushed a CD case, if you have acrylic, you can also use that. Glue it inside of the wound with liquid latex.

For the blood you can find fake blood in all Halloween stores or you can make your own. There's a couple of different recipes. I personally prefer to mix food coloring in neutral gelatin. I mix some red and some blue until I achieve the shade I want. Add more red to make fresh arterial blood or add less red a bit more of blue to achieve venous or dry blood shades.
You can apply it with a straw and use a tooth brush to splatter it all over.

This is pretty simple to achieve if you have the notion of what glass stuck to the skin would look in real life.
To create all looks with FX makeup, you will want to analyse a couple of different images of real life situations that portrait what you want to mimic. That could be the worse part for some.

To finish off my look, I did some pin curls in my hair and then molded them to the shape I wanted, to get the final pin up look.

The look wouldn't be complete without a pin up dress and some Mary Jane pumps.

If you want and can afford, you can purchase white contacts to emphasize that dead look.

 I hope you have enjoyed this post and this look, good luck if you try to do it on yourself!

 Love,
Anna

Halloween Special: Death

Today's makeup look is, finally, a Halloween look! I'm one of those annoying people that make Halloween a year long holiday, and I love everything about it. Too bad it isn't really celebrated here in Portugal.

I bring you one of my favorite comic book characters as inspiration for this first look. Death, of the Endless, is part of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman series. She's the main character's older sister and she's often described as the "goth girl next door".

There is a very important thing missing from my look, but I'll get to it later.

Death's makeup consists on bold eyeliner and black lipstick. Since the first publication of The Sandman, there has been various interpretations of Death and her look but the Eye of Horus inspired cat eye and black lipstick have, along with the all-black outfit and Ankh neckless, defined her.

All contour was done with a medium grey eyeshadow and it looks (surprisingly) almost natural. I did my eyebrows just a little bit thinner and darker than usual. With black gel liner I created an thick cat eye. On the inner corner of my eyes I used a smaller brush to continue the line I'd made before, designing a little triangle when connected to the lower lash line, which I also lined with the gel liner.

The trickiest part of this look is the little spiral that you should do on your right eye, for the sake of accuracy. I did this with black face paint instead of eyeliner because it was easier to create the shape with it.

I also used black pencil eyeliner to tight line my eyes and mascara.

GET THE WHOLE LOOK

• As I said earlier on this post, the most important thing is missing. The Ankh neckless is what differentiates Death from her siblings. It's her token and the symbol of her power.
• Her clothes are casual, all black, so it isn't really hard to find a pair of black trousers (she's rarely seen in dresses or skirts) and a black top. Her shoes are, most of the time, winklepickers.
• She's a huge fan of floppy hats so, why not using one to complete the outfit?

I hope you enjoyed this post, and that you've found some ghoulish inspiration for your own Halloween celebration!

LOTS OF LOVE,
Tânia

IMPORTANT NOTE: Both me and Anna are going to do two Halloween looks and we'll be posting them on the same weeks, spacing them with a different post each!