Happy Halloween!

It's the spooking season again and unfortunately this year there will be no dress up for me :(

A busy schedule has called for a well needed/earned rest this weekend - can't say i'm not extremely jealous of everyone getting to dress up though ... love indulging in a bit of creative alter ego madness!

This is what I wore for the ITCOW event on Wednesday night.  There was a tedious link to Horror B Movies in there with the cat mask (Catpeople, Eye of the Cat) but it was mostly  just because I liked it!

I tried to make my lips look blood drenched by wearing MAC Russian Red with Nars Amazon lip pencil roughly penciled on the middle of my lips.  I went for full graphic eyeliner to add to the horror chic! Lace dress is the one that everyone and their mother is wearing at the moment, from trusty H&M.

Whatever you are dressing up as tonight, have fun and stay safe! Looking forward to seeing lots of blog updates of halloween outfits so hope you have all been creative :)

x

Halloween .....oooooohh!

This year for Halloween I went to my friends party in Newcastle. Jen dressed as Ursula from The Little Mermaid and I went along as Queen of Hearts. If I do say so myself, our outfits were pretty cool but I was mostly impressed with our make up which I did myself for us both.

I had tweeted a lot about this over the weekend so I thought I would show you the results.

Meet Ursula and Queen of Hearts ...
Depending how you look at it either Jen is teeny or I am massive. I am sticking to Jen being teeny, okay?! ;)

The unfortunate thing about going as Queen of Hearts and having loveheart shaped lips is that I looked permanently p****d off the whole night. Oh well, I guess it made me look a little scary in the spirit of Halloween of course.

Onto the make up ... ahhh I was so pleased with the make up...
I will give you a quick summary of the products I used:
FACE: EL Doublewear foundation in Al Fresco (this shows up a little pink on my skin and doesn't photograph too well), MAC select cover up, MAC MSF Natural
CHEEKS: Nars Laguna, Illamasqua blush in unrequited, MAC pearl highlighter
EYES: Bourjois pale blue shadow over the lid, Teal from EL Blue Dahlia collection under eye and in crease, Alice from UD AIW palette over lid and under eye, illamasqua sadist in crease, illamasqua roulette blended out at crease along with Queen from UD AIW palette and FINALLY illamasqua immortal on browbone. All this teamed with MUFE smokey lash mascara, Nadine Girls aloud lashes, Mac fluidline in blacktrack .... phew!
LIPS: Illamasqua lip pencil (unsure of name), MAC russian red

The heart gems above my eyebrow and on my cheek placed as a beauty spot was from a set of Broadway nails, nail & body art kit. I also used these on my nails. Nails in China Glaze Ruby Pumps, NYC white polish in manhattan and a glitter polish over the top.

This kit really deserves its own mention, the gems are still on my nails 4 days later and they show no signs of budging.
Now onto Ursulas make up. Ursula in the movie is obviously purple but I didn't want to paint Jen's face purple otherwise we might lose the effect and we also still wanted her to look attractive despite playing the role of a villain for the evening.
Make up summary
FACE: MUFE HD Foundation in 125, MAC MSF Natural
EYEBROWS: Lined with MAC carbon
EYES: Urban Outfitters blue eyeshadow all over lid, Zara purple duo shadow blended into crease and underneath the eye, MAC fluidline in black track to line the eye, a purple glitter liner underneath the eye, Sarah Girls Aloud party lashes (not shown in this photo)
LIPS: Lined with an illamasqua pencil, Gosh red lipstick
I then shaded and contoured Jen's face with the zara purple duo eyeshadow. This doesn't show up so well under the flash but looked fantastic on the night. Ursula's beauty spot was filled in using Urban Decay liner in zero.

Thats the finished look. I have to say I was a bit gutted to wash all that make up off after the effort that went into creating it but it has definitely got me in the mood for being more creative.

Did you dress up for Halloween?

x

I crown thee ... Queen of Hearts

Next weekend is Halloween and this year I have a 'proper' halloween party to go to.

When I say proper, I mean that it requires the party goer to dress as something ghoulish or scary, so no sexy mermaid or minnie mouse for me :(

I don't watch a lot of scary movies so I don't have a lot of inspiration in they way of frightful costume ideas so it took me a while to decide what/who to go as.

I finally decided on a baddie from one of this years iconic movies - Alice in Wonderland. Queen of Hearts being the said baddie. She's scary enough, huh?

So, I have the dress, the shoes, the bag, nails, make up ... even the hair but one vital piece of the costume was missing.

The Crown.

After scouring the shops and the internet there was nothing that suited. I was either offered cheap tiaras or pink fluffy crowns from the likes of Claire's and offered pricey but beautiful creations from Etsy and Ebay. Not wanting to break the bank, however, I thought I would try my hand at making my own.

The beginnings of my crown

Fortunately I live right next to a crafts store so on Saturday I went for a browse and left laden with moulding wire, swarovski beads and glass lovehearts.

This is my first attempt at trying to make a tiara or crown of any sort and although a bit messy as I had no plan in place for how it would look when I started, I really love the result. It has even inspired me to design and make more.
I plan on placing the crown nonchalantly on the side of my head although I have made it big enough to place in the centre. Hopefully my massive backcombed hair on the night will keep it in place.

To create my little masterpiece I used wire of 3 different guage/thickness with the thickest being used as the base of the crown and depending on weight of the beads I used an appropriate wire to support.

I also used 3 different styles of bead - a red swarovski crystal bead, a red glass loveheart and a black plastic bead. I shaped wire in the shape of love hearts all the way around the base with a main large black and red loveheart at the front of the crown.

If I had put more thought into the whole effort I would have designed the crown before I began and would have known what materials I wanted prior to purchase but these are all things I can change for next time as I am sure I will try this out again. It's quite therapeutic.

What do you think of my DIY crown? Does it do Queen of Hearts justice?

x

Halloween Solstice Star

So, I hadn't planned to go out for Halloween, If I had, I would have made sure I had a kick ass outfit. However, we decided last minute to get together at a mates flat and obviously dress for the occasion. Our dressing up box (yes, we do have one) is at my mother in law's at the moment since we are packing up to move so I had to use the resources I had at hand. Mainly make up!

Initially I was going to go as a doll but then decided I wanted a more casual approach (read: I hadn't tanned or de-fuzzed the legs so a dress was a no-no!). So in the end, I decided to wear a black assymetric top with black bootleg trousers which had a bit of a 70s vibe to it.... make up wise I took inspiration from one of Kate Moss' birthday looks a few years back.
I love this look and have always wanted to try it. I had hardly any time to recreate it so what I managed to churn out is a bit shoddy but I now know what I would do differently.
To create the look I used a Bobbi Brown Foundation stick - this is definitely one thing I would change, the coverage just wasn't enough for this look. I then concealed and contoured with nars laguna.
I used Illamasqua Liquid Metal in Solstice for the star - which looked great to start with but as the night wore on it creased really badly over the lid. I drew a light outline fo the star to begin with then literally coloured it in with the Solstice.
I then lined my eyes with MAC Fluidline in blacktrack then added Ardell False Lashes.
On the lips I used Rimmel Foxy with Gosh Darling on top.

The Hair? Don't even go there - it was a flippin' disaster!!

So that was my last minute Halloween look - what did you guys dress up as?

x