Wood Demon for Halloween 2016

You know what? I have a list of creatures I want to be for Halloween and each year I draw one out and try to make it. So this year it was quite easy because I chose the Tree Demon. I was looking at all those sugar skulls and thinking how to make it a bit different and voilá! The Tree Demon or Wood Demon was born. 

All the stuff needed for it was either already in my make-up bag or outside in the garden. The only item I actually had to buy was the contact lenses. Duh! So in case you are wondering, they are ColorVue's Black Titan and they are a bit bigger in diameter than normal lenses, which was terrible for me to get them on. And I also expected they'd cover more of my eye in the center. I don't care how terrible the tunnel vision is, I need more coverage because as you can see here, a ton of my color is showing and I don't like that. 

Anyway, makeup-wise this costume is easy because all you need is a couple of colors. First I put on a white base (a generic costume shop one) which I spread to my hair to create cool texture. 

Then I contoured my face with the light brownish color in NYX's I dream of St. John. Taking black Astor gel liner, I created that nose, eye and mouth action. Since the liner is quite shiny, I set it with the blackest black I own - the one in W7's In the Buff. Then I went back to the NYX's palette and used the dark brown to create vertical lines. I set it all with Rimmel's translucent powder.  

I used the same technique on my arms (minus the gel liner since there was nothing to highlight), there I only added the knar-looking places to really resemble a tree. 

The last thing to really do was chopping some branches and putting them in my hair and tying them on strings to go around my chest chewbacca-style ;-)

The rest was just black clothes I have no shortage of in my closet.

It looks as if I was covered in white spots but my black outfit was spotless - someone should just clean the mirror at my workplace :-)=

Quoth the Raven "Nevermore" Halloween Costume

I've been dying to dress up as this for years. But I couldn't find a big black bird. Until one unproductive day in Spring this year. I was browsing the shelves of one supermarket when suddenly something caught my eye in one of those seasonal aisles.
Yup, things for gardening. It was sitting there as if it belonged there all along and as if I was supposed to be aware of its presence. The black bird. As it turns out people who (unlike me) can keep green things growing need a scarecrow to defend their produce.Which means cheap plastic crows and ravens are somewhere out there in big numbers.

And so it was settled. My costume would become reality. You must understand. I was planning this for years and even though my skills with make-up are doubtful, I still believe this is the best costume ever because a) it depicts my favourite poem, hence it's clever b) I came up with it - I didn't see it on the Internet or anywhere else, it's just my imagination in it  c) it turned out to be pretty bad ass. Even I was afraid of the raven. I had it in my bedroom and since I applied shiny red nail foil to its eyes, the little sucker would glow in the most unexpected moments and spook the heck out of me.

But back to how to do the costume. It's quite simple, actually. If you try it at least once in advance. This was the first time I used contact lenses (White Screen) so I had to try it beforehand. As it turned out, they were quite comfortable but applying make-up through a layer of mist sucks. See, most people get tunnel vision with colored eye lenses but the ones I bought cover the whole eye, especially the pupil. Trying before doing it for real helps because all the colors become hazy and you'll find out you applied too much contour once you remove them. So bear that in mind and have light hand when applying anything since it looks harsher for the real world.

You need a lot of white make-up. As a base I used the cheapest white cream make-up I found in a costume store. Forget all the spong-y applicators and dense brushes, the fastest way is to smear it with your hands (sure it doesn't look the best but we are trying to be efficient since we have to go to work in one hour). Once that was on my face and limbs I used Catrice's 660 Ice White Open to set it. Once that was done I contoured my face (temples, cheeks, sides of my nose and above the lids) and my neck and collar bones with the light grey/brown in NYX's I dream of St. John. I originally used the silver color in it but the result wasn't as natural as the brownish color. Then I lined my water lines with a white eye pencil to get rid of as much redness as possible (the white really drew it out and I looked like a rabid statue). The following step was to use a white lipstick and a black lipstick (the black went only to the inner rim of my lips to create depth). 

I styled my hair into two buns at the back of my head and sprayed all over with a white hair spray. Since there was a lot of it in the bottle I tried to spray it over my face and arms to settle the white make-up even more and it really held! Even my oily eyelids didn't crease! Yay! More than twelve hours in the costume and it held!

All that was left was to put everything together. I put on a gold leafy head band, wrapped myself in my bed sheet toga-style (which came convenient for trapping the raven on my shoulder since its legs were made of one single piece so I could get the end of the sheet through it to keep it in place) and secured it with a gold belt. I had white stockings on and a lot of invisible layers under the toga because ... well, October!

The reactions to my costume were priceless. Most of my colleagues couldn't recognise me and then they couldn't look me in the eye. The kids were afraid of me and some still couldn't believe it really was their teacher underneath (time to time I'd just stand somewhere not moving and they'd be so afraid!). One kid told me after the class that she was not afraid of me anymore but that The Raven was staring at her and she was afraid of it still. I spooked the hell out of pretty much everyone this year, so the mission was accomplished! :-)=
Spooky Halloween to you all!

Easy vampire make-up for Halloween

No need to buy some fancy supplies that cost more than necessary. You already have everything you need for this look in your make-up bag.

This year, I went for a “work-friendly” vampire costume because I had six English lessons in a row to give and a hall monitoring duty throughout the whole day so I knew I needed something bulletproof that wouldn’t require any touch-ups.

The only dilemma I was facing was the teeth. As a teacher who talks a lot (duh!) I needed something which would make me lisp as little as possible and that would hold for a long time. It’s been ages since I was a vampire for Halloween so I couldn’t remember which glue was the one that lasted the whole night at one Halloween party long time ago. So I bought all three glues available and had done my “teeth rehearsal” prior to going to school like that. So, it was not that two-part putty which I hoped would hold but it was that pink one-part glue which got me through the day.

And now, to the make-up part. Long time ago I accidentally bought a liquid foundation by Avon in Ivory which was too light for me but I kept it for occasions like this one. Once I had my foundation in place (no primer, I don’t usually need that) I wanted to set it with a matte white color. Naturally, my hate toward the eye shadow palette makers subsided a little when I recalled all those whites I had (I mean, seriously! Almost every palette has a white and a black in it! Aargh, what the heck am I supposed to do with them all?!). The only issue with this is that the palette is small and applying just that one color is a bitch. To be more specific, it took me 40 minutes of trying not to compromise my white with the surrounding browns while applying it with a teeny-tiny brush on all the visible parts of my skin.

After the hard part was over, I took a dark matte brown from the same palette (NYX’s Champagne and Caviar) and tried to contour my face – temples, nose, cheeks, chin, eyes, and widow’s peak. Then I took a red eye shadow by Essence in 44 It’s up to you and made my eyes a little bit red. The last thing was to put a lipstain on my lips (Essence in 02 Save your kisses for me ) just to get that “I’ve just eaten” look.

The teeth were easy to glue with that pink transparent putty and the look survived all my lessons without any touch-ups. I must say I didn’t eat the whole day because I knew the teeth would go and I only drank through a straw. But I talked a lot and it stayed put. So it was a win ;-)=

Vodka with Juice Halloween Style

Just like I've already mentioned in one of the posts before, Halloween is not the thing in here. But it doesn't stop some of us from decorating our homes or visiting the scarce parties dedicated to this special day. I skipped all the parties this year and just went ahead and made myself a spooky drink.

Nothing says I love vodka with juice more than a bowl of  some weird red/brown liquid with a melting hand in it.

On the brighter side, it's one of the easiest things you can do. Even a kid could do it (though I do not recommend this one for kids - some people say alcohol isn't for the small ones, after all).

What you're going to need:
- any red juice (I chose strawberry with pulp to make it grosser-looking but you can use tomato juice or any other you like)
- black vodka
- water
- a plastic glove
- bowl
- enough misery to drink it all alone or friends to help you

1) The first step is a tricky one. You take a surgical glove and turn it inside out. Why, you may ask. Well, they have this powder inside to prevent your hands from sweating. You sure don't wanna drink that. Yes, you can wash it out but who's got time for that? So turning it inside out it is. When you are done with the step one, you will just move to the step two.

2) Fill the glove with water. Be reasonable, don't make it burst. Plus if you fill it so that the palm area is round, you will only see that in the bowl (the fingers will very likely submerge). So make sure you fill it in a way that it can freeze nicely flat.

3) Knot the glove at the end.

4) Put it in the freezer so that it rests on a flat surface (You can make the fingers visible, I trust you!).

5) When it's frozen, prepare your bowl.

6) Fill the bowl with a red juice of your choice.

7) Add vodka - we are germaphobes so we need something to disinfect the possible glove germs, right? ;-)= Just make sure you pour it slowly so that it doesn't mix with the juice. That's just for the first impression, you will mixt it all later anyway.

8) Insert the frozen hand (after you've stripped it off the plastic layer).

9) Have the drink all for yourself as the others find it too gross-looking to drink.

Spooky indeed...

I am not a fan of any holidays. I don’t really like Christmas, Easter only interests my inner artist when coloring the eggs... just all I like about these days is the fact that there is no school.

On the other hand, if I were to pick out one holiday which should be celebrated globally, it would be Halloween, because I’ve ever liked the spooky side – they have the best cookies after all. Plus dressing up as creepy things and getting candies for it sounds so absurd it pleases my crooked mind.  But since my country is totally oblivious to the most of the Anglo-American festivals, I never really get into the right Halloween mood.

However, every now and then there are some shops trying to implant these alien festivities into our homes and I surrender and let them take my money for useless products I don’t need. Because why not. I like Halloween.

So when there was a whole collection of various Halloween goodies in Lidl supermarket, I just couldn’t stand there and let them stay on the shelf. I winded up with some muffins (yeah, yeah, I can bake my own which are always tastier and cheaper but these where with PUMPKINS on them!) and a drink which is called Spooky Strawberry (c’mon, it’s a VAMPIRE strawberry!). It looked like those flavored milk drinks I haven’t had since my childhood, so I let my inner child have her pick.

I’m one of those people who - when handed a bottle – play with it and subsequently read what’s on the cover. I managed to read the contents part of the drink and that spooked the hell out of me.

If I omit all those nasty chemicals I’ll get to the fruity part. How the people who produce strawberry milk manage to make it WITHOUT actual strawberries will probably remain a mystery. They probably thought: “Hey, if we mix lemon, radish and currant we will get a strawberry flavor! And if it still doesn’t taste like one we can make it red and people’s brains will automatically produce the flavor. It’s a win.” Well, maybe it is. Despite reading the contents table I still thought it kinda tasted like strawberries.  

So, what’s the moral of the story? Wait, there was supposed to be one?! Just don’t read what’s on the cover and let your inner child be happy it’s Halloween!