Eyebrow test #1: glue sticks

So apparently drag queens use bog standard glue sticks to make those bushy man brows lie flat and smooooooooth - really?! Well only one way to find out! Cue test number one with a pack of 4 little glue sticks bought at the cheapy shop up t'road - plus they have Cinderella on em (Disney's patron saint of transformations no less!)

Here's what I tried:

1. A few swipes the wrong way and a few the right way on each eyebrow:

No bad.. Goes pretty smooth to start with. This could bode well..

2. Adding another layer and smoothed with my fingers, adding a little powder to add texture like the tutorial I skipped through mentioned:

Lying quite flat but a bit gritty..

3. I must've skipped taking a photo of this bit as I used a butter knife to apply a thicker layer of glue on.

4. Left eyebrow has layer of concealer over it, right brow looking as no 3 should have.

The hair texture is coming through and I'm struggling not to peel at the edges which are starting to curl away from my skin with the layers of glue underneath.

5. Bugger it! I'll add MORE concealer, MORE foundation and powder those things back to the Stone Age! Hahaha!!!

Oh no wait, it looks rubbish..cloggy, peeling and without full cover. Not an entire failure - this could work on stage - i.e. from metres away, but it doesn't stand up under close scrutiny.

Still I may as well have some fun with it..

6. Picking an evil eyebrow type:

This is tough - I couldn't decide so thought I'd trial one of each..

7. Presenting a fierce straight line with smudgy blending out. 

The outer bit looks much better than the inner bit. Maybe this is why a lot of queens seem to use part of their own brows - that tufty start has peeled like an orange!

8. Hokay! Evil eyebrow no 2: 

Thicker, angled brows with classic drag-style lid shading and a little Clockwork Orange style liner to balance the bottom.

As you can see the glue leaves a shinier finish that's not as smooth as I like. Maybe adding 2 thick layers would help?

But it peeled off really easily at least - without pulling hairs out either:

..at least no more so than taking off a peeling face mask.

Alienspiration

Though I've just treated myself to some more supplies that will help my next project from the Dick Smith's book I'm working through, I'm still on a bit of a makeup roll and wanted to do something else in the interim that was as colourful as the drag attempt, but on a different setting. So I went to space!

Well, no I didn't, (having had insufficient colours to try the lion I had in mind) I fancied trying a fruity alien  and googled myself silly. The picture I found (Anastasija Potjomkina created this futuristic alien geisha look on model Iska Ithil using Sugarpill Love+, Lumi and Darling.) was on a Pinterest page, but my palette needed to be darker due to the kit I had.

The end result was a little Starlight Express-meets-Metropolis, but I wanted to try some shading techniques using card (as I don't have any surgical tape) with a combination of paint and powder. 

Kit used: 

Inspirational pic found: (I'm fairly certain this uses a lot of airbrushing)

1. Starting with the usual clean and neutral face mugshot:

2. Cover everything inc. collar area in a layer of Snazaroo Clown White:

3. Having cut out a rough curve from an old cinema ticket, I stippled on some (possibly Sky) blue  Snazaroo paint with a sponge curving down roughly from the corner of my eye..

 

..though it didn't sit quite right on my face so I curved it up further.

4. Extending the blue up and round to include shading across the top of my brow and down the line of my throat, jawline and creating the shadows in my collar bone. At this point I'd also exaggerated my collar bone with more white painted on and smudged in with my fingers:

5. Not wanting my existing eyebrows to be red, I extended the blue upwards to include my brows and using the other side of the card, painted lines for new 'eyebrows' above, a fruity circle thing on my chin and 'gills':

6. Using my hot pink loose eyeshadow - and being very careful to blow off the excess - I filled in more of the eyebrows near the temple and brought it down to my lids, then shaded either side of my nose and filled in part of the chin circle:

7. Using a short, thick brush I shaded the edge of my jaw and down the centre of my throat, before adding a doll-like spot to each cheek and an upside-down triangle under my eyes to continue the line of the brow tapering down:

8. Lastly I mixed a little black to the red and went over the corners of my 'eyebrows' and the edge of my chin circle before filling in the lips with blue and edging the upper lip in red:

9. I dug out a wig to complete the look and voila:

Time taken: approx 90 mins (though as my housemates came to chuckle/ogle I got caught up yapping)

Review:

Though I'm pleased with the stippling use on top of a card 'barrier' which creates a more solid line that makes things easier, using one paint on top of another tends to wipe or dilute the first layer a little. Even letting it dry and adding powder between.

Using a hot pink powder on top really let the colours pop, though it was fraught with spilling danger which I had to correct a few times as a big brush wouldn't always remove it. I'm not sure what it is about necks that means the colour never seems to blend as smoothly in the creases. Perhaps that's just unavoidable when you're painting yourself?

Mostly the thing I've noticed here is the lopsidedness of certain lines i need to work harder on and what works on my face might not always translate compared to the inspirational pic I tried to copy from. 

A Nina Flowers inspired act

Ok so having tanned the first season of RuPaul's Drag Race in one sitting, I got a bit obsessed with runner up Drag Queen du jour Nina Flowers and her amazing androgynous makeup skills. So I woke up, decided I wanted to have a little fun - it's been far too long since I've given myself any time to do more of this- and try a woman-dressed-as-man-dressed-as-woman style of makeup just for fun!

I only used my normal make up with a little Snazaroo (clown) white for those cheek highlights so I didn't bother posting a pic of my kit. Ok, here's how I achieved my look:

1. Beginning with a clean face then adding a base coat layer of my normal foundation: Rimmel colour match in ivory:

2. Adding some sponged highlights to cheeks, eyebrows, t-zone and the bridge of my nose with a thinnish layer of Snazaroo Clown White and smudging it in with my fingers. I also added some shadows underneath my cheekbones and at my temples with another foundation a couple of shades darker than my usual one:

3. I decided the darker foundation just wasn't cutting it so I added my (only, pink) blusher with a thick short brush to the areas under my cheekbone, my jawline and my temples going into the hairline and down the sides of my nose to further exaggerate the contours:

4. Adding some pink eyeshadow with a fine, damp brush In a cats eye shape, exaggerated down my nose and towards my temples:

5. And the same again but a narrower version with black:

6. As I don't have any eyebrow wax I just had to make do with keeping the shape roughly my own. I tried doing a double eyebrow...

...but didn't like the way it looked from the front so I removed it with a wipe and went over the temple shading again to repair it.

7. Normal brows again, filled out with kohl, adding eyeliner to upper and lower lids and a couple of thick layers of mascara. I considered putting on some false eyelashes but the only pair I could find were a little too monstrously feathered and I thought they'd detract from the overall shape:

8. With the eyes finished, I moved onto the lips. Now, Drag Queens tend to have massive lips so I gave it a whirl far outside of my own tulip-shaped pout..

..hooo dear I took it a bit too far and look like a child whose eaten said lippy!

9. So I brought it back to just outside my lip line, added a little black to the corners of my mouth and a little white to the middle to create more of a contour and slathered the whole thing in a shitload of lip gloss:

10. Now to give myself a fierce updo to set the whole thing off and voila! The look is complete:

I'm pretty pleased with it overall, I think the only things that fell down were the blusher tone (I hardly use it so I'll have to get a better range) and my eyebrows. I figure with some wax and powder to set them I'll be able to create better shapes in future.

Time taken: approx 1 hour.

 

Crepe hair test one: pirate

Ok, so now my lovely products have long since arrived I've been itching to do something with the crepe hair but the first Dick Smith option is 5th on the list and I'm only 2 down so far. So a ready made excuse came when invited to a fancy dress party I returned to my old favourite - pirates! To be exact, I was thinking along the Errol Flynn buccaneer style of pirate this time so thought a little test of face fuzz would be perfect. 

Having googled how to do it, the night before I unwound a longish length from the crepe 'rope' and briefly submerged it in a bit of hot water, hung it over the bath taps and let it dry overnight. This worked perfectly to straighten it out for use the next evening.

Then having chopped size appropriate hits off (it really is like untangling fuzzy wool), I dabbed a bit of the Grimas Mastix Extra stuff on my chin and got to pressing it down a bit at a time. The glue dried quickly and a fair bit of crepe hair stuck to my fingers and brush. It's a little harsh and feels a bit like it should have a high alcohol content as my skin is warm/tingly underneath for a good 5 mins. Good thing I don't have sensitive skin eh? And the finished result:

Although my hair looks darker in the picture it's a really close match (and beards are often more auburn than head hair anyway). My face felt a little tight but I had the majority of facial movement fine.

The glue went a little shiny in the light but only from certain angles. 

Throughout the night the moustache bit got thinner as pulling it out of my mouth to drink and the odd pawing by passing strangers took its toll, but the chin beard/goatee stayed on really well. Even giving it a yank before taking it off only took about half off.

The Mastix remover was equally harsh and stunk like nail polish remover but it worked a treat to get it off. As a minor test of how it worked, I was pleased with the result overall.

Verdict: not for those of a sensitive nature but excellent hold and looked real enough to fool people into thinking I'd chopped off bits of my real hair for use.

Can't wait to try it again and I'm hoping a thicker layer of makeup will help provide more of a barrier to reduce the lightly burning sensation!

1st attempt: vampirism

Okay, so I got too excited and had to have another go from what I'm calling the 2nd chapter in my Dick Smith book. From the get go I thought this would be easier than the ageing one as it seemed simpler but as I ran into problems mixing 2 types of makeup (cream and water based do not go well together!) so I had to find another solution in order to finish it off. So it probably ended up taking about the same amount of time again (which I foolishly didn't clock.. Again..) but here's my first attempt at mimicking the vampire. Firstly, here's my inspiration:

 

 And how it's supposed to look.

 Kit used. It's hard to see but that's a metallic silver in the middle.

 Looking a bit pink faced and cynical (oddly). Turns out my 'neutral' face is a bit lop sided..

 After my rosy cheeks made for a poorer looking texture during the ageing effort I thought I'd try to tone them down for the base with a green toned concealer. In all honesty though it later reacted with the soluble snazaroo stuff and ended up clinging to my pores. Not the best idea, but noted for later efforts.

 Thin mix of the white and silver bases.

 And a little more, not forgetting the lips.

 Adding some shading with the silver alone, good thing I did that ageing exercise first eh? Lesson one: learn your skull contours!

 Don't forget the ears and neck shading!

 Disaster! The cream based black wont stick to the base of soluble white, even when it's dry and dusted with loose powder! Result: patchy grey instead of black which gets worse when eyes are closed! Might be a good effect for bruising however...

 Time to make with the crazy eyebrows a la Dick Smith's instructions. This would probs look best on a dude than me but hey, I'll give the feral look a whirl! Used some of the cream-that-would-not-mix to strengthen cheekbone and nose shadows.

 At the risk of it all going a bit 'Twilight' I busted out some black eyeshadow with a subtle gold fleck (only really noticeable up very close) to cover the patchy eyes, made them much darker so I added some really strong shadows under my chin. At this point I should have gone back to my ears but noted for next time. Also this was my first time painting the insides of my nostrils black!

 Finally I slapped some water on my bonce to slick my hair back and added a little black to the very inners of my lips. Then I went back and added white/grey flecks to make them look more pursed. To finish, a little red around my eyes and fake blood dripping from the side of my mouth.

 You probably really shouldn't paint your teeth (hardest was keeping my lips apart, and less saliva sucking!) but I thought it looked nicely monstrous given i had no fake teeth to pop in.

 And the finished effect with minor editing!