MOAR HALLOWEEN!!!

  Halloween is seriously my fave holiday, I never want it to end.  In fact, I'm going to another costume party today, this time with my awesome family!  Also, why didn't I post this picture with my last post?!  It's awesome, if I do say so myself!

  You always get to do the best makeup on Halloween, and this year I made sure to get deep in that MUFE flash palette, since I paid for the damn thing, I might as well get the most out of it!

  My beautiful friend Britt let me beat her face for a 'harlequin clown' look, and I gotta say I'm pretty proud of how it turned out!  I have a lot of experience painting my own face, but I tend to get the shakey hand when trying to do anyone else's!

 

  The whole face is MUFE flash palette, set with all-important Swagger finishing powder.  As I live and breathe! TELL ME that is not the cutest clown you have ever seen!

  Oh my gosh, how cute is this outfit, too??  Crinolines for life, babies!  I have a gigantic steamer trunk full of pantyhose and tutus, I LIVE for that shit!

Happy Halloween!

  Ahh yes, boys and ghouls, it's the most wonderful time of the year again!  I'm talking about Halloween...what did you think I meant?!  I can't get enough of kitschy decor, fake blood, and fun-sized candy bars!!

Such a shame I didn't get a proper shot of my lovely neck scar, which you can barely see here!

  OK first let me just talk about my costume makeup for just a second here.  I was really pleased with how this look turned out!  I wanted a green face without having to cover myself in greasy makeup, but I didn't want to end up with a bloodless zombie face, so powder was out!
  I have this epic palette of high-end grease paints from Make Up For Ever that I am absolutely obsessed with!  The green on my face is straight from the palette with no added tints.  The colors are rich and beautiful and I absolutely adore it, but caveat emptor: these paints are greasy as fuck.  Now, I'm an oily-faced lass to begin with, but these are pretty insanely slippery when you first put them on!  This means a few things, both good and bad.  Happily, this makes it insanely easy to apply and also to fix any mistakes once you've got it on your face.  Unfortunately, it also means you need to give it proper time to cook, girl.  Gotta let that shit just SIT THERE for a good hour before I feel confident.   
  Additionally, it pretty much requires a finishing powder, so you're stuck with a velvet finish whether you want it or not.  I use Swagger finishing powder, which I ALSO freaking love.  Now, I love MUFE, but their finishing powder is half the size and twice the price, and it is made of exactly the same thing!!  WHAT in the WHAT, girl!   Don't be dumb, comparison shop.  And support small business!  The whole Swagger line is handmade by the divine Blake Karamazov in San Francisco!  We will be revisiting her again soon, to be sure...
  The lips are Jamaica by Ka'Oir, which is pretty great, too.  It's pretty creamy, and suuuper pigmented, so you don't have to put a heaping ton on to turn normal-girl-colored lips green!  I'm not crazy about the way it smells, but it's a small quibble.  I mean, it's not like it stinks.  It's fairly long-lasting and comfortable to wear, so I would recommend it.  The brand has all the freaky colors you have been wanting but unable to find.
  The eyeliner is a cream liner by MUFE, which I used on my stitches as well.  This shit is the BOOOOOMB!!!  I will never use liquid liner again, I swear to you.  This stuff is the total opposite of the paint palette - it's super waxy and dries quickly!  It stays richly black and flexible all day, too - no crusty, flaky business.  PLUS it doesn't require a powder to stay in place. Hurrah! Well worth the price.  I love it so much I would marry it. 
  My skin has nothing but mineral powder and the soft, forgiving sheen of my webcam's meager flash.

 

Completing the look with a Bride of Frankenstein bouffant and some gangrenous sutures!

  Now I've been dying to try a little spooky dripping blood look on my nails, but red just wasn't gonna match my Frankenstein ensemble, so I went with neon orange and green spooky slime!  I love neons, but they are almost always a slightly translucent gel, which is not great for coverage over dark colors, and naturally I needed a black backdrop for my Nickelodeon-colored slime nails.  Solution?  Mix one drop of white polish to four or five drops of neon polish, and viola! You have opaque neons!  Sure, they end up being a slightly paler hue, but once you've got it on your hands, no one will be the wiser!

To paint the slime, I used a combination of a thin, stout nail brush, and a small dotting tool.  The dotting tool was great for applying even coverage and achieving the drips.  In fact, the dotting tool is the most useful for this look.  I highly recommend using something similar, but in a pinch, a nice toothpick or even a dry (and cleaned!) ball-point pen will do lovely!  Be sure to wipe the tip every couple of dots to keep your tool precise and your polish from getting gooey.

Pretty sure these pants are the backdrop to 50% of my photos...

Swimmingly Cute New Looks for the Modern Mermaid

  We hosted an epic house party for my dear Friend of the Animal's birthday this past March, where some local talent played the house down, and when the cops showed up, they said "party on."  A night of epic proportions, as well as epic costumes.

  We like any excuse to wear a costume, and birthdays are by and large one of the best occasions - especially when you get to choose the theme.  Tonight's theme?  Under the Sea.  The birthday girl had a dream... a dream of being a mermaid.  Could I, armed with a serger and three yards of pink satin spandex, rise to the challenge?

  Oh it took trails, it took tears.  I realized late in the game that you can't beat the serger, so you may as well join it.  You want the machines on your side.  Anyway, I'm still learning the ins and outs of my new overlock machine, so what better way to practice than sewing slippery spandex to thick ruched lace?  Excellent idea.

  The pattern for these skirts was so simple - I just used my favorite American Apparel high-waisted pencil skirt as a pattern!  AA garments are SO easy to reconstruct, never buy something in two colors when you can just get one and then make as many as you want! Seriously, this skirt is made up of a mere three separate panels. My only alteration was to lengthen it slightly. The 'fins' are made from two layers of lace cut into a right-angled triangle and gathered along the hypotenuse (hey, algebra, never thought I'd meet you here in costume-making 101) which was stitched to the hem of the skirt.  The gathering rounded off the edges of the fins nicely, giving them the oh-so-Ariel shape that I wanted. 

Me and the Birthday Girl pose for a photo

In lieu of a clam-shell bra, I made us each a cute little pair of sequined Starfish pasties.  (The dancing eventually compromised the integrity of my pastie glue. I recommend packing a bikini top whenever you wear pasties, just in caseties.) The look is topped off with some seahorse necklaces and mermaid crowns.  Birthday girl bought a packet of plastic sea creatures at the dollar store, which we spray-painted gold and and pink to match!

  I'm also wearing the perfect mermaid lippy from Swagger Cosmetics by the incomparable Blake Karamazov.  Scope it out at http://swaggerco.bigcartel.com/ !

Starfish pasties!

   Here's a front-n-back view of the pasties where you can see how they're made - vinyl backing cut and shaped into a little cone, and decorated with chained sequins (way easier to use than applying single sequins one-by-one.  That would be maddening.)

Not the best photos, but you get the idea.

  And of course, no look is complete without a coordinating manicure.  Here's a pretty simple half-moon with a shimmery teal over hot pink, with a few selective touches of glitter - just a couple of the moons and tips have a glittery topcoat.

  **Bonus!  The mermaid skirt doubles as a sexy nightclub dress!  I'm all about turning a long skirt I love into a strapless dress - just throw a belt on if it's a loose skirt and viola!  New dress.

A Hairy Affair

  What started out as an innocent attempt to create vegan "feathers" for a friend has mutated into a full-blown obsession with wearing hair extensions.  And when I say wearing, I really mean wearing.

Hair extensions make for a really fabulous clothing and jewelry material - they are vegan and cruelty free, they have amazing movement, and super soft, chemically treated and straightened human hair feels amazing! Truly, you haven't lived until you've worn a hair skirt...

My Parasitic Twin costume!

My theme for this little number was "Parasitic Twin," or simply "Teeth and Hair" if you prefer.  (You can barely see my tiny tooth necklace.  We'll get to teeth in the future.)

This was a super simple project, I used three layers of hair extensions (10inch) on the skirt, sewing each onto a fat black elastic band, making it basically a hair tutu.  The necklace is a single length of black hair extensions sewed along the neckline to a bit of bias tape.  The bias tape is totally invisible and has the added bonus of covering up the weave seams, which can get a bit itchy against the throat.  One of my few costumes that needs the occasional shampooing!

Hair collar - detail

 






  As you can see, the necklace alone makes quite the majestic statement piece, and doesn't even look too terribly outlandish when worn sans matching skirt.  I feel like a girl could wear this to the club.

  RE: "Vegan Feathers" - because I haven't forgotten mentioning this.  I made a series of earrings using small, one- to two-inch sections of weave, which were originally intended to mimic a feathered earring look for my dear amiga, Friend of the Animals.  They didn't turn out looking too feathery, but to my delight, they came out looking like badass chandeliers!  The Stevies (left) are classy, but I am really partial to the duo-tone look!

On the left, "Stevie Nicks," on the right, "Miley Cyrus"

  In order to achieve a more feather-like effect, I reduced the width of the extensions considerably - down to only one or two centimetres.  With this look it was easier to combine multiple hair feathers without getting too weighed down - visually or literally!  (The chandelier type can be pretty heavy once they're all bedazzled with bead and chain accents!) This look really reads better as feathers than the larger style, but the visual effects of each are so different, you can't even really compare them!  Which do you prefer?

A pair of the slimmer variety, this is the same pair on my head, and hanging from the wall. 

  Eventually I'd like to offer these for sale.  Would you wear human hair jewelry?