halloween looks - do, a deer, a female deer

The weekend is high time to experiment with Halloween makeup, and I found some inspiration whilst Googling around. Sometimes painting your face to resemble an animal is really entertaining and it's a great potential costume. All you need to add is some brown clothing if you don't want to go all out.

 Interestingly enough, I'm wearing a shirt with a stag on it. It's actually a Harry Potter shirt with Harry with his patronus in red on the front, and Voldemort with his snake patronus in green on the back. You may also notice that my hair looks different here--hello, massive forehead!--I always wear a headband to keep my hair back whilst doing makeup that requires more than a quick fill of the brow and some lip balm. My bangs happen to fall directly in front of my forehead and have started to cover my right eye.

This is a rare post where you'll get a photo I originally posted on Tumblr. I quite like this picture, actually! I didn't take any pictures with my awful camera where I was wearing my glasses because I wanted the makeup to be the focal point, but usually I take Tumblr pictures with my glasses because I'm basically blind.

I actually wrote up a step-by-step instruction guide to getting this look. Obviously this would have been better if I had pictures of each step, but I'm really hasty with my makeup application sometimes and I have no idea how to take photos of myself whilst I'm putting makeup on. It's something I'm trying to teach myself!

1. Apply concealer to cover dark circles and redness. I forgot to cover my dark circles (whoops!) but I have very large red patches on my cheeks that I covered.
2. Put on eyeshadow primer so the eyeshadow stays in place.
3. Use a white pencil to colour the area around the eyes and blend. You can use a brush, but I just used my finger because I have more control over where I spread the product. Place a layer of matte white eyeshadow over this area. I used my NYX Milk pencil and Sugarpill eyeshadow in Tako.
4. Apply matte brown eyeshadow on the lid. I used my finger to do this, but if you have better brushes/aren't as finnicky, go ahead and use a brush. The shadow I used was Urban Decay's Buck and I blended it out with UD's Naked, but you don't have to use a second shade to blend it out if you're using a brush--my fingers just skipped a little so I needed a little give.
5. Line your waterline and lower lashline with a white pencil, and add a line under your lashes. I used UD's Yeyo liner.
6. Line your upper lashline with a black pencil. You want to extend the eyeliner into your inner corner and downward, and to the outer edge of your eye. When you reach the outer edge, you want to make a straight line from the eyeliner that angles upward.
7. Line under the white liner with the black liner. You want to make your eyes look bigger, so don't line the entire lower lashline. Also, bring the line that you extended past the inner corner back toward your lash line so it forms a point.
8. Using bronzer or a matte brown eyeshadow/blush, begin to contour your face. Focus on the hollows of your cheeks and bring that up to just under where your white circles were drawn. Aim for a soft triangle that points downward.
9. Bring bronzer up toward your temples and around your hairline. Put a little bronzer around your jawline, as well.
10. Fill in your eyebrows. My usual brow shape is too arched for this softer look, so I used an old eyeliner and made my brows a little straighter and fuller. (You can probably add mascara somewhere around this point, but it's not necessary.)
11. Brush bronzer down the sides of your nose. Use a white pencil to highlight just between your brows and down the bridge of your nose to contour it.
12. Using a brown pencil, sketch a line that connects the inner end of your eyebrow to the tip of your nose, making sure that you draw a straight line. Blend this out with your finger and repeat on the other side.
13. Use a brown matte shadow to blend out the line where it's closest to your eyebrow. This way it makes the line look a little more natural.
14. Take a black pencil and start to colour in the base of your nose. Aim to have two peaks that reach toward the brown lines you drew earlier, and then slope those points down toward the edges of your nostrils.
15. Draw a line connecting the base of your nose to the cupid's bow of your upper lip with the black pencil. You can also colour in your upper lip with this pencil, but be careful--some eyeliners are not meant to be used near the mouth. I only had this on for a few minutes, but better to err on the side of caution and either use a black lipstick or something clearly marked lip-safe.
16. Use either a nude lipstick on the bottom lip or concealer. I used both, but only because the nude lipstick I was using was actually too dark, so I lightened it with concealer.
17. Use a white pencil to draw white spots on your cheeks over the bronzer. You can add additional spots closer to your hairline like I did or skip that entirely.

This sounds a lot more complicated than it actually is--the worst part is the eyeliner, and if you can't tell, that's what I managed to screw up big time in these photos! If anything, I'd advise practising the eyeliner ahead of time. The rest of it will fall right into place. Here's the full list of products.

BROWS
Sephora Nano Eyeliner in 08 Iced Brown

EYES
Entire eye area - NYX Jumbo Eye Pencil in Milk (white) and Sugarpill pressed eyeshadow in Tako (pure matte white)
Lid - Urban Decay eyeshadow in Buck (fawn brown matte) and Naked (nude matte) blended out to the crease
Upper lash line + inner corner + part of lower lash line - Urban Decay 24/7 Glide-On Eye Pencil in Perversion (matte blackest black)
Lower lash line - Urban Decay 24/7 Glide-On Eye Pencil in Yeyo (metallic white)

FACE
Embryolisse Lait-Creme Concentre
Benefit boi-ing concealer in 01
bareMinerals All-Over Face Color in Warmth (healthy/sun-kissed glow - chestnut)
Sephora Nano Eyeliner in 05 Chocolate, 01 Midnight Black, 03 Pure White

LIPS
Benefit boi-ing concealer in 01
NYX Matte lipstick in Butter (toffee nude)
Sephora Nano Eyeliner in 01 Midnight Black