Kayleigh Rose Blogs: Halloween

So, it's that time of year again, Halloween has come back around, and if you are anything like me you may not have any clue what you are going to dress up as this year.

I do this every year, and after each year I decide that the next year I will be super organised and have a great costume idea for next Halloween...

But unfortunately, it never really works out that way. Usually I get distracted by something else or I haven't got the funds for an amazing Halloween costume or, like this year, I am working and I can't be bothered going all out for a costume to wear to work(running around a bar all night in some elaborate costume does not appeal to me at all!).

So, I have decided to do a series of blog posts with quick, last minute makeup looks that you can totally pull of this Halloween! Because personally, I think if you have a good makeup look, it looks like you've went to waaaayy more effort than you actually have!

For this blog post, I have decided to show you how I create a scary skull makeup look(I say scary because I am a wimp and this is probably the scariest of all the makeup looks I will be doing!). I really like this look because you can either go for a full face skull, or you could just do half a face and do the other half really glam, which I think looks lovely too!

This is the same look that I tried out a few weeks ago, just on half of my face, using the exact same technique in this post. I put more detail into this one because I feel with the whole face, it would have just been a bit too much.

So let's get going!

I started with a clean, moisturised face(my skin is having a slight breakdown this week, so excuse me looking like death already!).

The makeup I've used for this look is the Snazaroo classic face paints in Black and White, a black Topshop eyeliner and a Black Urban Decay eyeshadow. In all this is a pretty simple look to do, the most difficult part(in my opinion), is trying to get the jaw/teeth right. But it doesn't need to be perfect! So don't stress out too much, practice makes perfect!

Starting with the white face paint and a wet foundation brush, I placed the paint all over my face, making sure I had a good coverage, I also used an old beauty blender just to push the face paint into the skin.

Once I had covered my whole face and the paint had dried in, I took my eyeliner pencil and roughly drew in the areas of my face that I wanted to have detail. Don't worry, at this stage it can be really rough, you don't need to worry about the detail until a little while later! You are just trying to get the feel for it just now.

As you can see, I have done a really rough outline around the areas that I want to have some detail.
So, around my eye sockets, my temples, where my nose would be, along my cheekbones and I have roughly drawn in my teeth-although these do change slightly because drawing teeth is hard!

Next, I just fill in the areas that I want to block colour black, so my eye sockets, temples and nose. I have also very lightly outlined the hollows of my cheeks and the space between my upper and lower sets of teeth.

From this stage onwards, you can begin to visualise how you want your skull to look and it does make it slightly easier. Next I took a very tiny paintbrush, and with the black paint I decided on the outline of my teeth, but don't panic if you mess up at this stage, it's still fixable! I also took my eyeliner and filled in my water line and just underneath to blend my eyes in, making sure there was no flesh tones visible.

Now, the teeth are really tricky, so they are probably the area that you want to spend the most time on. But let's face it, they don't have to look exactly like real teeth! Unless you are a dentist or something, I don't think you need to worry to much about it, it's just for fun after all!

After you have roughly decided where you want your teeth to go, I went back in with my black paint brush and shaded the areas around each tooth, again, this is where you can really determine the shape of them and how you want them to look. Once you have decided exactly where they are going and you have shaded around them, just take you white paint and go over each tooth, just to enhance the whiteness of them.

I then took my black eyeshadow on a fluffy brush and blended it out around my black paint, just to soften the look a little, but to also darken the face paint and make it more intense.

I then took a very fine paint brush and painted in some cracks around the face wherever I felt it was necessary. It just gives the look some extra definition. Like I said at the beginning, I didn't add as much detail to the whole face makeup(as opposed to the half face), purely because I think it would be too much to look at on the whole face, I personally don't think it needs it, however you can add as much or as little as you like! It's your face after all!

And there you have it! A pretty simple(except for those pesky teeth!) last minute makeup look for your Halloween!

You could pop in some creepy contact lenses to go with it(I need actual contacts to see so I can't use them), but if you do, just remember to make sure they are actually safe for your eyes! You should always check who you buy them from, if it isn't from an authorised optician, it's probably best to stay away from them, your eyes are way to valuable to damage permanently for one night of fun!

I hope you like this look and find it an easy, quick alternative route if you've left the planning to last minute! Everything I used is easily found in the shops and pretty affordable. I got my face paints and brushes from Amazon for less than £10!

Here's a few extra pictures... My cat doesn't look convinced by this, but I hope you are!