Removing Gel Nails at Home

I got my nails done with some friends a couple of weeks ago and decided to get gel nails because I’ve never tried it before! I was happy with the outcome and the only reason I needed to take the nails off was because my nails were growing out which was really nice. I won’t be getting gel nails again though because of how difficult it is to take off (not that I really get my nails professionally done anyway). I first started just pulling it off because I was bored but then realized that that was tearing up my nail too! I started researching on how to get the gel nails off correctly at home. Everything I found required foil, cotton balls, and acetone. That sounded awful for my nails and my skin; also I didn’t have any acetone. BUT! I decided that I needed to get this color off and I didn’t want to go get it removed professionally. So I gathered my supplies:

-       Foil

-       Cotton balls

-       Acetone (I just used nail polish remover)

-       My mom (to help me with the foil)

I was told that I should keep it on for 10 minutes but since I wasn’t using straight acetone, I had to leave it on for 30 minutes for it to work. One House Hunters later, I was able to scrape off the polish (with a guilty conscious of using so much foil unnecessarily).

The Elements: Metal

This is the third look to the elementals look. Again, it's all with eyeshadows. I actually created this look quite awhile ago so I don't remember much from what I did so I'll put up pictures and if you would like me to recreate it with instructions, let me know!

I do remember using a lot of waterproof eyeliner (because that's all I had) and had trouble taking it off!

Zombie Bite

WARNING: Test wax and spirit gum on your skin for any allergies!  

I am by no means an expert on SFX. I would suggest doing some research on actual bites from humans, dogs, and such to get an idea on what your bite would most realistically look like, if you care about such things. It is also important to think about how long you have been a zombie, which will change how your bite will look, and also decide on how you think zombie venom would like after time. In general, make a character, be creative, and always have fun!

My character was just recently bit so the wound is still quite fresh, and you can see my attempts to have the venom pulse through the veins. My vein attempt didn’t go that well, but practice will make perfect.

Whenever I do a bite, I start out by biting wherever on my body where I would have gotten bit. (This is probably not how the professionals do it, but as someone who isn’t the best artist, it helps to have an outline. I also need to find a way to easily do a bite eventually because I think it would be so cool to do a huge bite out of my neck at some point.) I then quickly outline the bite in an eyeliner (usually white since it won’t show up after I’m done with the makeup, but this time I choose brown because I needed to see it clearly when I applied wax). I then placed spirit gum on all the parts I wanted wax (around the teeth marks) which will allow me to easily make it seem like the bite has gone into my flesh. I wait for the spirit gum to get tacky (patience is very important here!) and then dabbed a very thin layer of cotton (using cotton balls) on the spirit gum. This allows the wax to better stick to your skin by giving it grooves and texture to stick to. Warning to all: wax can be very annoying to work with and you must have patience. It is helpful to have towels, Vaseline, and sometime of flat thing to help with spreading the wax. While you can use your hands, it can be frustrating. They also sell tools, spatulas, to help spread the wax, but I use a metal cuticle pusher. The colder your instrument and hands are, will make it easier to spread the wax because it won’t turn into putty. Work the wax until you have “bite marks” and then taper the edges of the wax until it blends in with your skin. When you are happy with the shape of your wax, bring out a stipple brush and layer on colors to get the effect you want. I had a freshly bit zombie so I went with a bruise effect, using yellows, greens, and purples. I put purple at the very bottom of each “tooth” mark with a brush and used my finger to dab red around the edges. I also had this wonderful idea to create agitated veins (because in my zombie story, the poison flowed through the veins) but this did not turn out how I wanted. You can faintly see purple lines on my wrist but it didn’t turn out how I wanted to I just kind of blended it out and left it alone so I wouldn’t ruin the rest of the makeup. I then took fake blood and filled each gap with blood and stippled around the hand with my stipple brush. Don’t forget to do both sides of your hands and you’re done!

The Elements: Earth

This is the second look in The Elements series and it is the element Earth! But before I get started, shoutout to my mom for participating! I have been wanting to get practice on painting others' faces and she bravely volunteered. (Also, I thought the "earth" look would look great with her hair color). And again, this look is using all simple products that you have in your home!

What we used today was: eyeshadow, eyeliner, lipstick, foundation, and bronzer.

This is the finished look: (sorry about the lighting)

We first used a foundation that was two shades darker than my mother's skin tone. I wanted her skin to look almost like earth so we slightly darkened it. This also hid her rosy cheeks. I finished her cheeks with a very bright bronzer, so she wouldn't look dirty and I liked the sparkleyness of it. Her lips were a dark, dark rose shade of lipstick. I also darkened and sharpened her eyebrows. 

For her eyes, we used a very shimmery bronze orange on her lids. I then used a dark brown in her crease and brought it all the way back to her hairline (with a hard edge on the bottom of the color), blending the color slightly towards her forehead. I used a sage green for under her eyes and continued that color back towards her hairline, doing the opposite than what I did with the brown. I did a simple Cleopatra look with her eyeliner and finished her off with some mascara, and that was it!

Let me know what you think! 

The Elements: Water

I'm doing a couple looks that have to do with "Elements". All of the looks will be done with eyeshadows, foundations, and simple makeup you should have laying around the house! No costume makeup for this one. It will consist of at least five tutorials, water, earth, fire, air, and metal. Do you have any ideas for other tutorials that should be under this series? Let me know!

This first tutorial will be for the element water. I used my ELF eye shadows, Mary Kay foundations, other foundation, eyelashes, lip gloss, and primer.

This was the finished look!

The only thing different about these looks are the lips. I added the blue lips but I didn't know how much I liked it so I also took pictures with more of a natural lip, I'll explain how I did both. I like both looks a lot and I feel like they give different feelings to the look. Which one do you like better?

On to the tutorial!

For the foundation, I kept it pretty natural and light. I chose a liquid foundation that was light in coverage but still my skin tone so my natural rosy-ness would show through. I wanted this because I think of light pinks and corals when I think of water, not just blues and greens. I then added a powder foundation over my skin that was slightly too light for my skin tone. I also used the liquid foundation to lighten my eyebrows, I wanted a dainty overall look and bold colors to show the softness of water and also the power of water. I primed my eyes and going back away from my eyes (where you can see I added the blue).

I then started with a light, almost sky, blue. I blended this color over my lid and all the way out to my hair line, as you can see in the picture. I put a very bright blue right on my lids and slightly blended it out. I took a medium blue with a tint of green in it and put it in my crease and blended this out with the lighter blue. I took these three colors and many other shades of blues and greens and layered and then added swirls to the sides of my face.

Here is a picture of the swirls: (the lighter blue was washed out by the light)

They almost remind me of veins, except some of them I added more of a spiral to them. To finish my eyes off, I added the medium blue below my eyes and a white blended in the inside corner of my eye. I also used my liquid eyeliner along my top line. I then added swirls with the eyeliner at the corner of my eye. I added fake eyelashes and my eyes were done!

Here is another picture where the lighting is better:

 One thing I would suggest, if you don't have such rosiness to your skin as I do, I would add blush. A very soft pink or coral, to the apples of your cheeks, then blend it out farther and thinner than you normally would. I didn't do this step because my face is just perpetually slightly red.

The last step is the lips. I primed my lips for only the blue lips. For the blue lips, I packed the bright blue eye shadow, that I put on my lids, on my lips while the primer was still a bit tacky so the eyeshadow would stick. I then added a clear gloss on top to seal in the color and make it shiny. For the natural lips, I just used a pink shimmer lip gloss.

And that's it! The key to doing this look is just to play with the colors and to blend! Also, don't be afraid to layer colors, it gives the look depth. I want to see your version of this look! Send me a picture on Facebook!

Make yourself into a Tim Burton Character!

I love Tim Burton movies and my friend mentioned wanting to make her own Tim Burton style movie so I got to thinking. A dangerous pastime, I know ;) Besides the beautiful, and most of the time scary, scenery Tim Burton has, the style of his characters are the most memorable. So I decided to try and make myself look like I was a Tim Burton movie character myself!

It was a lot of fun, and fairly simple, to create this look. There are many ways to go "Tim Burton" and I'll probably continue trying different looks based on his style but this one was a good start to get my brain churning. One of the hard things for me, as someone who likes to base looks on previous pictures, his most memorable characters are cartoons. I, however, wanted to do a more "natural" look for this go round so I created this all on my own!

The key to "Tim Burton style" is to make yourself gaunt and pale. I used a foundation that was two shades lighter than I actually am. Only use this where you would normally hightlight, such as your cheekbones, the tip of your chin, and forehead. Then it will be easier to darken the other parts of your skin. I then used browns to contour my face in an extreme way, mostly focusing around the eyes. Besides the eyes, I made sure that I contoured the hollows of my cheeks, the bridge of my nose, my jaw line, and my forehead. I also put liquid eyeliner all around my eyes to really bring attention to them.

I used a black eyeliner pencil to fill in my eyebrows. I exaggerated them and made my left one arch a bit more than my right eyebrow. I did this because most Tim Burton characters always seem to have an odd flaw such as this (Corpse Bride has one eyebrow that is higher than the other), it gives your character something different. For the lips, I used my normal red lip stain. The only difference is I exaggerated my bottom lip and pointed my cupid's bow. I then put black eyeshadow on the stain to darken the color.

This look is made for anyone to be able to do it! I only used foundation, eyeliner, eyeshadow, and lip stain (though regular lipstick would work just as well). These are things that can just be laying around the house or is easily found all year (no need to wait for Halloween to find cheap costume makeup)!

Good luck with your Tim Burton looks! Send me pictures of your version on my Facebook page :)

Wounded in the Woods Makeup

I started out this look for a friend as a "war" makeup tutorial, however; it morphed into a wounded runaway. POW is as close as I could label this for a "war" look. Even though it wasn't what I wanted when I started, I think it turned out well and it was an extremely simple look. I first started with eyeshadow shades of browns and greens.

Here is a picture:

I thought that this was sufficient, especially if you didn't have costume makeup, didn't have much time, or were just looking for something really easy. It just wasn't as bright and bold as I wanted, so I layered cream costume makeup on top.

Here is a picture of the cream makeup on top of the eyeshadow:

This did have the depth of color I was looking for but it was still dark, and almost depressing. The colors still came out dirty and very blended. I then decided that the look was taking its own path and followed it, so I went a step further and added some blood and two cuts.

This is the final look:

I apologize for the bad lighting in these pictures, but if you can see, I have a cut on my forehead and on my lip. I also streaked water under my eyes like I have been crying. This is the final product for this look.

I used ELF eyeshadows and the super cheap cream makeup from Walmart (that you get around Halloween and pick up for a couple of bucks) along with some fake blood which came in my Walmart Halloween cream makeup kit. The number one tip I have here is to not forget about the small details: don't forget to paint your lips, ears, and neck. If you are going to a party and have a costume to go along with this makeup tutorial, I would consider also painting other parts of your body that will be showing, such as arms, hands, shoulders, or even legs. Just remember if it's at a friend's house you don't want to smear your makeup all over their things!

Good luck with wounded looks!