Day 1 

For the first day I decided to pull together a pop-art-esque zombie look. Any other year I've done a look involving making my face an entirely different unnatural color I've taken the extremely time-consuming and very drying route of pressing an eyeshadow into my skin until it was as covered as I was going to get—but even then being patchy and needing the help of a photo editor in the end to get the full-colored appearance I desired. My challenge with this look was finding a new method. At first I tried crushing up a bit of eyeshadow and using a mixing medium to turn it into more of a liquidy consistence I could paint on my face—once again, not pigmented enough to get that full coverage. I then tried mixing the same crushed shadow in with a good primer—this method got me the full coverage I was looking for but took way too much product to spread evenly. Third time's the charm, I used the lightest shade in Kat Von D Lock-It Foundation and mixed in that eyeshadow and upon applying it to the face it gave me the look I originally imagined! I think finding a full coverage foundation in the lightest possible shade was the key, this one being as literal white as a foundation could be. Sure, you could easily go and purchase something like MAC Chromacake in "pure white" and mix it with other Chromacake colors to get the same appearance, but I like to try my best to use what I have on hand. Thankfully I had this Kat Von D Foundation in my freelance kit to use on my fairer-skinned clients.

Day 2

This look was all over a bit of a mess and challenge to work around, but in the end I'm happy with what I came up with. I was inspired by this season of American Horror Story and the creepy clown masks that appear frequently that tend to have holes in them to trigger the mysterious but fairly common "trypophobia". When I originally envisioned this look I planned on creating prosthetic pieces to give myself a large nose, emphasized cheeks, and to make the holes more—well, holey. Unfortunately I have an allergy to latex and sensitivity to any adhesives I've ever tried. Upon adhering the first few pieces to my face I immediately broke out in hives and red scaly areas. Having to rely solely on makeup to give this look the same creepy feel was the biggest challenge, but I was able to shift the focus from what I originally planned to be the holes in my face, to the mouth. Considering the fact that I accidentally scared a good handful of people that day and all of them telling me it was the mouth/teeth, I'd say I overcame that challenge pretty well and achieved my goal—all with just makeup!

Day 3

The last day was Halloween. This was definitely the simplest look and not exactly how I imagined my Halloween day makeup to go but my challenge here was my time crunch. The day of Halloween I had to be at work by 8 in the morning as I did the makeup of two of my managers. With any and all full-face Halloween makeup look I like to give myself at least a good solid two hours for application and completion. Considering I have to leave my house a good hour before my shift starts in order to make it on time, I really wasn't about to wake up at 5am to do makeup. So, I started the day off as if it was any other day. Gave myself the same amount of time that I would to do my very simple every day natural look, which is about half an hour, and wanted to see what I could come up with given that small amount of time. It's nothing fancy in my opinion and in comparison to what I've done in the past, and most certainly nothing original, but I was given a very large amount of compliments! A little bit of glitter on the teeth and inner corner of the eye spiced the whole look up a bit and made it feel a little more glamorous than what it was, and I was able to prove to myself that I can pull together something impressive even in only a small amount of time. I even had a client schedule a makeover with me that day because she wanted me to do the very same look for her!

 

It's unfortunate that I wasn't able to bring myself to do a full week of this like I would have any other year, but in the end I learned new things and still ended up with three solid looks. Though there's a whole year until next Halloween I've already started thinking of new ideas and I'm excited to continuously try new things and see what I can come up with next year!