Halloween Themed Makeup Looks!

Happy Halloween, lovelies!

As I mentioned earlier, I had wanted to do some makeup looks for Halloween but did run out of time as I spent a large portion of last week sick. Boo. Still, I spent some time doing up some quick looks two days ago and thought I'd share them with you here, so please bear with me as it could be a rather picture heavy post.

They aren't particularly original but they are quick, simple and good for doing at the last minute. Oh, and you can get the props from a $2 shop, another big selling point for me. Plus, you can actually wear two of these looks out on a night out (minus one or two details, of course). I'll just apologise for the photo quality as I was using my iPhone instead of my camera, it was a little easier to see what I was doing (I had no idea it would be this difficult to take decent photos of myself)!

Halloween Look 1: The innocent sex kitten. 

Now, obviously the innocent sex kitten look isn't particularly original but it works because it's cute, simple and super easy! I blended some gold shadow over my eyelids, winged a flick, patted on some pink blush, contoured with some brown shadow and added lipgloss (Bourjois Rose Exclusif, to be precise). I also filled in my brows with black shadow for a bit of drama/definition. Trace a little black shadow under your lower lashline (take it only to about the outer third), add mascara and you're good to go!

Now, add a little black kitten nose and draw on some whisker lines with eyeliner. Pop on a cute headband with glittery kitten ears and you're done!

Halloween Look 2: The Cats Meow!

What's that, you say? You want to sex it up and look like you're auditioning for a role as a cocktail waitress (or stripper)? No problem! All you have to do is smoke up the eyes a bit more, I added black shadow to the outer corners and blended it into the gold. I also took the lower lash line further in. Added some black dots where the whiskers would grow out of, and added a sexy ombré red lip (by tracing black liner around the lips and gently patting in the red). I also added a clear lipgloss and patted on some highlighter but it's not really showing up in the photos. Oh, and the last step? Squeeze yourself into a bustier top and add a diamante bow. ;)

Here's a close up of the lips.

Halloween Look 3: Psycho Tortured Mental Patient.

Well, if innocent and sexy aren't your thing, you might like to try escaped, tortured mental patient instead! I didn't have white paint so I mixed up baby powder into a paste and applied that all over my face. I also darkened my eyes by applying black shadow all over the eyelid and lower lashes, drew some patterns around both eyes and then drew a 'stitched shut' pattern over my lips, extending it over my cheeks, much like the Joker in Batman. Try messing your hair up for that out of control, crazy look.

And because I love black and white images, here's one last photo!

 

I hope that didn't spook you too much! I had a lot of fun with all three looks and kind of wish I'd dressed up to go to a proper Halloween party!

How will you be celebrating today? I will be catching up with friends after work, and we'll be having dinner at TGIF at Jam Factory. I know TGIF get into the spirit every year, with the waitstaff going all out and also decorating the restaurant, it's a lot of fun! Plus they have free face painting and treat bags for kids, and they have themed cocktails and desserts, what a win! As I'll be going along after work, I won't be able to dress up too much, but I might do my face up a bit and wear a cute headband/hat! I'll try to take some photos if my friends let me. :P

Have a wonderful Halloween!

Much love,
MM.
x

P.S - I'm participating in Aqeela's weekly makeup theme again so do jump over to her blog and check out what the other gorgeous girls came up with for the weekly theme of 'Halloween'.

Halloween Nail Art #3 - Dripping Blood Nails.

Hi lovelies!

As promised, here is my third (and final) Halloween inspired nail art look this year! I was partly inspired by the nails from the Prabal Gurung 2013 collection, but I also wanted to use the orange/black Ulta3 colours that Jasmine gave me in our swap, so I decided to make my first attempt at the dripping blood manicure.

I used Ulta3 Fire for the base coat, a fire red/orange shade, and then tried to emulate the dripping blood effect using Ulta3 Black Satin. Unfortunately, I found the brush a little hard to work with and also the polish a little too thick, so I switched halfway through to using Revlon Lunar.

First up, a shot of Fire on it's own, it's such a gorgeous shade, I just had to share. It's actually quite bright, almost neon coloured!

Ulta3 Fire.

And here's what I ended up with. Overall, quite happy with it, but I can already think of ways to improve it for my next attempt!

In direct sunlight.

If you're wondering why it looks a little lumpy in the last shot, it's because I decided to apply that BYS glow in the dark polish to the 'blood'! It actually worked quite well, although I did struggle a little with the BYS brush, plus the formula is a little thick so it was hard to get it looking like the blood drips. But it really does glow in the dark, I just haven't figured out how to take a photo of it yet. :P

Overall, I really do like this manicure and it's a bit less cutesy than the other two.

Which one of the Halloween looks have you liked best, lovelies? If you missed it, the pastel spiderweb manicure can be found here, while the pastel mummy nails can be found here.

Please come back tomorrow to see my three (well, okay, two and a half) Halloween inspired makeup looks)!

Much love,
MM.
x

New Hair Colour - 'Balayage'.

Hi lovelies!

Short (and sweet, hopefully) post to share my new hair with all of you!

Before photo.

Basically, I was interested in getting the balayage look but I didn't want to ruin my hair by bleaching it too much. My hairstylist decided the best option was to give me balayage foils, only it didn't end up quite the shade we had anticipated (apparently my hair is resistant to lightening or something like that...go figure), so we ended up with almost coppery tones throughout. It's actually quite hard to photograph as it seems to look different every time I try to take a photo!

After photo, wearing it straight.

I was wearing it pretty straight when I got home, and decided to try putting some waves/curls through (I don't know why but balayage always seems to look nicer with curls).

And these photos were taken the next day after the curls had relaxed a little.

Overall, I do like it, although it wasn't 'exactly' what I was going for, but hey, I figure I'll let it go for a bit and if I get sick of it, I'll just dye it another colour! Or I'll add in another shade and end up with dip dyed locks! Life's too short to be boring! :P

Oh, and after my hair appointment, I stopped at the market and got some lovely orchids for myself, because I'm worth it. ;) I love them, they are so pretty and summery, it makes me happy just looking at it!

What do you think of my new hair colour, ladies? Do you ever buy yourself flowers?

Halloween Blog Swap!

Hello lovelies,

Two days to Halloween, not long to go now! For all of you who asked about my new hair, I will be putting up a blog post very soon, I've just been struggling to get photos to do it justice and now I'm struggling for blogging time in between everything else, so please bear with me. :)

Today, I'm showing you the items I received in my Halloween swap! About three weeks ago, I was chatting with a few international beauty bloggers on Twitter and mentioned that I'd like to participate in a Halloween swap. As we were concerned that our packages wouldn't get to our international recipients in time, a few of us Melbourne based bloggers decided to host our own little 'secret' swap, which was kindly organised by the lovely Evelyn from Cotton Candy Diva. I was matched up with Jasmine from Sweetaholic Beauty, who I was also paired up with for the Australian Christmas in July blog swap earlier this year (read about it here). I received Jasmine's fantastic Halloween package last week, and here's what she sent me.

It all arrived packaged up adorably in orange tissue, and she thoughtfully decorated it with cute Halloween stickers too!

I was a little mystified to find this bubble wrapped bag, and opened it to find...

A bag of edible fake 'blood'! This really cracked me up! I was snickering so hard, I didn't even realise it was candy until a bit later (that you suck through the little 'drip').

Next up was this BYS Glow in the Dark polish. The formula is a little thick and gloopy, but I think it might be best applied over the entire nail, as opposed to used for nail art.

Jasmine also threw in these two gorgeous polishes from Ulta3. I really wish there was an Ulta stockist near me where I could pick up some of their makeup/polishes. The pharmacies near me only seem to have a rather disorganised bargain bin and the shades are never very nice. :(

The burnt orange shade, Fire, is surprisingly flattering on my skintone and applies like a dream, fully opaque in two coats. Black satin is a little thick but might be a one coater when applied over the entire nail.

As you can see, Jasmine really spoiled me with lots of candy as well, namely orange jellybeans and ghost drops, together with three cute little screme eggs (scream, instead of creme, geddit?). I've eaten one of the eggs and it was delish, with oozy green caramel inside. I'm going to share the lollies with my workmates on Wednesday, as I think I'll be on a serious sugar high if I ate them all myself.

Here's a quick snap of Jasmine's cute Halloween card.

 

And one last snap of the entire Halloween swap she sent me! I actually used the polishes Jasmine sent in my last Halloween manicure (which I just did today), so stay tuned for an upcoming blog post on that. :)

Thanks a lot, Jasmine, it was a lot of fun!

Remember how I said it was a 'secret' swap? Well, my recipient was Evelyn herself, and she got my parcel today, so do go visit her blog if you want to see what I bought her. :)

Are you getting into the Halloween spirit, lovelies? What will you be doing to celebrate?

Much love,
MM.
x

Halloween Nail Art #2 - Girly Mummy Manicure.

Hello lovelies,

I have a new manicure to share, which has been inspired by some mummy manicures I saw while browsing Pinterest (speaking of which, would you like to follow me? If so, click here).

I used a Face of Australia pastel polish in Have Your Cupcake and Eat It Too for the base, and then dabbed on some Essie Ladylike using the Saran technique to 'dirty' it up a bit. Then, I drew on some random lines for the 'bandages' using...my old Maybelline master precise eyeliner! I recently bought a new liner and was wondering if the old one could be used for nail work (the answer is no, I think it's just too old to give precise lines). Last of all, I dabbed on some black polish (Revlon Lunar) and white polish (Sally Hansen White On) for the eyes.

Hope you like that, lovelies, I just thought it was a bit of fun. I've had two 'cutesy' Halloween manicures now, so perhaps I ought to try a third, slightly more creepy one for my next attempt? I have some ideas in mind, so stay tuned!

Have a great weekend! I have a hair colour appointment so hopefully I'll be back in a few hours with a different (and hopefully flattering look) to show you!


Much love,
MM.
x

Halloween Nail Art #1 - Spiderweb Manicure.

Hi lovelies!

Okay, I'm going to make a confession. I think it's going to be a heavy manicure week on the blog this week. I usually try to space out my manicure posts for readers who aren't into the manicures/nail art as much as the other stuff that pops up on the blog (which is probably why I have about 20 manicure themed posts in progress) but I've bought a whole swag of new polishes this week that I can't wait to share! Also, Halloween is less than a week away and due to being sick, I haven't managed to do as much Halloween-themed stuff as I'd have liked (I missed this week's makeup tag), so brace yourselves for an overload in the next week, I wanted to do at least 3 Halloween themed posts this year. :)

Taken from Google Images.

I saw my doctor today and was prescribed some medication to help get me over this nasty cold. I think I'm improving a little, though, as the teary eyes and constantly dripping nose (sorry if that's too much information) have almost stopped. To celebrate, I decided to do my nails with one of the new Face of Australia (FOA) pastels I picked up over the weekend, as part of my first Halloween-themed manicure this year (I'll be doing a post on the FOA polishes very soon).

I used my Sally Hansen black nail art pen for the spiderweb designs, which were drawn over FOA's Boys'n'Berries polish from the Pastels collection (if you're wondering why the FOA bottle has stickytape wrapped around it, it's because I accidentally dropped it a few days ago and the lid broke all the way through). I thought it'd be fun to do a 'cute' manicure instead of a creepy one, and doing the designs over a pretty pastel ensured it would be adorable! I will apologize for the shaky design, I think I'm a little unsteady due to being sick, but at least it looks more authentic this way!

Rare right hand photo.

Rare right hand photo.

Rare right hand photo.

Left hand photo.

Left hand photo.

Left hand photo.

Left hand photo.

Left hand photo.

I hope you enjoyed my first Halloween themed look this year, lovelies! Isn't that FOA polish just gorgeous? What will you be decorating your pretty digits with this Halloween?

Much love,
MM.
x