Queen for a Day

Funny, really! For a film which really didn't impress me, here I am creating a second makeup look  inspired by Tim Burton's adaptation of Alice in Wonderland. Reluctantly, I've got to admit now that I am glad I went to see the movie: The music was so beautiful, it gave me goosebumps right from the start and the costumes were breathtaking.
So I chose the Queen of Hearts dress (Red Queen's) as the inspiration for this look and entry to the YouTube Alice in Wonderland Makeup Contest.

 

My favourite bit in the look is 'Fierce' a coppery gold eyeliner from Collection 2000, Glam Metallics which Nooberella raved about. I could not believe the coverage and brightness this inexpensive eyeliner offered. When I first tried it on my hand, I was disappointed with the brush but I was so pleased with the pigmentation I just had to buy it. Being used to my Revlon Colorstay eyeliner, this was very fiddly but definitely worth the effort.
Nooberella reviewed and swatched her little collection of Glam Metallics here if you are interested to know more.


Anyway, here's the look. I have some nice lashes with red rhinestones on top but you can't see them very well on the photos. It’s actually 2 pair of lashes, my normal favourite ones (Eylure Naturalites Glamour 101) and some rhinestones ones I bought on eBay especially for the occasion.






While I was working on the video last night, I was told the contest was extended for a further 2 weeks. So this give me time to had a little play with paintshoppro and give myself a crown for the day ^_^ I tried to create a paper gold crown by the way, but it was a major fail, and looked more kindergarden than anything, lol.

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Alice in LambriniLand

Avant-Propos: Glossary of Essential Terms

Makeup Contest: Excuse to have fun with makeup and green light to make a fool of oneself on YouTube
Mad Hatter: Annoying Character in Alice in Wonderland, remixed by Tim Burton. Trying to understand his nonsense will drive you mad
Lambrini: Cheap wine you get at the Spar just to get cash back.





So there I was, on Easter Bank Holiday finally setting to do my entry to the fabulous and most talked about make up contest on YouTube Land: The Alice in Wonderland Contest hosted by the most talented makeup gurus out there at the moment: GoldieStarling, Letzmakeup, Glitterdollz7 and last but not least, the beyond gorgeous HollywoodNoirMakeup.
Tim Burton's film left me really unimpressed (see my full review here) and the character of the Mad Hatter annoyed me till no end. On a makeup point of view, I was shocked to see the contrast between the pretty bright promotional posters and the doom and gloom 'reality' of Wonderland.





While Avatar had left me totally amazed, (this was the last movie I saw) Alice in Wonderland left me in a bad mood, honest! So I wanted to channel this negative energy into makeup. My idea was to create a brighter, more feminine and sexy look inspired by the colors of the Mad Hatter. No gloomy and lame tea party in sight, I had envisaged this look to be bright, fun, wearable at some fancy cocktail party!

So to get in the party mood, being Easter week end and that, I thought I would treat myself to a glass of lambrini. Before you knew it, half of the bottle had done and I had become tipsy midway through and was asking for tips on twitter how to sober up. Will spare you the fastidious details of the adventures of descent into LambriniLand. Have a look at the (not so happy) ending instead. If you behave, I might post an orange ‘blooper’ picture at the end of this post.


 



 


More pictures and fancy music in my video if you’re not perturbed yet. So, so so, where are the jungle frizzy orange eyebrows? Oh I tried, you bet I tried but it looked so spaced out and I really wanted to keep this look as much wearable as possible.  Because you’ve been nice reading all this, I thought I’d show you as well my attempt at orange eyebrows.




Bwhahahhahaahaha

p.s Consumption of excessive amounts of alcohol will not help with makeup application. It might however give you the false illusion that you’re doing a marvellous job.

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Underwhelmed in Wonderland

It all started since last Hallowen, in October 2009 when I first heard about Tim Burton’s take on Alice in Wonderland. It literally took the makeup world of YouTube by a storm. I first started to see SeeshaRee recreation of the mad hatter but it was goldiestarling’s take on the mad hatter, her inventive fluffy eyebrows and her hatter skills (designed from scratch hat) which fascinated me.

In fact, I was fascinated by how much it inspired the makeup artists on YouTube.
From then on, I knew I wanted to see the movie at the cinema. The fascination around Alice in Wonderland reached a crazy new level when Urban Decay was launching a special limited edition of a eyeshadows palette inspired from the film.
I *had* to watch the film, even though I knew very little about the original story, Tim Burton’s style and not being a huge fan of Johnny Depp. I wanted to be transported into a world of adventures, action, and pretty colours, and that was my main expectation of the film.


So I went to take on the 3D journey into wonderland and I ended up in a gloomier & darker world than the real one. It started off well, Alice fled from flatulent tintin, followed a rabbit with a clock, fell down a hole and had sumptuous clothes made to measure whenever she changed sizes. Is that wonderland or what?




We made acquaintance with some of Alice’s new mates, amongst them a beautiful fluffy and feathery dodo.  But dodo soon disappeared and we had to contend ourselves with the most annoying mouse in wonderland and beyond, stabbing some dalmatian spotted monster in the eye, and it went downwards from there, and wonderland became more sordid and dark as the clock ticked by. 

 


I was looking forward to meet the mad hatter, and when this happened I was greeted by some thick glaswegian accent character with the most awful bulging eyes, the same eyes which have been glamourised on promotional posters of the movie and throughout YouTube. I was trying to go beyond the orbits of the eyes and try to focus on what he was saying, but all I got was a mumbled mumbo jumbo of words. I was craving subtitles at this point, more than ever. The tea party came along, but left a sour taste in my mouth as it could not be any more different from the pretty one on this picture:

Abandoned table plonked in the middle of a warzone, with broken tea cups, soiled table linen and no cupcakes. Everything was such a far cry from what I imagined to see. Alice in Wonderland? Alice in gloomyland more like!

 




Whatever the movie should have been called instead, I had paid to see the film, I was determined to enjoy the film, and to stay there till the end but I could not make sense of the plot. Mad hatter recalled at some point the time when wonderland and his curly locks were pretty and full of life but I could not catch any of that. I was confused throughout the whole film. Why was scarface after Alice? Why did the sword have to be returned to the white queen? Why did jabberwocky had to be killed? How did the queen of hearts end up ruling wonderland?

So many characters were so annoying: from pesky little mouse, to matt lucas and his twin, to the white queen who never used seche vite and was waving her fingers in the air throughout the whole film. 

Is there anything I liked in the film? Yes. I absolutely loved the redesign of the queen, her queendom and her entourage. Alice had more outfits than Katy Perry at the MTV EMA’s  and my favourite was the outfit she was wearing during her stay at the queen of hearts.  (If you pay attention you should see 5 different outfits for Alice in this post alone :)



Even her Joan of Arc outfit (pictured below) was stunning and she looked every centimetre of a hero in it. I have never seen better dressed soldiers from the white queen’s side in their elegant wasp waisted silver attires and the white lacy and laden with beads dresses of the horses were just out of this world.




Moments when the queen of hearts was ridiculed entertained me too but my overall feeling was a huge disappointment. Is every Tim Burton film as incomprehensible, dark and ugly as this one? Would I have needed to be a fan of Tim Burton to fully appreciate the movie? Would reading reviews of the film beforehand have prevented such a disappointment? Probably. But there has been so much hype about the film, I just *had* to see it.

Makeup wise, as this was also partly why I went to see the film, a few elements inspired me for my entry for the equally most talked about makeup event on YouTube (International Alice in Wonderland Makeup Contest) Whether this will materialise is another story as right now I need to recover from the underwhelming wonderland.

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