Return to Pandora - My Halloween antics

It's been so long since I last blogged, I feel I have forgotten how to do it. I hope you will excuse this very simple post from me. I am nowhere near sorted computer wise but I can finally talk about computer gate without crumbling into tears (this lump in the throat won't give me a rest though)


Time away from it all has helped me but nothing has been more uplifting than the amazing & overwhelming support from you all, from blogosphere and twitterland. Then something else happened: you guys were so lovely, I felt I just couldn't come back on twitter, with just tweeting about doom and gloom. Until one of you - and you will recognise yourself - told me I could come back, no matter what tweets I was up to post. That gave me the biggest lift in the world and I happy I have come back to twitterland. Coming back to the bloggosphere (this for me includes blog reading and commenting on your wiriting) is taking longer but it is on the cards, when access to technology permits it.

To ease myself gently back into blogging, I wanted to share a few photos with you, photos from one memorable and happy week end: Halloween weekend. Some of you will know that Halloween is a big a deal for me. It's quite simply my favourite day of the year. With the computer apocalypse happening, I was feeling so low that I didn't even know if I was going to celebrate it. Being a whopping 10 pounds heavier (my all time heaviest) didn't help my confidence but I couldn't live with myself not doing anything for Halloween. I am so glad I made the effort. It was such a blast. Nothing could have spoilt my mood: not the uncomfortable lenses, the rain or the fact that my camera broke in the middle of the night!


A big fan of Avatar movie, I wanted to be a (tsu)na'vi again this year but wanted to jazz up my makeup a little and make it a little bit more three dimensional. I went out dressed as an avatar twice: Saturday 28 November and the actual Halloween night, Monday 31st October. The pictures below are from 31st October, where a new camera had to be purchased in emergency for the occasion.

I prefer the look of the lenses I wore on Saturday night but I prefer the avatar marking of this makeup look.

Necklace (as I lost the one from last year) was a bargain from BHS: 50p ladies and gentlemen. Get in!

No way on earth I could have fitted in my brown skirt from last year. This bargain back up from eBay just had to do.

Posing with Beetlejuice and the only thing I could think of at this stage was the new polishes from Models Own bearing the same name

I don't who he was but he did scare me!

Want to see what I used to do my makeup? Here, here :)

Thank you so so so much again for your support
liloo xx

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Becoming Blue for Halloween

Take one liloo with no makeup on. This is so scary in itself, it could have been perfect to scare the kids out, or anyone for that matter.

Leave your hair to grow for a year, braid your hair and put the coolest looking contact lenses in. I bought them with my own money from eyesbright.com and I chose the ones which were actually called 'avatar' lenses. The lenses looked absolutely amazing, the perfect shade of yellow with darker brown on the outer circle. However, I think I must have worn them inside them out as I could really feel the lenses throughout the night. To make matter worse, I forgot to remove them at the end of the night, slept with them and ended up with a blurry vision for a day which spooked me out. For the love of Halloween, no matter how tipsy you are, please please please remember to take out your special effects lenses before going to bed, ok?

I was asked if I was going to the full works and get my whole body blue but I chose to do a half mask again and I am so glad I did. It was raining on both nights (Saturday preceding Halloween and Halloween night itself) and I can't begin to imagine what it would have been like to be rained on with wet paint smudging all over the body.



This is what I used: For the actual paint, I mixed a bit of blue and white Ben Nye Magicolor Liquid Paint. No need to mix it water, it's already the perfect consistency. I only mixed the blue and white to make the blue a smidge lighter. I absolutely love this face paint, and I have used the blue many times as a eyeliner on my toucan look and on my flamingo look






I chose the biggest eyelashes I could find in my stash, added a bit of black in the crease to define the eyes a bit more than last year. The face paint is great, very resisting to the elements. The downside is that it's very hard to blend eyeshadow on top. Blend too much and you start to wear off the paint underneath. To add a little bit of sparkle, I added some glitter pigment from Mac on the eyelids.

Once the base was on, I added my markings very very gently with a random brush and some plain black eyeshadow. The little white dots were done by simply dipping an old eyeliner brush straight into the white liquid paint.


The piece de resistance was my lovely handmade ears from my best friend @joannadelilah, the ultimate master of disguise on YouTube. She made them herself, from scratch, first making a mould and then creating them with some liquid latex! I love my ears, I've worn them 4 times now. I have the nose to go with it but I am a bit shy to wear it.

Finishes touches were some mini crystals stuck on some white dots and a generous spray of Ben Nye Final Seal all over my face. My avatar mask stayed so well through the night. Even the little crystals stay put! The response I had throughout the night was absolutely amazing. I was the only avatar in the hood but people recognised me instantly. 'Oh it's Avatar' they kept on saying. I had such a buzz, despite my fuller figure this year.

I think I might have gone overboard on the white dots, I prefer the look I was wearing on Halloween Night itself (Monday 31st October) but much prefer the look of these avatar lenses.


Did you go out for Halloween? Feel free to link me to your piccies. I'd love to have a look! x


tsuna'vi
(liloo)

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Tsuna’vi for Halloween

Being absolutely obsessed with Avatar the movie, how could I not resist not transforming myself into a navi for Halloween.
I just had to be an avatar this year, it just made sense.





Trying to work out how to make my whole body blue was another story. For the past month, I had been toying with this idea and many times I have asked myself if I was really going to go ahead with this whole na’vi malarkey. We’re talking having the whole body blue here. When I use facepaint and spend time applying it, the result gets awfully streaky at best of times, let alone all over the whole body. I remember my first attempts at facepaint when I did this tribal makeup, whereby the whole bathroom was smeared with brown, it was not a pretty sight.


To say that this character was challenging was an understatement. I love halloween to bits, it’s my favourite day of the year, and I really wanted to go out, have fun and not to have to worry about facepaint smudging, fading, going streaky etc. The practicality of it is a nightmare: so you just go out like this, with facepaint on, at 9 degrees in winter, with no coat. How do you put facepaint on your armpits anyway? Do you put deodorant before the paint or after? And you need to carry a handbag right? How does this come into the equation? ‘Avalook (get it?) at this pretty girl. Her make up *is* stunning but can you really wear this out? It’s going already streaky around the waist, and the girl is wearing hardly anything!!! Plus, how can you pull wearing this look? Who is going to take you home with all this blue gunk on you lol?





So I looked into the option of buying a catsuit from eBay, all the way from China as I was desperate. I bought one in the end as I was getting desperate but the catsuit never arrived and I had to think quick on my feet. To be fair, I am quite glad it didn’t arrive. I would have ended up like a shiny smurf and being from China and all, the sizing would have been ridiculously small and I would have never fitted it.


I was really close to give it up. Objective no.1 was wearability and a party proof look. In the end I opted for a fake masquerade mask, a blue ‘top’ (or handkerchief if you prefer to call it that way) and a brown skirt from eBay. The skirt didn’t fit at all and I had to destroy it a bit to wear it.  More details on the makeup itself (and whether it was truly wearable and party proof) in another post. For now I leave you with some photos. Skimpy? Yeah, outrageously skimpy and not something I could wear when I am 70. I didnt want to look back on my life at 70 and go ‘do you know, if I had the guts I could have been an avatar that year?




 

More Halloween shenanigans (and a rather yummy Jack Sparrow, some dance moves and all my mates) in my youtube video here. So did you dress up for Halloween? I’d love to see what you’ve been to. Spam me away with your youtube video and blog posts links :)

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