Halloween – becoming the Black Widow

My love of Halloween and all that comes with it was not disappointed this weekend when my friend decided to hold a last minute fancy dress party, giving me the opportunity to try out some crazy make-up and to become the Black Widow. At such short notice, I was forced to make do with items I already had and to get a little creative – luckily I already boast a rather ample store of fancy dress items thanks to my university days. I just can’t bring myself to throw any of them away despite rarely needing them – but you never know when you’ll need to dress up!

The finished look – The Black Widow

The skirt I had bought only the other day and was looking for an opportunity to wear it out. I love the fitted jersey midi underneath and the grey mesh layer on top had the effect of looking a bit web-like which was the effect I was after. The fitted layer underneath was really helpful, it was a pretty windy night! The skirt was from Boohoo and cost only £12 – find it here. The top is a favourite of mine, from Missguided (as is the necklace), it is a velvet bralet with cut outs on the sides – these are great for showing off my rib tattoo! It cost £17.99 and is available here. The heels are my old reliable wedges from New Look and my rings are also from there. I actually loved my outfit, it was so comfy but really glamorous at the same time and I will definitely be cracking it out again, minus the cape, for a night out.

My Black Widow make-up

I decided that since I was mainly using accessories to create my outfit, that I would go all out for my make-up and wanted to try to create a strong look by really vamping it up. I looked online for ideas and tutorials and spotted one that I posted on here before the party that I thought I might try, but when it came to it I actually found another tutorial that looked a little simpler and quicker to do. See the picture below for what I was using as a guide and click on the picture to go to the YouTube tutorial.

Black Widow make-up by GoldieStarling

Now, although I am fairly good at doing basic make-up such as applying foundation, contouring, smoky eyes etc, I am not much of an artist and don’t really have the vision necessary to create such incredible looks. I based the entire idea around a pair of Paperself Lashes I was given at the EA Blogger Party and wanted to create the webbed effect around these. I know that my make-up is nothing in comparison to the beautiful job that Goldie Starling has done in her tutorial, but here’s how I created my look and changed it to suit my look.

First of all I applied my foundation  (Maybelline Dream Matte Mousse in Sun Bronze) and concealer (Dream Lumi Touch by Maybelline in Sand) base, contoured using bronzer (Match Perfection by Rimmel in Medium), but left the blush out to make my lipstick stand out more. Then I created the strong smoky eye by using a frosty white and a silver eyeshadow from the Smoky Eyes Palette by Bourjois with a combination of Gunmetal and Creep from my Naked Palette by Urban Decay. This was set off with Extreme 24-house Felt Tip Eyeliner (Collection 2000), Exaggerate Waterproof Eye Definer from Rimmel and plenty of Benefit’s They’re Real mascara after I had curled my eyelashes. I then painstakingly applied the first false eyelashes I have used in years. The gorgeous Paperself lashes were cobwebs with spiders and looked amazing but were a bit to big and wide for my eyes so to make them easier to apply I cut them into sections and then just applied the biggest and longest ones to my outer lash line.

My smoky eye and false lashes

I then began to draw on the web shapes by starting with my white Barry M Khol Pencil and making the inner circle of web by drawing a scalloped circle around my right eye. From each point, I then drew a straight line outwards and tapered these off at the outer edges of the circle. I joined these by drawing more of the scalloped circles to join the lines together and create the web. Once I had done this, I shaded finely along the scalloped edges to create the web and smudged this using a bit of white eyeshadow to set the liner. The tutorial I watched suggested doing the white section first to create the negative shape before adding the black and I found it a lot easier having tried to apply the black shapes first in another attempt.

The web effect on the right side of my face

The next stage was to use the black felt tip eyeliner to draw on the black lines of the web which was fairly straightforward, but be sure to steady your hand and use long sweeping motions rather than short, sharp movements. I used a bit of the Gunmetal and Creep shadows to smudge the liners and create the web effect. I then added some gems that I found in my drawer, I bought them for a few pence at Primark ages ago and forgot I had them. I attached them using false eyelash glue and placed them around the outside corner of my eye with another on the outside corner of my left eye.

The left side of my face and some extra webbing

The tutorial was to create a symmetrical look with the web around each eye, but I didn’t have enough faith in my make-up abilities to get these close enough so I decided to add some webbing on my jawline on the left side of my face which I think worked rather well. I followed the same process to do this except in more triangular shape which was actually far simpler. I finished the look with my amazing new Collection 2000 Gothic Glam lipstick in Scorned (a dark purple shade that I had been looking everywhere for).

I was really pleased with how my make-up turned out and wanted to wear my hair in a massive quiff to add drama to the look and keep my hair off the make-up, but had to go for a wild back to the hair. I set the whole thing with plenty of hairspray to keep my hair and make-up in place all night. I was so pleased with how it turned out – for someone who is not incredible at make-up, I think I did a great job, especially using what I already had! What do you guys think?

 

YES! Halloween score!

It turns out that all my moaning about how much I miss celebrating Halloween has paid off and the universe has organised a party at my boyfriend’s house (at least until he moves out tomorrow). One of the other house mates is organising a Halloween party for tomorrow night and it is a perfect chance to party without having to clear up the mess the next day because we can go back to his new house and avoid it!

So, last minute fancy dress idea is all based around these amazing Paperself lashes I was given at the EA Bloggers Party a few months ago. It’s also quite a topical costume – I’m going for the black widow look.

I absolutely love them and was dying to wear them, so my outfit will all be based around spiders and I will attempt the following make-up from the tutorial it links to.

Black Widow make-up

The make-up is stunning and I can’t wait to try it out, but I might change it slightly to suit the colours I already have and to make it simpler. With it I am going to wear a new skirt I had already bought from Boohoo, a grey,  mesh midi skirt that will look gorgeous with my black velvet crop top and my new chunky black shoes. To make it more costumey – I also have a fabulous spider web cape and a pair of black lace gloves. Hopefully it should look quite glamorous overall and still like a costume.

I’ll be sure to post pictures of my outfit and make-up after the weekend.

My favourite Halloween costumes..

I am a BIG lover of Halloween and always have been – from dressing up as a witch for Brownies in a bin liner, to scary masks and crazy make-up – I love it all! Sadly, I don’t very often get the opportunity to dress up and really enjoy it because a lot of the time other people don’t really join in. I love it when we get a group together and we all dress up – it really makes it so much more fun.

Zoe Smith, Mark Wolverson, myself, Leanne Clark and Chris Friend

This is a pic years ago when we all dressed up and headed into town, fairly predictable costumes with me as Catwoman and my best friend as a Devil, but I seriously loved the effort Chris went to with his Joker make-up and outfit. It was seriously scary when he sat in the back of my car and I looked in the rear view mirror!

Michelle Brook, Serena Savage and myself

And my first year of university when me and the girls went to stay at Michelle’s for a Halloween house party. This year I went for Batwoman, while Michelle was a Devil and Serena was a Dark Angel. Costumes were a last minute thing here so we had to make do with what we had!

Pumpkins made by, clockwise from top left, Serena, Me, Michelle, Stav

In my final year of university, me and the girls went all out – we carved pumkins (as above) and decorated the house from top to bottom with fake blood, cobwebs (to go with the real ones) ghosts, lights and plenty more. It looked amazing! Then we had a fancy dress party with all of our friends before we headed to Forum for a massive night out. This year, we went for matching costumes as the House of Boobs girls – we found the cutest skeleton costumes!

From left, Katie, Serena, Michelle and me

Our friends also went for some fantastic costumes with zombie schoolgirls, the Incredible Hulks/Zombies, crazy cats and plenty more!

From left, Hannah, Claire, Cara and Kirsty

 

From left, Martin, Oliver, Jake, Dom, Sal and Charlie

And my amazing friend Stav, who spent a good hour trying to put these creepy contact lenses in and then realised she could barely see past them and was blind for the night!

Stav

Man I love Halloween, just wish I was having a party or something this year to celebrate! I’m just glad I at least had the zombie run at the weekend. How’s everyone else celebrating?

 

Getting homely as the winter nights draw in..

I’ve become rather excited about all parts of the festive season lately – I guess I have finally accepted the summer is over and now I need to get ready for the winter. To me, this means, food, food and more food. I’m now thinking about pumpkin soups, Christmas cakes, chocolate logs, cheese boards, roast beef, Yorkshire puddings, gravy and mince pies.

Just listing those was making my mouth water! So I decided to get ahead of myself and start celebrating the festive season. My mum bought a couple of pumpkins for us to carve out and although I seem to have lost much of my artistic skill since the last time I carved a pumpkin while at university, I was quite pleased with how it turned out.

My happy little pumpkin – I called him Doug

After I was finished, I scraped the rubbish into the bin, lit a candle inside my new friend, Doug, as I named him, then began to get out all of the baking bits and pieces. Sadly one of the women at my work that I like and admire the most is taking voluntary redundancy and because of the rate of it being processed, she is due to leave today. I wanted to do something nice for her last day so I decided to bake some mince pies because I know she loves my baking.

Baking mince pies

I have my own way of making the gorgeous little pies, I use a mixture of shortcrust and puff pastry for the bottoms and tops. I usually use shortcrust pastry on the bottom cup, fork some holes in the bottom, pop them into a muffin tray and fill the holes with delicious mincemeat.

For the tops, I use a heart-shaped cutter to cut out puff pastry, or shortcrust works just as well, and after coating them in milk, I pop the hearts on top. Bake in the over for around 15 minutes, or until golden brown and then take out to cool. Once they have cooled, scatter icing sugar over the top and enjoy!

TOP TIP: If you are feeling particularly decadent, make the whole mince pie with puff pastry – it melts in your mouth and is even better!

ADMISSION: No I don’t make my own pastry – I am fully able to and have done in the past, but don’t really see the point when it is never quite as nice as shop bought, takes a hell of a lot less time to make these pies (one of the attractions is it takes less than 30 mins to make a huge batch) and even the professional chefs use shop bought and recommend it.

The finished product – yummy!

Zombie Apocalypse – What would you do?

From left, clockwise, myself, Mark Malle, Lizzie Russell, Jade Mynott and Mark Wolverson, with our prey in the centre, picture by Vikki Kinnear

The world has been infected by a deadly virus. It’s finally happened, the zombie apocalypse has happened. Everyone you know and love is dead, or has been turned into one of these undead, bloodthirsty creatures. The question is, when it’s your turn, do you run or do you turn?

On Saturday I headed to Norwich’s University of East Anglia to join in the second annual Zombie Fun Run, organised by student fundraising association RAG (Raise and Give). I was joined by the boyfriend and a group of friends from home as a little warm-up before we headed to the Sub Focus gig later that eve – review posted tomorrow morning.

From left, Mark Malle, Mark Wolverson, myself, Vikki Kinnear, Jade Mynott and Lizzie Russell – looking good!

We were warned to prepare for a scare and sign up as a runner or zombie – of course we wanted to be zombies! Once we were made up in full terrifying make-up by the RAG team, we were sent along the course to hide in the undergrowth of the woods alongside Earlham Park and the university grounds where the aim of the game was tofind devious hiding positions to ambush our prey as the runners made their way around the 2.5k course and tried to keep their lives intact.

We decided our best chance of success of grabbing the red tags worn by the runners was to hide around the whole of the outside of a clearing in the woods so that the runners would not see us until it was too late, and so that we could attack from every angle. I don’t think that any zombies took it as seriously as we did – in fact we even took a guy out and ended up scaring him to the floor before he limped off – oops.

I like to think that we were really quite terrifying and we had plenty of fun finding hiding positions in the woods, scaring dog walkers and chasing the runners into the woods. One of the funniest moments was when Mark Malle chased one runner deep into the woods until we could no longer see him, then re-emerged slowly, groaning and dragging himself back through the bushes in full character with the band hanging out of his mouth – no sign of the runner. We were a little nervous until the runner came bounding out of the bushes and promptly tripped over a log.

After a while there didn’t seem to be any runners heading our way so we decided to head back along the trail and towards the university square – the promise of a BBQ just too much of a lure for our meat-starved zombies. Along the way we checked our bands and found we had collected a respectable about between us – not sure exactly how many because we had to give some back but I caught at least six zombies myself! Although we did bump into another team that had caught a ridiculous amount of runners – we couldn’t believe how many bands they had but they did have an excellent hiding spot and the runners had no choice but to go straight through them.

Myself and Mark in full zombie make-up

When we finally reached the main field, we did stop to catch a final few runners and entertain ourselves by having pictures of us attempting to eat someone – see top pic which has now become my favourite picture – before heading to the BBQ and back to get changed before the night’s events.

Overall it was a great event – really well organised and so much fun. A perfect Halloween event with just the right amount of blood and gore, and a great way to get us warmed up for the night ahead. I’m looking forward to seeing some more of the pictures and videos that were captured on the day.