Are y'all ready to bring back Face Friday?
Back at the beginning of the pandemic, I decided to "paint my way through the Apocalypse" with a series called Face Friday: step-by-step makeup walkthroughs featuring close up shots of each step and all of the products used. Now that we're on to the newest incarnation of this site, one of the features that I've wanted to try to bring back is Face Friday - but I'm not sure about the format, or even if the format will remain consistent from post to post.
Listen, I did love the step-by-step walkthroughs, but they aren't at all interactive; it's just me in a room, painting my face, and trying to remember to take pictures after every step. I wanted some way to combine the process of getting ready with a more casual makeup play day. And that's how this particular look came together.
I have a bunch of new makeup that I've been wanting to play with, and with all of the attacks on drag performers and trans identity working their way through red states, I wanted to do a look that used the Trans Pride flag as inspiration. I had also been gifted some lashes recently at a show that I thought would be the perfect accent.
The start the face, I primed with my tried and true I Heart Revolution Peach Delight primer to help mattify and blur, and then I wanted to add some glow back in. To do that, I used the Primed & Ready Reviving & Anti-Fatigue Illuminating Primer in Warm Apricot by The Collection. This is a great primer to add just a subtle golden, peachy glow to your skin before putting down your makeup. Then to amp up the glow further, I added the Auric Glow Lust in Morganite, applying and blending all over the face with a beauty sponge.
For foundation, I've had the Pat McGrath Skin Fetish Sublime Perfection Foundation in Light Medium 11 for a long time. When I tell you this foundation was an experience...good gawd, girl! This stuff is orange. That is always one of the potential problems with buying foundation online, but I've gotten a lot better over the years and I was surprised that it was as bad as it was. I think what tripped me up is that I bought the foundation through Sephora, and I found a mistake on the website. They have two different shades, Light Medium 9 and Light Medium 11, that are both described as "light medium with pink undertones." I'm usually a light, bordering on a medium, so I decided to go with what I thought was the darker of those two. But when you look at the shades on the Pat McGrath website, it describes Light Medium 11 as being "light medium with peach undertones." Peach is being generous - we were encroaching on Oompa Loompa territory - but it definitely is the warmer shade option and I might have been more satisfied with the Light Medium 9. I'm not going to bother trying the lighter foundation as I didn't like the extremely watery consistency of the foundation, but I will still try to get my money's worth out of this bottle and just not repurchase it.
For concealer, I decided to use the Jaclyn Cosmetics Faux Filter Perfecting Concealer in Fair Light Pink. I've heard people really blast this concealer, especially that they felt it dries down way too fast, but I had a good experience with it. Of course, I do the typical Jaclyn big concealer triangle under the eyes to highlight, and I put a lot on, so maybe that is part of it? Maybe if you dot it, it dries down faster. For me, I was able to paint it on and i love the highlighted finish, and the pink tones and the brightness really helped balance the orange foundation situation.
Anyone remember Flesh Beauty when it was at Ulta? They never really captured my imagination, and I wasn't surprised when I saw them disappear from Ulta shelves. But when one of the little foundation sticks popped up at my local Dollar Tree, you know I had to try it! I have the shade 37 Ganache, and I used it to build the base of my cheek contour. Then I used both powders in the Trixie Cosmetics Flower Power Bronzer in Darling Daisy to build up the contour on the cheeks and add some to the forehead and down the nose.
I should know better than to keep getting my heart broken by liquid shadows, but I just can't stop myself. I picked up several shades of the NYX Glowshots, hoping that they would work to lay down as bases to put colorful shades on top of. These were a disaster. I had three shades - Grapefruit Glow, Come Through Coconut, and Blueberry Baller - but you'd never know it. As I layed them down in three distinct sections to represent the colors of the trans flag, there was almost no color and they all just blended into a sort of grayish wash of glitter. I had primed my eyes with MAC's Paint Pot in Painterly, and I powdered it with the Makeup By Mario undereye setting kit in Light to make sure the cream didn't react too much with the liquid. These are just duds. I think they were having a buy 2 get 1 free sale, so I didn't spend as much as I might have, but any money spent on these was a total waste.
The eye look was created with a total of five shadows: a bright pink and medium blue shade from the Juvia's Place Candy Shoppe palette (the shades don't have names, or I'd give them to you!), the shades Lovestruck and Cloud Free from the Beauty Bay Pastels palette, and the Jeffree Star Cosmetics Artistry single in Cullinan (also in the Blood Sugar palette. I started by shading the inner parts of my eye with the pink Juvia's and then layering with Lovestruck, then shading the outer part of the eye with Cloud Free and darkening the very outer V with the blue Juvia's shade. Then in the middle I added Cullinan, blending it into the edges of the pink and blue shades to get a nice gradient.
Now, let's talk lashes! These colorful lashes are from Looks That Thrill. The owner, Jennifer, gifted me with a couple of pairs from her new line at my last show, and I told her that I would use them in a couple of looks and give my thoughts. This is the first pair, Style CG03, and they definitely inspired this Trans Pride look!
I was leery when she said that she was doing a line of colored lashes, because my experience with colored lashes is that they are usually cheap plastic fibers, relegated to clown makeup kits and Halloween. These are definitely not that! These are soft and feel as nice as the full black lashes that I buy from companies like Glamlite. So clearly it's possible to make colored lashes that don't feel like garbage, so now the question is why more companies don't choose to do that?!
These applied as easily as any other lashes that I have used - I always struggle with lashes, so any issues I had were user error. The band is thick enough to be manhandled a little bit, taking them off the plastic holder, but it's nice and flexible and adheres easily to the curve of the eye. I love that they are a mix of black fibers with the pops of color, as I use a dark eyelash glue so I prefer a black band and at least some black fibers in the lash. I want to play with them more, and I've got another pair to plan a look around, but my first impression is that these are pretty good falsies for the color lovers!
You can find Jennifer on Instagram @looks_that_thrill
For the rest of the face, I wanted to continue with the color theme, bringing in some candy pink blush and highlight, and topping it off with a blue glitter highlight.
I started with the Haus Labd blush in Dragon Fruit Daze. It had a slightly satin kind of skine to it, but I wanted a true glow! Over the higher points of the blush, I buffed the Haus Labs highlighter in Rose Quartz to really bring a gorgeous pearl pink shine. Then I topped all of that with the Blend Bunny Cosmetics Noctilucent palette - specifically the shade Apparition which has a gorgeous blue glittery shift! This was the perfect cheek to tie in with the eye look.
The final step was to add a bubble gum lip! Once again I went with Haus Labs, using their Le Monster Lip Crayon in Fuchsia Shimmer. This is a gorgeous color, but since it was a creamy crayon I wasn't able to overline my lips as much as I usually do - and I can really tell in the pictures! It's not terrible, but it does make me once again feel like I need to save up my pennies for some filler!
Anyway, once again, here is the finished look:
The beautiful crystal butterfly was another gift from the last show! Melanie, a longtime FB friend and audience member, is a Paparazzi Jewelry consultant and brought me this gorgeous piece. I know that people feel all kinds of ways about MLMs, but I thought this was a beautiful gift and I wanted to shout her out!
Let me know what you think about this style of Face Friday - do you prefer the step by step, or would you rather just see the products and a finished look, and have the application be more interactive through Facebook Live? I'll include the video below for anyone who would like to watch it! Don't be surprised if this feature goes through more changes and iterations - I'm still deciding what I want it to look like!