Man Up!

Posted by: Steph

Today, I totally Stumbled onto this video, where a woman uses makeup (black and white eyeliner and eyeshadow) to transform her look into a man, specifically Jared Leto. And I was BLOWN. A. WAY. I've learned a lot of tricks to play with the contouring of a woman's face to make it look leaner or make the nose look longer and all that jazz, but I never thought of being able to do something like this!

http://thoughtcatalog.com/2010/woman-transforms-herself-into-jared-leto-in-6-minutes-goes-viral-on-youtube/

It got me curious, were there any makeup tutorials out there on youtube which could teach me how to do something like this? After some searching, I only found a few videos of non-exceptional illusions and speed throughs like the one above. None of them near matched the quality of transformation, however.

On a side note, I found it interesting that there were a large variety of male to female videos and very few comparatively of female to male. Very interesting.

What I loved about this idea is the perception of gender as defined by slight and almost imperceptible differences in just shadows of the face! Of course, I now had to take my shot at it. I pretty much followed selfOblivion's process on the video. Although I used browns instead of blacks because my hair is much lighter. It made for a slightly less rock-star look in my opinion.

I didn't have a short hair wig, so I wanted to use a hat, but I only had a cowboy hat. Thus - scraggly cowboy. 

Less Rockstar... More habitual drug user, who seems pretty masculine! 

Clearly, it's not perfect. In fact, my boyfriend seemed offended by my "bad beard" as he called it. (He does have a full beard he wears proudly.) However, I am so excited by this optical illusion that I am thinking of doing this for next Halloween. I realize, yes, that it is far away from the time I write this post. However, that gives me a lot of time to perfect! My costume might be - Dressed as a guy who is dressed like a rockstar. So when people ask me who I am, I will say I'm a rockstar and they (hopefully if I am good at my makeup) won't know I'm a girl! SO excited!

UPDATE: After watching the Jared Leto vid, I knew I could do better. So I tried again and here's two pics. A little more shadow-y and angle-y with my smoldering good looks.... ?

Gangsta o

contemplating on how to look sexy as a man

PS: Here's a pretty normal picture of me to compare:

Doll is Gaga all over you

Posted by: Steph

Going through my internet related tasks, I realized that Katie and I had left this blog a-hangin. I am about to remedy that. For last halloween, I decided to be ... a creepy doll! I wanted to be more russian pocelian doll rather than plastic barbie, so that is sort of what I was going for. My inspiration included:

Let's face it. Dolls are creepy. My mom has a child-sized one hanging out in the spare bedroom and I am scared to go to bed at night when I stay over. I can just see it looking around with its beady eyes just waiting to giggle and then murder me.

The creep factor comes from the child-like proportions - mainly, I think, in the eyes. The eyes are huge! I researched TONS of doll costumes others have done, and most stuck with their own eyes. Actually, most were of the Barbie persuasion. Until I found the two videos that inspired me the most. The first was a Lady Gaga Bad Romance make-up tutorial which introduced me to the optical illusion of bigger eyes, and the second introduced me to the concept of hiding your eyebrows for major transformation!

(Lady Gaga)

(Broken Doll from Petrilude - HUGE inspiration)

I tried the process a few times in September just to make sure it would work for the big Aitch-Day.

creepy, right? Don't worry, it gets better. 

 Here is it all coming together on the big weekend:

Erasing my eyebrow. God I look creepy. Also, I used some flesh putty to extend my forehead to make the wig look less awkward with those big eyes. Right now, it looks like my whole face is a mask because of it, and I could just RIP it off! 

I have eyebrows again! 

Final product! Got a $10 dress at Savers, used a $7children's tutu for my neck poof thing, and bought accessories to make a wonderfully creepy doll! 

Not everyone knew that though. I was asked a lot if I was Lady Gaga, or someone from Alice in Wonderland. I guess I could see both of those. 

Here's a shot with my eyes closed (on accident) but you can see how hidden my brows are. Shiny, but hidden. Katie looks so excited about it too. 

NOW I look Lady Gaga-esque. 

Overall, I could not have been more pleased with the outcome. Months of planning and hard work definitely paid off! Now... let's start planning for next year!