Halloween Tutorial: Realistic Skull

Hey guys! I am so excited about Halloween and I love the spooky season! So I want to give you all a few simple makeup applications that you can use for your costumes!

Realistic Skull Application

     Creating a convincing skull requires a mix of realism and creative liberty; however, you must be careful with your colors as you do not want to end up with a completely grey face.

    

     1)Start with a clean and moisturized face. Apply foundation that is either your natural skin tone or one slightly lighter and make sure to blend down your neck and around the collar bone region.

     2)Next, while looking at your reference photos, trace the skull on your face using a soft brown or gray pencil eyeliner. I used a grey pencil liner by Nyx. To keep yourself from getting confused, work from the top down. Also, skulls are not perfectly symmetrical, so don’t worry if all your features don't mirror each other perfectly.

     3)Using your flat angled brush, fill in your eye sockets with black body paint, I’m using the water-activated black Pro Paint by Graftobian. When it comes to your nose, only cover your nose in black body paint where your cartilage is at, it should be roughly an upside-down heart shape when filled in. Then you will completely cover your neck and ears in black body paint using your large foundation brush. This will help you be able to see your other features a little more clearly.

     4)Now use a small detail brush to fill in the teeth with white crème paint, I used Wet’n’Wild’s white paint pot, and then use either your white cream paint on a flat brush or a jumbo white cream pencil, such as Wet’n’Wild’s white Jumbo Body Pencil, to highlight your forehead, cheek bones, chin, and jaw. Don’t blend it out yet and make sure to use a small brush to fill in the teeth so that you don’t lose any details. Take a small detail brush and outline your jawbone in black body paint. Then fill in the negative space below your cheek and above your jawbone with a slightly larger brush using black body paint as well.

     5)Outline the temple area still using black body paint. We will be shading here later, so it won’t end up with such a strong contrast. Carefully, place black lines lightly between the teeth, use slow strokes to avoid making the gaps thick.   

     6)Take a makeup sponge and carefully blend out the white highlights on your forehead, cheekbones, jawbones, and chin. Do not blend out the teeth! Also, be extremely careful when you are blending and don’t blend into the black body paint or you will just end up grey.

     7)Now take a warm-toned brown eyeshadow, I’m using Note to Self from the Yes Please eyeshadow pallet by Colourpop, on an angled blending brush and blending down the lines on your forehead. These lines are to add shadow to where the skull recedes so keep the eyeshadow on the side closest to your ears.

     8)Take that warm brown eyeshadow and blend your temple area. Again, blend towards your ears.

     9)Take your small detail brush and some black body paint and make some small cracks coming from the eye sockets, nose, and anywhere else it seems appropriate. There are no specific places that need cracks, simply place them where it feels natural.

     10)Use your small detail brush and fill in the areas between the teeth and the rest of the negative space between the jawbones with black body paint. Take your angled blending brush and what is left on it of the warm-toned brown eyeshadow and gently blend the teeth upwards for the teeth on the upper jaw and downwards for the teeth on the bottom jaw. Don’t over blend, only blend it enough so there is not a stark contrast between where the teeth are and where the jawbone is. Now, add some extra highlight to any areas you need to be paler in and clean up and redefine the teeth if need be. Also, darken up any of the black body paint that may need it. Make these last alterations and touch-ups and you’re done!                   

Here is the final look!!

There are a few alterations you can make to this look if you want to. You could use a washable glue stick and block out your eyebrows or you could fill them in and make it more of a glam look. You could also use a bald cap and continue the makeup onto your head to make it a full skull look. 

Here are the products I used:

Also, here are my references:

I used some of the techniques from Glam&Gore's "Last Minute Halloween Makeup Tutorial" which you can find here.

Also, I used a few techniques from Madeyewlook's video "Get Ready With Me ~ ft a new friend" which you can find here.

  Finally, I used this image as my main reference. 

Thanks for reading! I hope you all enjoyed this post and if so please let me know so I can make more like it!

Love you guys!                                                                                                                                

~Kate ❤                                                                                                                                     

Is Wet n Wild Cruelty Free?

     Hello all! Today's post is about Wet n Wild which is a successful drugstore makeup brand that has been an outspoken advocate about and for being cruelty-free. But are they actually cruelty-free? No, Wet n Wild is no longer a cruelty-free brand and it is unclear if they ever have been.

     In May of 2019, Suzana Rose, from Cruelty-Free Kitty, posted an article about Wet n Wild's cruelty-free status and about them lying to consumers about the company selling in China. There are several reasons that this is such a large issue. Firstly, they straight up lied to their consumers about selling in China and then tried to pretend it was a "miscommunication." Secondly, no beauty company in China can guarantee that they are cruelty-free.

Here is a break down of China's laws on animal testing.
1. If the beauty product is not made in China then premarket animal testing is required.
2. If the beauty product is made in China then no premarket animal testing is required.
3. However, all makeup can be subject to postmarket animal testing if there are complaints or if it randomly selected for (non-routine) animal testing.
4. Furthermore, all specialty products are required to be tested on animals premarket. An example of a specialty product is SPF.
5. No company is exempt from these laws. There are no loopholes.

How does this apply to Wet n Wild?
1. Wet n Wild produces its makeup in China. So no premarket animal testing is required.
2. Wet n Wild is not exempted from any of the other laws. So postmarket animal testing could take place and Wet n Wild could do nothing to stop it. 
3. If they decide to sell any specialty products there, then the products would have to be tested on animals first. However, it does not appear that they are currently selling any specialty products in China.

     So what does this mean? It means that while Wet n Wild sells its products in China they are not cruelty-free and they are not advocating for brands to be cruelty-free.

     Is Wet n Wild certified cruelty-free in the US? No, they are not. Wet n Wild is no longer Leaping Bunny Certified. Leaping Bunny is the leading certification of cruelty-free products for cosmetics and household products. Sometime between 2017 and now, Wet n Wild was removed from Leaping Bunny's certified cruelty-free companies list. Which means they would not recommit to Leaping Bunny's standards.

     Wet n Wild is still claiming that they are cruelty-free and are avoiding answering any questions about them selling in China. They have not been transparent about any of this even after it all came out. They have continued to lie and avoid the consequences of their actions.

My opinion on all this:
     In the past few years, I have made a great effort to only buy cosmetics from cruelty-free brands and have loved Wet n Wild as an affordable brand that has good products. So, I am angry and disappointed about what they have done. I will no longer support them and I wish that they would just be honest about what is going on.

     This has been a simple breakdown of what happened and I didn't go into all the details, so if you want to learn more about it I highly recommend you read Cruelty-Free Kitty's post about Wet n Wild, which you can find here. I also read Emily Wolf's post about Wet n Wild and thought it had some interesting points, so if you are interested in reading it you can find it here.


Love you all,
~Kate ⁕