Rainbow Cake

New Neighbours...

Slightly Depressing Illamasqua Post

This is my third attempt at writing this post, not because I messed up the last two but because I find this post difficult to write as it requires me to draw upon the worst time in my life.

Yesterday Illamasqua announced their "Final Act of Self-Expression" collaboration with a London Funeral directors to provide makeup artistry services for the recently deceased's funerals. The intention I'm sure is to offer a service which would allow those for whom makeup played an important in their identity to be made up in a way which they would have had done whilst alive. However, I am not convinced that this is coming across in a way in which they intended, it does seem in poor taste, namely because many of the people who would want this service are young or at least much younger than the average life expectancy. It is not 'natural' in Western society for young people to die, it is not common place to expect to lose a loved one so early on in life, so such deaths will ordinarily be extremely traumatic, if it had been a service offered through funeral directors, it would be fine or if this scenario were really commonplace it wouldn't seem as bad.

My primary objection comes from the fact that this could create an unrealistic expectation as to how the dead person will look. The model in the images advertising this is obviously alive and looks fantastic, much more like a sleeping character out of a fairytale than a corpse. Despite the common misconception, it is difficult to make the dead look alive, when my Mum died I was present and the change was instantaneous, the body she had once lived in looked like that of a stranger and no amount of make up would have been able to change that. As a result we decided that the coffin lid should be shut and no viewing allowed, although viewings are fairly common where we come from in Scotland (there were viewings at my Grans funeral, at my great-Grans twenty years ago and at all but one (out of necessity, rather than disapproval) of my families funerals in Scotland). Opinions varied as to the success of this but my Mother had said that my great Gran "looked like a vampire-it was horrific", she had said that it wasn't down to the make up or and lack of skill on the part of the funeral parlour. I think this could be selling an unrealistic expectation to someone who is dying and to relatives who have just been bereaved. 

Birthday EOTD

I am now inescapably in my late 20's which is a slightly depressing thought. Had a reasonably good day, My Dad and brother had bought this massive chocolate cake meant to feed 20 people and as a result we're going to be eating a lot of cake to get rid of it and I got to but a load of books without having to pay for them myself.

Makeup was a 1980's inspired but fairly simple look.

TFSI

NYX jumbo e/s pencil in oyster- lid

Sugarpill chromalust in birthday girl- lid

Medusa's e/s in electro purple- crease

Medusa's e/s in electro green-lower lashline

MAC p/m in pink opal- highlight

Barry M white eyeliner-waterline

Collection 2000 glittery liner in disco queen- upper lashline

Benefit bad gal lashes

Margarita: Love and Destroy

I was really bored earlier today so I decided to try a look inspired by a scene in my favourite book, The Master and Margarita. This is kinda how I think of her makeup during her flight over Moscow (not at Wolands Ball where I imagine her face to be even paler, more sharply contoured and the eyes darker- a bit like how they did Illamasquas Dystopia collection a couple of years ago).

I initially thought of trying to replicate the look in the video at the bottom (the song is Love and Destroy by Franz Ferdinand and the video is a scene from a Russian tv adaptation of the book). I had remembered the eyeshadow wrong so it is quite different.

Swatches: Ben Nye Green and Purple Eyeshadows

Royal Purple, Amethyst, Cosmic Violet
Mermaid Green, Jade, Chartreus

Ben Nye Eyeshadows-Size

I recently bought 2 Ben Nye Grand Lumiere eyeshadows and was surprised at the difference in size between the individual ones, the palette ones and a MAC eyeshadow. Considering that a Ben nye shadow costs about £11 it is amazing to see just how much you get compared to MAC.