Celina, based in Melbourne Australia is an aspiring artist. With a passion for expressing herself through makeup, beauty, fashion, cosplay & photography, she believes in living life as creatively as possible.
Check out of my gaming blog called SuzakuNU, outside of beauty and cosplay, I live and breathe IT and gaming :)
A simple look, for a big dream, to make videos~ Today I’ve created my first video tutorial, the first of many I’m hoping. I think moving on to a video medium was only a natural extension of my growth on this blog. When I first started blogging for beauty, I was terribly shy, and so would take baby steps. Expressing myself through words, then photos, then more “outrageous” photos and finally video.
This is an amazing learning process, there are many things I want to change and improve on with my video, and I have a gazillion ideas I’ve been bouncing off my friends. I’m hoping with time I will be able to create for you some entertaining yet educational videos Special thanks to Klaire de lys is who is in my opinion one of the most talented makeup artists I’ve ever met on youtube! Her support is amazing and I can only hope to be 1/10 as talented as she.
If you would still like to see the tutorials written out, please let me know below~ I don’t mind writing them up if anyone finds them useful~ Enjoy!
Even though most of my inspiration and knowledge of makeup comes from endless hours online, I still love to collect and read various beauty and fashion related books. It’s just nice having something tangible in my hands that I can take over to my couch (I don’t use a laptop for blogging) and read with a nice cup of hot chocolate
I have a number of books, but for today I wanted to do a comparison between two brand specific ones. Bobbi Brown’s Makeup Manual and Napoleon Perdis’ Forever Flawless.
Bobbi Brown Makeup Manual
* Absolutely love that the first part of the book focuses on healthy eating and habits to achieve beauty. An essential and often neglected part of “beauty”.
* Gives a comprehensive guide on skin care.
* Each chapter focuses on a specific part of the face, eyes, lips, etc.
* Tutorials provide step by step images illustrating makeup application.
* Includes tutorials and tips regarding makeup for special occasions and various age groups.
* Provides advice and guidance for makeup artists wishing to become pro and break into the industry.
* Wish it talked more about Bobbi Brown products, when viewing some tutorials I would have liked some actual product recommendation.
Napoleon Perdis Forever Flawless: How to look your best at every age
* Very heavy product promotion, but does give comprehensive details on how each product should be used.
* Gives a solid coverage of tools and skin care options, easy to understand for beginners.
* Each chapter focuses on a specific part of the face, including a Napoleon Perdis product recommendations.
* The second half of the book gives very detailed information on techniques and products suitable for a wide range of age groups, including well crafted tutorials with before and after photos. Great start guide for budding makeup aritsts.
As you can see whilst both books are essentially guides on how to apply makeup, they also come from different angles and ultimately which book you select depends on your needs. Still I’ve glad to have purchased both books, if I had to choose one I might lean more towards the Bobbi Brown book just because I felt it had more content, and less product images / blank pages than the Napoleon Perdis book did and I enjoyed the step by step images. But keep in mind the Bobbi Brown book cost about double that of the Napoleon Perdis book.
I’m sorry, I’m not sure if both books are still available in store. I believe I paid about $50AU for Bobbi Brown and around $27ish for the Napoleon Perdis (which Sefie kindly had signed for me!!)
A couple of weeks ago I went out to The Meat & Wine Co for dinner (fantastic food btw :9) and was inspired to do a bohemian look when I saw their beaded curtains with the orange night lights filtering through. So I went home, pulled out all the beads I had in storage and created my own “beaded curtains”, and there you have it!
Special thanks to Toby for taking the photos for me, I was holding reflectors in both hands during the entire shoot, and it took a bit of time to figure out how to set up the background, lights etc! It was both frustrating and rewarding <3
Hope you enjoy the look, I'm really enjoying stepping up the Book of Fables to a new level and am already hard at work creating a bunch of props for future shoots, but please don't expect them for every chapter! I work both a full-time and part-time job so I don't always have the time
OH! And before I forget, today is the last day to enter Fables in Fashion’s First Giveaway! Finishes at 5pm, Melbourne, Australia time! So be sure to enter if you would like to win some cool prizes, I’ll be throwing in a few other samples for the winner
Face
Prime, apply foundation, concealer and powder to set. I wanted my skin to appear more “warm” and glowy, so I applied a bronzer to my temples and jawline, applied blush to my cheek bones and a highlighter to the cheeks, bridge of my nose and forehead.
Eyes
Prime your lids, then take a light tan shadow and apply all over the lid, up to the brow bone, inner 1/3 of the lower lash line and inner corner of the eye. Take a medium brown and apply directly on to the eyelids, pat down the colour to intensify it and only blend out the edge closest to the crease.
Take a deep brown and apply to the 2/3 outer parts of the crease and the outer corner. Blend up towards your brow bone and wing it out. Take a brown eyeliner and line your upper lash line and follow the shape of your winged eyeshadow. Next take a black eye liner and line your water line.
Take a teal coloured eye liner and apply directly on to the lower lash line, really pack on the colour, you can set it with a teal eye shadow powder if you lack lower lashes to help keep the colour in place (I should have done this!)
Fill in and extend your brows with the deep brown eye shadow. Curl your lashes and apply black mascara.
Lips
Line and fill in your lips with a muted pink lip liner and coat with an electric pink / red lipstick.
If you live in Australia, then hope you are enjoying your long weekend~ I figured most people will either be on holiday or at least enjoying their break away from their computer (except for me because let’s face it, I’m a bit of a nerd / geek), so I decided to bring in a pretty simple look I’ve had in mind for a while.
CLAMP are a group of talented women who have written some amazing Japanese series such as Card Captor Sakura, X/1999, Chobits and of course Magic Knight Rayearth. CLAMP’s illustration style for female eyes tend to be very similar throughout all their series. And so I wanted to present a simple tutorial with my interpretation of CLAMP female eyes.
I had actually recorded this as a video tutorial, but… I’m not 100% happy with the results, so I’ll hopefully re-shoot it again soon Enjoy!
MAC Prep + Prime – Skin Base Visage
Giorgio Armani Luminous Silk Foundation – 4
Giorgio Armani Micro-Fil Loose Powder – 1
Bobbi Brown Creamy Concealer – Beige
Bobbi Brown Sheer Finish Loose Powder – Pale Yellow
NP Set – New Neutrals *
NARS Powder Blush – Orgasm
e.l.f Eyelid Primer – Sheer
MAc Fluidline – Blacktrack
DUO Lash Glue – Dark Tone
False Lashes
SHU Uemura – Lash Curler
NYX Mosaic Powder – Highlighter
MAC Lipglass – Cruise Control
Maybelline Brow Styling Gel – Clear
NYX Felt Tip Liner – Extreme Black
Prestige Eyeliner – White
Product marked with * were sent for consideration
Face
Nothing too special here, prime, foundation, concealer and powder to set. When cosplaying, your makeup will be thicker than usual just because you will be photographed often and you want absolutely flawless skin . Apply blush to the apples of your cheeks and a white shimmering powder to highlighter.
Eyes
First prime your lids, for my Shidou Hikaru photo shoots I went with red eye shadow, but for the sake of making this tutorial more general, I went with a neutral eye. You are trying to make your eyes appear larger than they are, so the most important thing to remember is where you set the crease. Even tho my eyes are large, I tend to apply the crease colour -just- above my actual crease. It’s not clear in the photos (hence why I want to reshoot the video), but it does make a big difference.
Next would be the liner, CLAMP eyes tend to go very heavy on the liner, but the exact same you want will depend on the character you are portraying. You want to make sure your liner is thicker and less winged out for younger characters, and wing it out a great deal more for vampy characters.
Curl your lashes and apply mascara and make sure to apply a good set of false lashes. I’d go as far to say that the majority of female characters, no matter what mangaka needs to wear false lashes.
Lips
The colour of your lips will again depend on your character, Hikaru is youthful hence why I settled for a sheer pink shade. But naturally vamper characters will require a darker colour.
I will do my best to make sure my video is as comprehensive as possible, please let me know if there is anything you would like to see in it!
I’m sure you all know where the inspiration for this look came from, and if you don’t then clearly you haven’t heard of wonders that are Illamasqua‘s Toxic Nature collection~
The hardest part was ensuring both eyes were even, which still didn’t turn out exactly the way I had hoped, still not too bad for a first go. Please note that besides the first and last photo, I’ve digitally removed my eye brows to enhance the overall look~ I wanted to leave them in for some of the photos to give you an idea what it looks like naturally.
Face
After primer and foundation, use a powder foundation to set as we want as much coverage as possible. Next sculpt your face, don’t be afraid to use a heavy hand here, we really want the look to be dramatic. Use a bright magenta powder blush to the apples of your cheeks and blend, and then top off with a highlighter. Contour your nose with the bronzer.
This particular step of most tutorials is essentially the same, but what differs is the amount of product and pressured used. Using this same technique you can get a variety of looks just but adding or reducing the amount of makeup used.
Eyes
Coat your eyebrows with wax to flatten them, then cover up with concealer so that it almost appears like you don’t have any brows.
Prime your lids, then take a black gel liner and start to outline the design around your eyes. For the black droplets under my eyes I used a liquid eyeliner for added intensity. Randomly draw tiny spots all over your cheeks.
Fill in the area on your lids with a purple gel liner for colour intensity then cover with purple eye shadow. Next fill in the area above with a pastel green cream pigment. Fill in your lower lash line with the same pigment. Take a dark brown eye shadow and draw in the brows. Add a tiny bit of hot pink eye shadow to the inner corner of your eyes.
Retrace the black gel liner with a black liquid eyeliner, and heavily line your upper lash line.
Curl your lashes and apply a thick coat of black mascara, then apply the longest biggest set of black false lashes you have.
Lips
Fill in your lips with a tan cream eye shadow, then take a brown gel liner and line your lips and create the shape you see in the photos. Take a touch of a pinkish red cream blush and dab it on the centre of your lips.
Photo below is with half the look and half without any makeup! I thought the contrast was really interesting
Welcome to Chapter 50, I can you believe I’ve been doing Book of Fables for almost a year now!? Crazy right? I’m glad I’ve managed to keep it up, only slightly disappointed I haven’t done many videos though But you know, take each day as it comes and do what you can
For this look, I wanted something simple and light. Not sure how I feel about my look as a blonde, but at least by lightening my brows everything “fits” just a little bit better.
I rarely smile nor show any real happy emotions in most of my photos, so attempting this shoot was a nice change. It just made me want to smile and be happy I hope I was able to convey that in some of my photos~
Face
After primer and foundation, start to contour your face lightly with bronzer. We only want to create gentle shadows here, use a shimmery white highlighter and pink blush to help sculpt your face. We’re aiming for a youthful delicate look.
Eyes
Comb back your brows and cover them with concealer, then coat them with a medium brown eye shadow. You only need to do this step if you have dark eye brows like me.
Prime your lids, then apply a white shimmery eye shadow to your entire lid, crease and brow bone. Take a pink powder and apply directly into your crease, blend out so that the pink will appear above your eye lashes when your eyes are opened… if that makes sense. Bring some of the colour down to your lower lash line.
Take a white eyeliner pencil and fill in the inner corner of your eyes. Take a medium brown shadow and deepen the depth by applying to the outer corner of your eyes. Next take a glitter gel and dab just a bit to the centre of your lids, then apply pixie glitter on top of that. Feel free to brush a bit of glitter over any highlights of your face too for added “sparkle” if you feel like it.
Line your upper lash line with a black pencil liner and smudge it out with a cotton tip. Curl your lashes and apply 1 coat of any black mascara. Take a set of false lashes (the ones I used were pink with glitter on them) and apply.
Glue two small silver crystals to the outer corner of your eyes.
Lips
Fill in your lips with a magenta lip liner, then coat with a layer of pearlescent pink lipstick.
Last weekend I was invited to attend Circa Nocturna, Melbourne’s Alternative Fashion Parade. This particular look is to me, more about the hair than the makeup.
Cause I’m hardcore like a fox cosplayer, I decided to cut parts of my hair to get this look. I have to create the fringe and longer side strands to achieve that “rocker” feel to my hair. The makeup is pretty basic, a standard pink / purple look (that would have photographed a lot better in my home studio!).
Special thanks to Surfaced Music for taking these photos for me~
MAC Prep + Prime – Skin Base Visage
Giorgio Armani Luminous Silk Foundation – 4
Bobbi Brown Creamy Concealer – Beige
MAC Mineralize Skinfinish Natural – Light
NARS Powder Blush – Orgasm
NYX Mosaic Powder – Highlighter
NARS Smudge Proof Eyeshadow Base
Prestige Eyeliner – White
Estee Lauder Eye Shadow Powder – Pink Flash
MAC Eye Shadow – Vibrant Grape
MAC Eye Shadow – Parfait Amour
MAC Eye Shadow – Hepcat
MAC Fluidline – Blacktrack
Coastal Scents – Brow Tones
Maybelline Falsies Volume Express – Very Black
Maybelline Brow Styling Gel – Clear
DUO Lash Glue – Dark Tone
False Lashes
Lancome Color Fever Lipstick – 312
Face
Nothing new here, primer, foundation, concealer then powder. Apply pink blush to the apples of your cheeks and then a matte highlighter to all your high points.
Eyes
After primer, use a white eye liner pencil and apply to the inner corner of your eyes and brow bone. Blend with your finger. Then on top of that, apply a shimmery white powder to intensify the effect. Bring the shadow to under your lower lash line.
Then apply a medium purple shadow all over the lid and blend into the crease. Then take a darker purple to the outer corner of your eyes and blend. Apply just a tiny bit of the dark purple to the outer 1/3 of your lower lash line. Take a shimmery pink shadow and apply to the inner 2/3 of your eye lid and lightly apply just above your crease.
Apply your gel cream liner and make a thicker line than you normally would whilst winging it out at the same time.
Curl your lashes and apply two coats of mascara. Apply your false lashes.
Take a brow eye brow powder and fill in your brows, then set with a clear brow gel.
Lips
Lightly apply a fuchsia pink lip stick.
Hair
Pretty simple! Separate the majority of your hair from your fringe, and pull out a few strands for the side of your head. Tie your hair up in a ponytail. If you have short hair, you can flip your ponytail up and start pinning strands of it to the top of your head. Spray with hair spray to get the strands to stand up more and flick out.
But if you have longer hair like me, what I did was still flip my ponytail up, but created a small loop at the base of my ponytail, then tied it down with another hair tie. Next I took a few strands of hair and then pinned it over the loop to disguise it. This (hopefully) gives the illusion that I had shorter than what I really did
Celina, based in Melbourne Australia is an aspiring artist. With a passion for expressing herself through makeup, beauty, fashion, cosplay & photography, she believes in living life as creatively as possible.
Special thanks to Klaire de lys is who is in my opinion one of the most talented makeup artists I’ve ever met on youtube! Her support is amazing and I can only hope to be 1/10 as talented as she. 
