Get your cosplay on! This week is mainly directed at cosplayers who tell me that there is no need to wear makeup when you cosplay a character that doesn’t appear to be wearing makeup. Wrong, so very very wrong. You always need makeup when you cosplay!

Don’t tell me you are magically born with perfect even skin, softly flushed cheeks, big bright eyes, long lashes and glossy lips All of which are standards for any animated character, so consider this look highly versatile beyond the limitation that are Mint Buramanshu. This look can be used for any character that doesn’t appear to be wearing any makeup.

Ingredients
MAC Prep and Prime
Bobbi Brown Skin Foundation SPF 15 PA+ – Sand
Bobbi Brown Creamy Concealer – Beige
MAC Mineralise Skinfinish Natural – Light
NARS Powder Blush – Orgasm
Canmake Highlighter – 01

NARS Smudge Proof Eyeshadow Base
NP Set New Neutrals Palette
MAC Fluidline – Blacktrack
L’Oreal Extra-Volume Collagene – Black
Chanel Sculpte Sourcils – Noir

NYX Lip Pencil – Natural
Maybelline Color Sensational – Pink Please
L’Oreal Glam Shine Volumizer Gloss Repulpant – Forever Sweet

Instructions
Face
Prime, Foundation, Powder and Conceal! All standards that should be followed for 95% of looks Using a medium brown powder, contour your nose so it appears smaller.

Cheeks
Use a natural pink blush on the apples of your cheeks, and a highlight your cheek bones, nose, forehead and jawline with a highlighter.

Eyes
Prime your lids, then taking 3 neutral colours (very light brown, medium brown and dark brown). Apply the light brown to your brow bone, inner corner of your eye and all over your lid. Use the medium brown to your crease, then line your upper lash line with the dark brown. Don’t be afraid to make the line thick, this is the colour that will “open” your eyes.

With a black eyeliner, line your upper lash line enough so the dark brown is still visible. If you want you can line your lower lash line with a white liner, but don’t use black or it will make your eyes look smaller and give you a harsher look (and it will be even more obvious that you are wearing makeup)

Curl lashes and apply two coats of mascara. Apply false lashes (choose these wisely, you can’t just randomly pick up any false lashes, I’ll try and do a post on this one day!). Bottom lashes are optional, but only if you can keep them subtle. We aren’t going for a gyaru look here, we want to look as natural as possible for photography.

Shape your eyebrows with a brow pencil.

Lips

Line and fill in lips with a lip pencil, cover with lip stick then apply a generous layer of gloss.

Tips:

• Be careful not to apply anything too heavily, whilst this is a cosplay look, the idea is to enhance our features NOT “draw” them on.
• You know you’re on the right track if in real life, your makeup looks a tad heavy, but appears very subtle in photographs.

I’ve got a bunch more posts to make regarding natural makeup for cosplayers, so let me know if you have any questions in particular you’d like answered and stay tuned

If there is one thing you should know about me is that I have an unhealthy addiction to makeup palettes. Something about knowing I have in the palm of my hand the tools to completely transform myself.

Hmm… I sound oh so sophisticated and mysterious. Which isn’t me at all (I wish!), so I’ve narrowed it down to being that fact that I like to look at a lot of pretty colours at once.

Yes, that sounds much more like me!

So it’s no surprise I have an unhealthy amount of palettes at home, I buy each one with the hope that “this will be my travel / all purpose palette”, which never ends up being the case as proven by half my luggage space being dedicated to both skin care and makeup. Oh well, aim high right?

However, one palette I find myself turning to more often each day is NP Set’s 10 eye shadow palette. It was given to me by Sefie, and it contains some lovely neutral winter tones. What I love about this palette are the range of colours and how light the actual compact is. Great for when I’m running late and need to do my makeup in the car, which unfortunately occurs all too often.

Last week, I decided to splurge on a couple more NP Set palettes. I figured, my collection is so heavily dedicated to the international brands, I should give a little more love to the Australian brands I’ve purchased the Career and Sweater set.

I bought two, each for around $39 each. Both contain eye shadows, blush and lip product. Personally I’m not a fan on having lip products in a palette if I intend to use them everyday. So much easier to just whip out a tube of lip stick/gloss to touch up, than fiddling around with a palette, especially when one is out to dinner.

Curious to see how versatile these palettes really turn out to be!

Oh, and a word of warning. If you’re a clumsy girl like myself, I would avoid the Romance, Party and Jet set palettes. I too was drawn to the array of lovely eye shadows at hand, but trust me the packaging is so brittle and weak, the palette literally snapped in half when I opened it (Fortunately, I opened it just outside the store and was able to return it)