50 shades of orange foundation

I remember a while ago pointing out that my sister's foundation was quite orange. I thought

it was because she wanted to look tan. But like her I've found that the palest skin tone in the shop is still just as orange as the darker colours. Both my sister and I have 'fair' skin and have to use palest foundation possible. But recently I've noticed something annoying.

I stopped buying foundation on the highstreet about a year ago simply because I thought that makeup companies purposefully made their foundations orange toned to suit girls who wanted skin that 'glowed'. I resorted to Korean BB cremes. They matched my skin tone. But recently I've realised this was not because they were pale to match the pale korean skin, but because they have grey undertones. 

A lot of customers have complained about BB cremes in general being too grey (probably because of the chosen chemicals in them) but it was something I never had a problem with.

And I found out why today.

I have pink undertones in my skin.

Doesn't sound like much but it makes all the difference when buying foundations. Most foundations on the highstreet suit women with yellow undertones in their skin and for them they do not get that orange tang on their skin even if they are pale. 

The grey undertones in the BB creme simply negated some of the pink in my skin and appeared less grey. 

But how can you tell what undertones you have?

Well surely everyone has a mix. You are not either pink, yellow or orange toned, or warm or cool specifically. But there are ways to tell which tones your skin has the most.

They say looking at your veins can determine this.

Image not mine!

Blue = cool (pink)

Green = warm (orange and yellow).

Blue/Green = olive

But if you're like me and have purpley/blue veins that seem to merge into massive green ones then there are easier ways to tell.

Pink toned:

- You blush easily 

- You burn easily

- You are more sceceptible to Acne Rosacae 

- You have blue coloured veins

Yellow Toned/Olive:

- You tan more easily than you burn

- You have green veins

- You have blue/green veins

As soon as I read about the 'you blush easily part' I knew straight away I probably had pink toned skin as I blush so easily. It is the only reason I wear foundation (yes I have lots acne scars but I hate the cakey feeling of skin makeup, I would rather just use concealer).

So why am I writing about this today? Well because if you are a cosplayer you'll long for that seamless foundation that matches your skin tone. So if you have found that every foundation you try is orange on your skin, then maybe you have more pink undertones and should aim for a foundation with a pinker tone. Mac's foundation come in both Cool (for Yellow tones: NC) and Warm (for Pink tones: NW) that come in all shades, and in the shops you can try the foundation that has the pinker tones in it. 

I hope this helped you!

x

Cosplay armour tutorial part I

Bonjourno!

I figured as I was doing some armour for my next cosplay I'd do a tutorial so you don't make the same mistakes that I do and maybe if you are thinking of an armour cosplay you will have some idea of what you're up for. 

Okay, so I am going to cosplay Dark Knight Rikku:

Pic not mine

 Now it looks pretty complicated, and it was! I spent ages just trying to find reference pictures. Then I sketched out the armour and printed out refs. Also it turned out a second opinion was valuable as my friend spotted something I hadn't! 

So I decided to make this out of craft foam. Nice and cheap. But that is the cheapest item. Including the sword when finished the cosplay will be £50-£60. That's not including the wig (an extra £20). It's probably more expensive as I am having to buy resources to make the armour that I can use again afterwards but I don't already have them such as craft knifes, air dough etc. It has a lot of little things on it which add up unfortunately. But still, I spent £45 making/buying my last cosplay so it's not too bad, and apparently that's cheap too anyway for a cosplay. So, onto the tutorial part 1 where I'll show you how to make your pattern, cut out your armour and shape it if needed.

You will need:

• 1-2 rolls of masking tape (depending on your cosplay you will need ALOT)
• Scissors and if you want then a craft knife
• Lots of paper --> scrap paper is great if you have it
• Lots of sellotape! 
• Material you are making your armour out of 
•  A trusty sidekick friend (this is essential)
• Thin clothing
• An oven if shaping your armour and are using craft foam

1

1.) Okay so what you need to do is put on your thin clothing, but it needs to cover the area your armour will cover. Tie up long hair etc. This is where you need your trusty friend, I am very gratefull to have had Donnie help me with this! You'll need to get said friend to sellotape paper all over where your armour will be, and remember to stay as still as possible. This is where you start getting warm (you will get very warm, this took us 2 hours in total before I got the cocoon of paper and tape off my body and I was boiling by the end). Once you've acheived that you'll need your friend to get the masking tape, starting somewhere good and solid (I started at my rib cage) to wrap it tightly round and round to cover the paper. This is quite hard and you might want to stick your chest out to avoid restricting your breathing. So we did my torso first, then the chest, shoulders and then finally the top of my back.

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2) Get your friend to draw the pattern you want (basically what you will want to be wearing) and then cut it out carefully. Whilst drawing your pattern you'll probably run into certain issues. These are: how you will get the armour on and off + will my material fit the pattern? I ended up making a line for a join to get the armour on and I also ended up having to separate the side bit from the top picture (as you can see it is pretty large and wouldn't fit my A3 craft foam). I will super glue it back on later (then it'll be sealed in by layers of pva glue, paint and polish so it'll be alright).Then you can either use this finished pattern to draw around or you can transfer it to tissue paper (don't forget to transfer markings i.e. joints, holes etc) as I did to check it all still fit when drawn out onto flat material. 

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3.) Draw around your pattern onto the material you are making it out of. I'm using craft foam, but tissue paper doesn't absorb permanent felt tip pen which could be good if you need certain markings or bad if you don't want pen on your material! 

4

4.) Now you'll want to cut it out. I used a craft knife which cuts easily through the craft foam. You might need a different knife/pair of scissors to cut through your material, especially if it's thick. Remember to put a matt or board underneath so you don't scratch up any nice tables or granite work surfaces!

5

5.) Now if you need to shape it (if it's made out of craft foam) then you can heat it up. The oven is safest and you only need it on a low heat (I had ours at 50 C which is the lowest setting). It heats up pretty quickly and you can reheat it over and over, I didn't experience any shrinking or burning. But remember when you take it out you'll need to reshape it very quickly, and hold it there for at least 20 seconds until properly cooled. The foam is only warm as well when you take it out so don't worry about burning yourself (although if you have it up high then the foam may also be quite hot too so just be careful!). If you are using Worblas or wonderflex then these also bend when heated too, although a hot air gun is probably best for shaping Worblas.

And that's the end of part 1. As I've show how to make the pattern, cut and shape the armour I'll try upload part 2 sometime soon which'll be sealing and painting!

Kagamine Rin Cosplay makeup tutorial

Thought I'd have a go at making a makeup tutorial. My camera is really old and bad qual, and then blogger killed the quality even more! Hopefully when I get a new camera in Jan I will make a nice tutorial if I have time :) Below is a tutorial for Kagamine Rin cosplay. I cosplayed her white magnet version (which is why her wig is different), but this is a basic cosplay makeup tutorial and you could use this for other female cosplays. I forgot to mention but I had already done my makeup base. It's not as rigorous as I would have done it; I'm not wearing concealer or Primer. I always wear primer when doing shoots/conventions because really it is great. One cosplayer described it as the 'butter you put on bread before your topping'. It really makes your makeup last and look better! 

Enjoy!

 

Products used:

BarryM black pencil eyeliner,
Coverbook eyeshadow pallette in champagne, light brown & dark brown,
Collection 2000 waterproof liquid eyeliner,
Eylure naturalite collection fake lashes (can't remember what pair),
Collection 2000 lengthening mascara

For general cosplay makeup brown eyeshadow is an essential. It is great for changing your eyes and it really makes them stand out. Also if you are like me and have un-symmetrical/a lazy eye then mascara/false lashes even them out.

 

MCM expo 0ct 2012!

Lots to say here!

The past weekend I have been at MCM Expo in London with the rest of LwL.

This year was quite different. Firstly we were staying in an apparment with 3 other friends and it was really nice. We had so much space! And more than 2 mirrors xD. 

The only thing is I felt that MCM was the busiest it's ever been this year on the sat & sun. But these extra people aren't coslayers. I felt a bit cramped as per usual except it was harder to find cosplayers. I didn't manage to find 2 people I wanted to see which was a shame.

We went to go see the Eurocosplay finals on saturday and it was really good. The cosplays were AMAZING! I would've had a hard time being a judge although with the new stupid rules they introduced that they're now changing back for next year after much complaint judging wouldn't have been hard...

On the saturday Lucy and Charley were BAMFs and cosplayed as Cosmo and Wanda from Fairly Odd Parents:

Only pic I can find atm of them taken by Harri B (one of the friends staying with us)

Donnie and I cosplayed as Rin and Len Angelic/White Magnet version. I will post some of the pics when I get the original versions of them (these are lesser qual. ones off of fb).

Bal kindly took some pics of our cosplay

Harrie was Busajima from Highschool of the dead, but I don't have any pictures of her so here's an old one!

It was very exciting overall. I just hope there'll be more cosplayers in May. I mean there were plenty of cosplayers this time but too many..normal people even on the sunday.

We did Hobbits sat & sunday. It was great and fun especially when people are like 'OMG hobbits', 'where are you taking the hobbits?' ('to Isengard!'). X)

Here's a group shot of us + the lovely Steph as Bilbo!

Pic not taken by us

We had a lovely time at expo and got to see a lot of our friends which was nice. Some even came over saturday evening to play LOTR trivial persuit and Katie and Mollie came out for dinner with us on the fri.

We all have exams next May, so we are planning rewears. I am going to work on Dark Knight as well over time, especially after Christmas. In Oct however Balshaw will be wearing Vivaldi from Alice no Kuni! Looking forward to seeing that. Depending on money also we will hopefully be doing Bride of the Water God. I'm so excited!!

Weight loss for that convention?

The weight taboo

If you cosplay you'll know that unfortunately weight can be a big issue. I know cosplayers

who range from super skinny all the way to quite large and I can say that they all look beautiful however, not everyone agrees. One of my cosplaying friends gets a lot of abuse on her pictures about her weight which is sad. Anime/Manga characters are all super skinny with massive boobs and it makes it hard to cosplay sometimes as our view is that cosplayers should be skinny like the characters, and that we should judge them on overall physical appearance and not the effort that goes into the costume. 

I don't approve of this warped body image but I can't praise being overweight and I know some of you want to get slimmer or healthier for cosplay. I know it's hard to diet. I know it's hard to lose weight and so I thought I'd share with you an inspirational gyaru blogger who lost a lot of weight to become healthy.

http://chouzuru.blogspot.co.uk/2009/12/how-i-lost-90-lbs-41-kg.html

I hope it inspires those of you who want to lose weight or to eat healthier.

Ciao x 

Rin cosplay progress

For Oct. MCM Expo this year (which holy cow Matt Smith is attending), I am cosplaying

as Rin Kagamine on the friday. I'm doing the white magnet version and Donnie is going to be my Len.

So far I've sewn the dress (took me about 4754875 years), styled the wig,

sewn the hair-bow and...yeh. Still got lots of little things to do now!

Here's some pics of my progress:

(Excuse the flowers, they're blocking out the stuff on top of the wardrobe)

I did a makeup test too. The edges of the lashes are damned hard to get on though!

Anyway yeah. I'm super excited. Still got lots to buy and do, especially with another cosplay too! Gonna be so broke, but it'll be worth it!

I know on Friday that Chaz and Balshaw are doing FOP

And Harrie is doing Johan from Yu gi oh (love that show :D)!

Good luck to all of them with their cosplays! 

Ciao x

Getting your skin clear for cosplay

Ok so I'm not gonna bore you with the usual. If you're reading this then you've probably read

a lot of other articles on how to clear up your poor skin. You know the usual drill: drink water, find the facewash to suit you, get sleep, eat your fruit and veggies etc. but I wanted to share with you personal tips.

1.) See a doctor

I have had acne since I can remember really and not a day has gone by since I first got it where I have not had a spot on my face. So that's since about 13 or 14. To begin with it was only mild, but at the age of 15 I was already getting cystic acne. I could feel it pushing it's ugly lump up through my face as I sat at school until when I was about 16 and got 11 cystic spots over 3 days. I cracked and went crying to my mum (who herself had acne until 35 when she took proaccutane (an extremely high does of vit.a)). She told me to go to the doctors and although it sounded silly after I went it was the best thing I could've done. They gave me antibiotics with zinc to apply to my face. At this time I was gettng acne around my mouth where to this day I still get painful acne there. This cleared it up until one day it decided to stop working...After that I tried oral antibiotics and cremes. You have to bear with the system as it is a gradual one. They put me on the pill for 3 months and it did nothing. However the doctor put me on for 3 more months and I'm glad they did because it is working really well (although atm I have a painful spot) because I changed my facewash. Facewash + pill and I had only rarely those small tiny spots which go away quickly and mean nothing if you've had to bear with any form of painful acne. The only problem with the pill is it actually intensified my period pains. I'd also like to mention as people think the pill increases cancer it does not really. For Dianette, in their study of 6000 women out of the 3000 not taking the pill 16 of them had breast cancer by the time they were 30, and out of the 3000 taking the pill 17 of them had breast cancer. It is also said to reduce certain cancers but idk what to think about that. But yes. The best thing I'd reccommend is go see a doctor! I felt so relieved just seeing one.

2.) What does your skin want?

I was confused about facewash. As my acne was large, inflammed and painful I though my skin was sensitive. But I was wrong. I noticed my sin was oily towards the end of the day and swapping from a thick, moisturising cream clenser for sensitive skin to a foam for sensitive oily skin made all the difference! So think about what your skin really wants. 

3.) Calm

It's not so much the appearance but the pain that spots cause. What appears small feels like a massive golf ball swelling in your face. You can try various creams to calm them but one remedy I have tried recently is mint, green tea! Using an organic (pepper)mint green tea  bag hold it under the warm tap them rest it on the painful area. I find the peppermint really soothes the area and green tea is also meant to be calming. I do this when I have just (ok it sounds gross) cleared out a massive painful spot (if you completely drain it may leave a scar but the pain is gone by the next day. I would not reccommend this though as it will leave scars).

4.) Food does not cause acne

It's true. So take out that chocolate bar it doesn't matter. But eating the right foods can help acne. Basically that's fruit and veg. Zinc helps skin as well as your vitamins so eating these will help your skin, but seriously there is no link between certain foods causing acne. It is mainly down to your genes (unless you have a habit of smearing butter all over your face which would be the cause).

5.) Follow all that other stuff

Of course yes it does help to drink water and get sleep. Sleep means more time for calm, healing and growing, whilst water means your body is not dehydrated and stressed out. A body that has is daily needs met has energy to repair and help itself. And that could be your skin! So eat enough & eat vitamin/mineral abundant food and drink plenty of water. According to the doctor stress does not effect your skin but we all know that's a lie. Try to avoid stress and try to smile (unless it hurts because of your acne D: you can just imagine a smile or think of fluffy kittens!). Oh and don't touch your face, it makes it hurt even more and irritates it! They mention bacteria spreading but tbh if bacteria is causing your acne then facewash would have sorted that out for you by now (all they do is create excess fatty acids which clog your pores, so if you wash your face at the beginning and end of day you should reduce their numbers enough to stop this). Umm and don't overwash your face. Also moisturiser is not essential if you have oily skin. I know they say oily skin is caused as it's not oiled enough, but moisturiser doesn't make a difference although if it does work for you then just keep at it! Exfoliation can help as well, but if you have lots of acne opt for a very gentle exfoliator. An exfoliator can help stop spots developing so you will notice a difference later on if you exfoliate maybe twice a week. It certainly helps in oily trouble areas if you get lots of small whiteheads/blackheads. If you have cystic/painful acne then just go gentle on these areas.

I hope this helps!