Lipglossiping Paris competition entries

The beautiful Charlotte from Lipglossiping is having a competition (sponsored by Vaseline) where the prize is a holiday to Paris! It ends at midnight tonight and I only discovered it yesterday so spent the afternoon hastily making entries because of course I'd really like to go to Paris! Here are my entries

1. Gargoyle

This was based on the gorgeous gargoyles that sit atop Notre Dame. Notre Dame is an absolutely gorgeous building but the gargoyles are my favourite bit because I just love them and their plaintive faces. This is a relief sculpture made from fake nails and then painted with nail polish in various shades of grey (and black and white) I used China Glaze, Barry M and Models Own polishes and the nails are off a generic unbranded nail wheel:

 

And here's a couple of work in progress shots because it looked really cool before I painted it too

 

2. Another gargoyle!
Yeah I really like the Notre Dame gargoyles. This time I carved his little face from an old lipstick. It was basically impossible to get a photo showing all the detail but I hope you can see some of it at least!

 

 

3. Mona Lisa Face

So while the painting is of course not Parisian it is probably the most famous painting displayed in the Louvre which is in so to me the painting always reminds me of Paris. This was made by rubbing various eyeshadows (mostly Barry M Dazzle Dusts) onto paper with cotton wool balls and buds. Then I added some detail using Illamasqua medium pencils in Sophie (black) and Vow (creamish). I just did the face as it's the most iconic part (and if I'd done the whole thing it would have taken forever!)

4. Pontilist Eiffel

And finally a more simple entry, an Eiffel tower. I used the French pontilism technique (tonnes of tiny dots) with colours inspired by fauvism and just covered a piece of paper, then I cut out the shape of the tower and stuck it on some plain white paper. The dots are all nail polish (various brands and colours)

I hope you like them all! Even if I don't win it was really fun to play around and got the old artistic juices flowing :)

More Birthday

I mentioned in my Cookie Monster post a few days ago that I was going to a friends birthday. I meant to post a picture, but forgot. Anyway I thought you should see because I look hilarious!

 

Me, Philippa (birthday girl), Xenia, Ian, Martin

I look absolutely terrified in every photo that was taken! Possibly because I was quite terrified, but it's still funny :P Also hellloooo double chin!

And I just thought I'd share, this was one of my presents for Philly:

I made her an adipose :)

I've had a horrible morning. My Mum had to wake me up to tell me that our Cat, Jimmy, had died. He was very old, 3 legged, deaf and going blind, but he was the nicest boy ever. Not a good week :(

Some recent art

Music rat 1

 

Music Rat 2

 

Music Rat 3

 

Ferret Yawn 3

I'm playing with acrylics lately, usually i use watercolour and it's a lot more 'slick'. I do like this too though, what do you think? Constructive criticism is appreciated :)

Are people interested in seeing my paintings and stuff? If you're not please be honest as i can use my other blog for it and then people who do want to see can look there :)

I'm entering the Sunday Times Watercolour competition next week, please wish me luck. And 2 of my pieces from last year are going into an exhibition in a local gallery, it's great because if they like my work i might be able to build a relationship with them.

I have been really getting interested in homemade and indie toilettry products and makeup. For a longtime i've wanted to make my own and just can't stop thinking about how nice it would be to run a little Etsy store (well along with the 2 i have already for my paintings and sewing :P) and make my own special blends and colours. However i would be a complete beginner, and so many people are so wonderful at it already is there any point? Do you think i should give it a go or just leave it to the professionals? I don't know what i could do differently except maybe add a new aesthetic.

And sorry for being useless at replying to comments recently. I'm going to go and catch up as much as possible before bed :)

So fed up, NOTD and painting

A little while ago the wonderful people at Beauty from the earth sent me some wonderful samples to try. I had been putting off writing my review until i'd used the products long enough to get a proper idea about them. Now i have and it appears my entire photo of folders (including FOTDs, swatches etc) has gone missing. I assumed i had deleted it but it's not in the recycle bin. I can't find it anywhere though, it's baffling me!
Hopefully i'll find it lurking somewhere deep within the computer memory or i shal have to take them all again X/

 

Here are my nails from last week - Illamasqua's Insanity with Topshop matte topcoat on the tips. The terrible application is my fault, not the polishes (it applied like a dream) i kept smudging and instead of taking it off i just applied another coat :P

And here is a terrible photo of quite a nice painting i finished a while back. Pepito the Performing Pup :)

Pinchy pinchy kiss kiss

A painting

Just finished it. It's King Calcium, ruler of the pigeons :)

It looks nicer in real life, there are iridescent green and purple tinges that you can't see in the photo And the light grey bits just look a flat white when really they have very subtle shadows. Anyway comments or (constructive) criticism is very much appreciated!


I was wondering if any of my followers or friends in the US could do me a huge favour? Starting tomorrow Sephora is having a 15% off sale. As they don't ship to the UK i've been wanting a load of stuff from them for ages and now seems a great time to get some. So basically i'm asking if someone would let me ship the package to their address, and then i'll pay you to send it on to me?


Also i just uploaded some new OCC lip tar swatches here

Hope everyone is having/had a lovely weekend.
xxx

Some art

This was made for my dad for christmas. It's the first time i've used acrylics in yonks and i really loved it, looks like there will be a lot of acrylic on canvas happening soon.


And this was a present for Claire's mum. I flocked the frame so it's all velvety :)


And now these are all sketches, character designs and so on for illustrations for a children's book i'm writing:

This is Visha, the roller skating bear.




The ring master.






Lulubelle the tight-rope walker:






And Pedro (the main character) the worlds largest elephant:

Resolutions

I hope everyone had a really good new year! I had a bit of an odd one, just hanging around the house with fried and a bottle of vodka. It descended into a pre-teen game of truth or dare which then had Ian (the only boy in our group) being dresed up in drag, me having a glass of booze parcel-taped to my arm and everyone getting a bit too interested in everyone elses sexual history.
Today i woke up with my second hangover ever. It was horrible. I think i shall think carefully about drinking in the future, it makes the nights more interesting and easy but the repercussions are more horrible than i had imagined.

So i have some resolutions for the new year. Will i keep them? Honestly it's pretty doubtful, i'm rather useless at this sort of thing but they are all things designed to make my life easier and more fulfilling so i will try my very best.

1. Lose some weight. A boring and incredibly typical resolution. My reason is purely shallow, i don't care about my health or anything sensible i'm afraid to say, my reason is simply that this time last year i was at least 1 dress size smaller, and now i am too large for some of my clothes. I stil loe those clothes and it's sad to not be able to wear them.

2. Complete at least 1 painting/sculpture/illustration/piece of clothing a week. I NEED to get back into the swing of consistently starting and finishing things. I have so many 'talents' (if you can call them that) and the majority of the time they get put on the back burner or just forgotten about. i have so many half finished projects that i just need to turn my attention to for a few days to complete.

3. Sell Sell Sell! I have so much stuff in my house which i no longer need and am planning to sell but just haven't gotten around to it. Expect an epic blog sale of fashion/makeup/miscellanery soon, some stuff i'll be giving away. Stuff that doesn't sell here i will put onto ebay and anything that doesn't sell then will be taken to a charity shop. I need to just get it out of the house!
I will aso be putting more paintings/dolls/sculpture etc onto etsy. I figure the more i have out there the more likely it is i will make some money!

4. Save money. I'm not even gong to attempt to put myself on a spending ban, it just won't happen, but i will try my best to save at least a small amount of money a month.

5. Be as professional as possible with my art. As soon as possible i'm going to do a complete overhaul of my website, making it as original and exciting as possible, but still professional and easy to use. I'm also going to try and get any exhibitions possible. I'm trying to pursuade my friend Mikey to do a show wth me, not only doe (i think) our work go ogether really well, but he has lots of connections and will attract a lot of people :P

6. Wear more makeup! This might seem a bit of a silly one seeing as this is first and foremost a blog about my experiences with makeup but to be honest i don't feel i wear it enough. One of the reasons i started this blog is that from around the beginning of last year i stopped wearing as much fun and exciting makeup. Firstly i was so buy at college i would just run out of the house without bothering to spend any more time than was necessary. And while now i will put it on everytime i leave the hous i feel i have fallen into a bit of a rut. My look is always a bold lip with either plain eyes or eyeliner. I think this look is very flattering for me but have so many exciting coloured eyeshadows and so on and it does sadden me to see them sitting in my makeup box looking lonely and unloved. I used to be a lot more 'outrageous' with my looks as well, coloured eyebrows, rainbow eyeshadow, green blusher, drawn on monobrows etc etc and while some people still think my usual look is a bit 'out there' to me it just seems like an 'everyday' look and nothing special.

So I will be trying as hard as possible to stick to them, but in the highly likely event that i fail i'm not going to be hard on myself.
I've loved reading everyones end-of-year posts and hopefully i'll get my op products of 2009 up soon.
Happy New Year! xxx

Illustrations

Some people asked if i would show some of my artwork on this blog, so here is what i have finished most recently, a set of illustrations for a book that will hopefully be being published, albeit in a very small run. If it does get published it will be so so great for my career just to have some work circulating and if not it was still good practice.
These are all photos that need to be cleaned up on the computer, so just imagine them without the smudges and things :P

Guildford Exhibition (re post from my other blog)

A few months ago i had a near disastrous exhibition at the Presence Art Space in Guildford. Firstly due to my social phobia and the slight flakiness of Suzie (the owner of the space) it took me about 2 months to actually sort ot when i would be exhibiting. Then less than a week after i had put my work up i recieved word from Suzie that the space was having to close down (due to something to do wth council taxes). It was really a shame because Suzie had paid the rent for the space, which was a disused shop, for a year, and it was a non-profit cultural busness she was running, but the council wanted to charge her the taxes for a shop just because that is what the building was made for.
Anyway it was still worth it because Suzi was a wonderful person who said she'd like to do something with me in the future, and some Guildford Council people saw my work, so hopefully something good will come out of it.
Anyway heres some pictures.










It's a real shame that the space is a bit derelict looking because the amount of space i had was amazing!

A day and night FOTD

Have finally finished all the illustrations! Phew, i've been so stressed!

Last tuesday i went up to The Foundry, which is a pub/bar/artspace that allows anyone to put their work up on various walls.

Here is my face of the tuesday:


And close ups:



check out my insanely bloodshot eyes!


I was wearing:
face: avon personal match tinted moisturiser in light, Barry M blusher in no. 3
eyes: Barry M Kohl pencil in no. 23, beautyuk glitter eyeliner in no. 5, givenchy phenomen'eyes mascara in black
lips: Barry M lip liner in no. 2, Rimmel vinyl 1000 carat lipgloss in Steal the show

Here is my night look, which was basically my day face but with some foundation and red lipstick:

Here's the changes:
Face: Nyx liquid foundation in LM01 Pale, ELF complexion perfection powder, Collection 2000 illuminating touch concealer in naked.
Lips: Revlon Matte lipstick in Really Red

And here's (most of) my wall and some people i don't know :P :


Last night i went to take my work down and discovered that between saturday night and sunday night someone stole 3 of my paintings. I am terribly upset about it. They weren't my favourite pictures or anything, but when you work hard and put your creativity into something and someone can just get away with taken things. This is how i'm going to make my living! It's just very hurtful.

I've been a very naughty poor person and had a huge haul recently. I just watched Confessions of a Shopaholic and found myself relating much too much to the main character! D:

Anyway i have a lot more time to blog now, so i'm back babeh.