Gotta look fly for 4th July...

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YEEHAA!

It's been a little while since my last post, but fear not guys, I'm back! I've been swanning off around Italy sipping on Bellini's and devouring kilos of nachos along the East Coast of America ( I know, how awful) so please do forgive me...

It wasn't just the extra love handles though, I also picked up some new ideas for future makeup looks, and I've got a fair few up my sleeve that I'm pretty psyched about...

I absolutely love America and had another fantastic trip there this June. I would love the opportunity to live/work there (hint hint to any single American men who may be reading..), y'all are so darn fun and friendly! I couldn't help but therefore dedicate a look to one of their biggest and best holidays (and movies), Independence Day.

This was a fairly quick and simple, fun look which uses just good old fashion paint and brushes. I sketched a take on the stars and stripes flag first, choosing to enlarge one star so that it surrounded one eye and then sporadically dotting smaller ones around it. I drew this with a wave, giving it movement and making it look more interesting, avoiding straight horizontal lines which can look quite flat. This also tends to work better with your face (especially my curvaceous nose!) which naturally has more dimension/curve to it anyway.

I painted this straight onto my face with a fine brush and white paint. The large star around my eye was the trickiest part to do freehand, if you turn your head a slight different way, it suddenly becomes very uneven, plus you have the eyebrow and general hollow of the eye to deal with... The best thing to do is to stop often, step back and survey how it is looking, or take a photo - you often spot things you hadn't in the mirror! You can then go over the lines to alter if necessary (an easier way to do this would be to print and cut out a stencil and use that as a guide also of course). I then just blocked in the colours with a larger brush, keeping the lines as clean as possible.

To give this more depth and movement, I mixed slightly deeper shades of the red and blue and a very light grey to show some shading in the flag.

Happy 4th July USA!!

Peace out.
JLM x

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