Best Friend n. Someone who willingly puts their face and hair in the hands of a trainee make-up artist and hair stylist of only three weeks and is happy to sit through hours of prodding, powdering and preening.
Last weekend, my best friend, Ally, kindly volunteered to be my first client outside make-up school and let me loose on her face and hair. Little did she know what she’d let herself in for. I came prepared with a suitcase (yes, suitcase) full of make-up and styling equipment, as well as a beauty box full of eyeshadows, lipsticks and other bits and bobs.
The first task was to blow-dry Ally’s hair. I never realised the skill involved in doing a professional blow-dry until we were taught last week. For a start, hair should be about 80% dry before you blow-dry it. Then you have to hold the hairdryer in your right hand and the barrel brush in the left, continually twisting the brush and moving the blow-dryer as you dry the hair. Then you have to ‘catch’ the section of hair with the hairdryer and pick it up again with the brush and use a spare finger on your right hand to section out the hair so that you do not have to put your tools down. It’s a bit like patting your head and rubbing your belly at first!
I had an idea of the looks I wanted to create on Ally. The first one was to be quite a natural look, using shades of cream and brown to accentuate her green eyes and a rosy pink lip. As inspiration, I used the image of Rosie Huntington-Whiteley in the Burberry Body campaign. I love the caramel colours used around her eyes which really compliment her colouring and match her hair colour. However, Ally’s hair colour is a lot darker than Rosie’s so I used a slightly darker shade around the eyes. The second look I wanted to create on Ally was a pale face with contoured cheeks, nude lips, dark eye make-up and gold leaf on the eyebrows. I have been dying to put gold leaf on someone for ages. I love the flaky effect you can create with it. Unfortunately, I wasn’t quite sure how to get the gold leaf to stick to Ally’s eyebrows without blocking the eyebrows (covering them with soft wax) first and I didn’t want to scare her by pulling out my blunt knife and wax, so I chose to coat the eyebrows in Vaseline and glitter lip fix and then stick little bits of gold leaf onto them. It worked quite well for a first attempt, but I think lip-gloss may be a better option for the future as it is a little bit stickier.
It was really great to transform Ally’s face and take her from a very simple day look to a more conceptual, edgy look. See the transformation for yourself...
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| The 'before' photo |
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| The daytime look |
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| The Gold Leaf look |
