Cupcakes & Mad Men Soiree

The best part about being a costume design student is that we all enjoy any excuse to get dressed up. Laura, friend and fellow MFA student, hosted a make-your-own Mad Men cupcake viewing party so out came the bold graphic print and hair ratting comb!
 

Tunic: H&M

Triple Strand Necklace: Forever 21

Glasses Necklace: H&M

Leggings: Target

Flats: Beacon's Closet

This is my first outfit taking photo! Not gonna lie, I'm super self-conscious about it. We costume folk prefer to remain behind the scenes. But I figured what the hell, why not?

Oh and let me tell ya, talk about a challenge fitting this hair into my scooter helmet! As you can see it deflated a little. ;)

Check out my Peggy cupcake!

Dream Summer Wear

I spent an embarrassingly large portion of my day (after catching up on last night's True Blood with my neighbors) lounging about the house on Style.com checking out all the Resort 2011 shows that I missed. Dudes, after checking out Alice + Olivia's, I want to dress like this for the rest of the summer. The line is full of urbanized retro glamour, bold colors, head scarves and turbans, funky sunglasses and bold lip color. It's basically a line of everything that I love. I have yet to wear a turban Sunset Boulevard style in my lifetime but now I'm seriously considering hunting one down. I mean, I am living in L.A. after all!

 

Aaarg!

 Woohoo! Zombie finals! Want to look like a frozen zombie? Here's what you need:

• Water-based make-up palette
• Cotton batting
• Gelatin
• Fake snow crystals
• Epsom Salt
• KY Jelly

All of the coloring is just face paint. The growths are the cotton batting dipped in warm liquid gelatin with paint and snow crystals or Epsom salt on top. The KY jelly is for the hair and for a glistening effect.

The costume consists of items I found at a thrift shop that are ripped and distressed. Epsom salt and sugar are applied with Elmer glue and corn syrup. It is gross, sticky and uncomfortable but it was easy to apply and only had to last for a couple hours.

I know what I'm doing for Halloween!

zombie makeover

My first three frozen zombie attempts

Zombie Makeover

Because we're working on zombies for our class, we also got a crazy fun makeup demo. He mainly used water based colors, corn syrup, gelatin, bread crumbs and cereal to get the effects.

Anthony never looked better, no?

Rick Baker's Fabulous Studio

Last Saturday I got to go and see makeup extraordinaire Rick Baker's studio. Nobody special, just a winner of 6 Academy Awards and designed creatures for movies like The Grinch, Men In Black, Planet of the Apes, Wolfman, and the Nutty Professor.  It was better than Disneyland (OK, I've ever been to Disneyland, but I'm pretty sure this tops it).

His studio is an enormous area full of creature creating cubicles, make-up rooms, Gothic inspired architecture and a graveyard. Yeah that's right, a graveyard! There also was a mini-museum area where the creatures he created were on display. Naturally pictures needed to be taken to document everything.

Eyebrow Gluing: You know, just a normal Thursday night...

Gotta love studying costume design. We get random but fun homework assignments like this week's "blocking eyebrows" task. Last night I blasted a Queen/David Bowie/Abba mix and got to work. 

The formula extraordinaire is:

- Brush and coat eyebrows with Elmer's stick glue -

- Using a brush, powder and glue again -

- Repeat gluing and powdering until eyebrows are completely smooth and flattened -

- Apply an extremely thick concealer over glued brows until fully covered -

- Blend into make-up until brows are invisible -

***Drag makeup optional**

This was my first attempt but it seemed to go relatively well. My brows are narrow but are dark and super dense making them difficult to camouflage. I had to coat and coat and coat them to discover that no matter what I tried you could still see the eyebrow ridge around the section by the bridge of my nose.  With practice I'm sure this wouldn't be a problem..... or it's because I'm just abnormally hairy.  ;)

my first zombie

Aw yeah, it's zombie time! Behold my first draft of zombie makeup I'll be doing at the end of the quarter.

I'm still working out the specific disgusting details but this is my initial look for a frozen zombie. I want to have patches of frostbite and possibly frozen snow or frost encrusting. Naturally, being dead and all, there also needs to be some flesh decay but I'm not sure how much. I've been watching some really gross youtube videos on zombie makeup. There is some crazy, crazy stuff out there.  Even though a lot of it is really nasty, it's still really amazing to see everyone's tricks. I watched waaaay too many of them last night.

As much as I loved watching those gory how-tos, I don't think I want to go that. Just because I'll be the living dead doesn't mean I still can't look good. After all, true beauty never fades.

Boop! Boop!

One of the very first movies I remember seeing was a stop-motion version of Wind in the Willows. Naturally, when deciding on a make-up oriented fantasy character for a class I had to go for motor car enthusiast Mr. Toad. Boop! Boop!

It's the Opera, Daaahling

Lord have mercy, today was pretty amazing. I got to go on a mini-tour of the LA Opera's hair and make-up department and see took a close up look at all the wigs and a couple of the costumes. I took a bunch of pictures but unfortunately they're copyrighted so no posting them here. =*( The show is designed by Achim Freyer (costumes/hair/make-up/set/lighting) and it looks phenomenal. It's very impressionistic and is is absolutely crazy, weird and beautiful - in a way only ze Germanz can be (Freyer being Deutsch and all...of course Wagner was one too).

Because I can't show any images of the wigs, here are some of the studio. Not extremely interesting but I enjoyed the wall of drawers full of hair pieces.

I only recently learned that a great deal of wigs are made of yak hair, which I'm still getting a kick out of. Meryl Streep's grey wig in The Devil Wears Prada was all yak.

Here's my favorite row of drawers, because you never know when you need a filler piece of pink fantasy yak hair??

Field Trip

{Image via WagnerOpera.net}

Woo hoo! Going to the LA Opera tomorrow to visit the hair and wig department. Right now they are doing The Ring Cycle which let's face, it doesn't tempt me at all to see even if it is German. I mean, its sooo long and I'm not a big fan of Greek tragedies. However I am excited about the costumes (natch) / sets / hair & makeup. I can't wait to get there and pester the wig people with questions. Who knows, maybe I'll bring my camera and take some photos?

ooh la la

I stumbled upon a new thrift shop today and I'm so glad I went in. Check out my new vintage hairdryer in it's original carrier case. I was surprised how good condition it was in. And it actually works! To top it all off, I only paid $2.00 for it. I'm moving cross country in September and I probably shouldn't have gotten it, but it was too good of a find to pass up!

Ragtime

Ryan, Brannon, Craig, Lori & Me

Astoria, 2009

Photos from our night out on the town.

 

Lori,  Me & Brannon

Finger Waves

It was my friend Lori’s 26th birthday this weekend and she decided to have it at our favorite bar Dutch Kills, a speakeasy. So naturally, me being a costumer and she being a historian, we simply had to dress for the occasion!

To go with my outfit I went all out and attempted finger waves. Well, faux finger waves. I don’t have enough coordination to master the real hairstyle so I decided to do it my own way. Well, the “easy” way still took 3 hours and nearly a pound of hair gel.