Because I am such a huge fan of the beauty community on YouTube, I have seen many Halloween tutorials in my time. I have never actually tried to do any type of extravagant makeup for Halloween before, but this year I wanted to try something new.
One of my favorite beauty YouTubers Samantha Ravndahl (@ssssamantha on Instagram) created a really cool skull makeup look about 3 years ago on her Instagram. Although there was no tutorial to follow, I decided to use the pictures as reference and see if I could recreate the look myself.
Disclaimer: I am no professional makeup artist like she is, but I think it turned out pretty okay.
I took a ton of pictures as I went because I wanted to go through step by step to tell you how I got this end result and share some tips and tricks of how to get it yourself! This is my first try at it, and I learned a lot of things along the way that I will use to hopefully further improve this look when I do it on Halloween.
This is the reference picture I went by as well as my final product, which ended up a lot better than I expected it to.
Step 1: Base Makeup. First, you should do your foundation routine as normal. Use your favorite products for foundation and concealer to get a good base going. I only set the top portion of my face with powder since I was going to be using a liquid face makeup to create the skull. Also, do your eyebrows as normal.
Step 2: Eyes. Next I went in to create the eye look. I wanted to start with the eyes so I wouldn’t have to rest my hands on my face after the skull makeup was on. I started off with a warm brown eyeshadow color in the crease. Then, I did a fairly medium-sized winged eyeliner. I added some black eyeshadow in the crease and lining the under eye after that. I also used the eyeshadow to smooth out the winged eyeliner. In the reference picture, she did not have the eyeliner connecting in the inner corner, but it looked odd on my eye shape to do it like that, so I decided to connect it. I blended out the bottom black eyeshadow with the same warm brown eyeshadow and with that, I was done with the eyes.
Disclaimer: I thought the eye look looked kinda crazy before the skull makeup was done; it is a lot more intense than I would usually do. If you are not one to want a really intense eyeliner look or your eye shape doesn’t do well with that type of look, try doing a traditional smokey eye or your favorite eyeshadow look for going out!
Step 3: Half Skull Makeup. I used black and white liquid face paint as well as a brown cream liner and black eyeshadow to create the skull.
That is the brand of makeup that I used. I used a Colourpop brown liner, but any brown eyeshadow/eyeliner should work just fine for the details. I used a couple of makeup brushes to help with precision. Use smaller brushes for smaller details and larger brushes to fill in the face/different bigger areas.
I started off with the white and filled in the bottom of my face making a curved line under my eyes. Next, I used a small brush and the black to outline the top of the section as well as fill in the nose area. From there, I added in the cheekbone details in black and connected them to the mouth. I then drew out an outline of teeth and continued to add detail to the teeth with a combination of the liquid makeup, eyeliner, and eyeshadow. I also filled in the center of my lips with the black liquid makeup.
The pictures show the step-by-step of what I did to create the finished look. From that point on, there are a couple of optional things I did while I was playing around with it. I added some glitter/highlighter to the white portions to make it a little girly. I also used a little of the black eyeshadow over some of the white portions to give it a little more dimension and depth. Lastly, I added some large fake eyelashes to the look, and this was the finished product.
Overall, I was very happy with my first attempt at this. The liquid makeup I used was very user-friendly and washed out of my makeup brushes easily. It dried down, wasn’t uncomfortable to wear, and did not transfer onto anything that it touched. It was also fairly easy to wash off with just my face wash.
Some tips for someone trying to recreate this: I would recommend using a small eyeliner brush or the smallest brush you have to create the teeth and the details. In the inspiration picture they are a little daintier and detailed, and I will be aiming for that the next time I do this look.
I did find it to be an easy/semi-fast thing to do for Halloween, so I would definitely recommend it to anyone! It is also a money saver as the two bottles of makeup only cost me $8 each, and I used everything else that I already own. Pair this look with an all-black outfit and you have yourself a costume.
(Reference Picture Source:https://www.instagram.com/ssssamanthaa/?hl=en )