Carnaval 2006 - More Me Photos
This is my "dry run" of my makeup. I had seen facepaint on a clown that used a giant "X" across the face, and it led me to think of this design. I wanted to avoid looking like I was trying to emulate a butterfly, and go more with the bee/wasp/yellowjacket kind of feel to it - just a little evil, pointed, with a stinger! I loved the deep black around my eyes, and the yellow just popped in the dark. My lips didn't look this good on the actual night; the black ran together into the red, so they ended up a deep red, not the bright red in this photo. Oh, and before you tell me how green my eyes look in this photo, I enhanced their color a little. :) Just so you know.
Here J9 sprays me down with a final coating of glitter. We use glitter hair spray all over our bodies. I had to go to two stores to get gold! J9 found multi and silver, but gold was apparently being elusive. :) I did, however, eventually hunt some down. I bought three cans, so I'll have some for next year. LOL!
A good full-length shot of my costume. I'm wearing my "standard" 7" platforms that I got online years ago from Funkefeet. This was my first year to really focus on my legs. This is more how I wanted my costume to be last year, but didn't actually achieve. I think my design this year was born as much of my dissatisfaction with the cumbersome nature of last year's costume as much as anything else. I wanted to be able to WALK and to show a lot of leg. I think it worked out well, don't you??
Chrystal got a shot of me with my headdress off at the hotel. I think I was trying to mess with my lights. :) Who knows? I think it's funny to see me with no headdress; it's like a drag queen taking off her wig. And yes, I've shaved my head again. That's all for the next full site update I do - but for those who didn't know, SURPRISE, I have no hair! ;)
The back of my headdress. This was one of my lightest headdresses, probably weighing in at less than 4 lbs. I was glad for how light it ended up being; when the paper mache was wet, it weighed closer to 6 or 7 lbs, but as it dried, it got lighter and lighter. YAY! I did have a problem towards the end of the night with a wire in the front starting to press too hard on my forehead, but it wasn't horrible, and I managed to get through it!
Originally, I wanted to have the ribbons in tight corkscrew curls, and I had even gone to the trouble of curling HUGE LENGTHS of ribbon (you pin the ribbon onto several end-to-end drinking straws, twist the around and around and then pin at the ends, get them wet, and then bake them at 100 degrees for about 8 minutes - be careful not to forget them; the straws will melt! - when you take them out, they're curled forever!). Once I attached the curls, though, I hated them right away; they tangled and looked horrible. I tried wetting the ribbon, but the curl stayed anyway, so I had to wet them and iron each strand carefully to get them straight again. I liked them MUCH better that way; they lines echoed the ribbon falling from my forearms.
Another full-length shot of the costume. My skirt, too, popped a wire at the show, and a piece of the umbrella tried to dig a small hole in my hip, but that too was fleeting and I got away with only a little roughness, not any actual blood. I did, however, ruin my hose. :)
I found this great trim for the front of my headdress that was pointed in little lace triangles. I had originally planned on wearing an actual crown on my headdress, but that didn't ever seem to work out, so I was really happy to find this trim and build it up in layers to give a crown look in front. I waxed my eyebrows down again this year to get that smooth look under the yellow makeup. I used Paradise Makeup AQ for the black - you wet it down and apply it with a brush. I dusted it with black glitter powder to give it some depth. The yellow was Ben Nye cream set with his vivid Luminere yellow powder eyeshadow. It was HELL to remove; I think it took me 45 minutes just to get it all off my face, but the effect was stunning, especially in the dark.
Lane helps me to arrange bees. :) I was always doing a "bee check" to be certain they were all floating about as they should.
- Help Me Keep My Site Afloat!