I love Halloween. I'm all about it. This year we haven't decorated or carved punkins because of other things going on as I've already posted about. But that doesn't mean we still aren't doing things. I'm leading my pagan circle this year in Ancestor Thankfulness (which is really what Samhain aka Halloween is about) and doing past life regressions. I'm also focused on my costume because we're dressing up this year. I'm going eclectic witch, which is fun when your going to go gather with a ton of male witches (most of my circle are dudes) and and do witchy things. But I'm putting an elemental theme on it this year. I'm infusing my costuming with fire. That includes my makeup. So I'm going total reds and fire colors with a tad bit of burgundy. I've already plotted out and collaged my look. Here's the eyes. What are you guys going as?

I'm using the top left look with the highlights of the top right look and the eyeliner of the lower middle. Fire baby. Total fire. Did I mention my hair is deep burgundy atm? It looks black but when I'm roaming around in the sun its to quote a co-worker "OMG JEN" about the red of the lower center shadow maybe a tad bit more burgundy. It was purple for a while.

I think I lost my mind when I hit my last birthday because suddenly I started plucking my eyebrows, carefully applying makeup daily in eclectic ways, and re-polishing my nails which are naturally very long in all sorts of crazy polish daily. Currently I'm wearing Sally Hansen's Lustre Shine in Azure. I picked up the whole collection of all eight duochrome colorshifts this weekend. Scarab which is a green/blue/gold is probably my favorite. But currently I'm wearing Azure. Here's a swatch of it below. Swatches, for you uneducated in polish speak folks, are when chicks paint their nails, grab the bottle, and photograph it. Everyone knows polish looks different out of the bottle on nails than it does in the bottle. So to really know the true color, you have to swatch it. Here's the Azure swatch, which doesn't do it justice because duochromes don't always photograph well. But in real life its gorgeous.

The picture doesn't do this polish credit. It's a deep blueberry grape sparkle with a duochrome with dark lavender so as you turn it in the sun or even in the weirdest light it glows from purple to blue. Right now sitting in the darkish living room it looks deep grape. I always start out with a dark color that's a good quality nail polish and then put something over it in a day or two when I'm tired of the color. In this case I'll probably throw a foil polish over it like SH's Hidden Treasure or a glittery polish like SH's Snow Globe. I bet you guys didn't know I'm a closet polish addict. Fact. I totally am. I don't have my nail's done. I do them myself. And they are one way I cling to my girliness in an industry dominated by men. And I'll tell you one thing.. the guys always notice when I change my color or come to work with one hand a different coat than the other - yesterday I was wearing Piece of Papaya by Hard Candy on one hand but on the other I had the same polish with an overlay of a Masquerade which is a top coat of black glitter and papaya pink colored glittery circles.
Here's some idea of Piece of Papaya and Masquarade:
Now, piece of advice. If you get good quality polishes, don't wear topcoats by themselves like the girl in the above picture did. They look like absolute dog doo doo. Throw a base coat of something on under it. If you can't be even remotely creative, throw on a good solid matte black. Then it looks gorgeous like the makers designed it to look, and not so... much like you've been in a kindergarten class and have stick glue and glitter slopped on your nails.
And now, when I get tired of the Azure by itself, I'll pick some awesome topcoat shiny out of my polish stash and throw it over the top. Polish is anything but boring. How can it be with all the awesome names folks call them. Like this one, slanted to go over my gorgeous Azure. Claw of Cthulhu. How badass is that?
It has to suck to be a dude. You guys miss out on soooo much cool stuff.