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Make Up Advice

1. Wash Make sure you have a clean face. I know this is fairly obvious, but you'd be surprised how many people forget that. Wash your face thoroughly with warm water and soap and pat it dry. I find tying your hair back and making the strands of fringe stay back with an Alice bad helps too.

2. Moisturise Your face is going to be hidden under heavy make up for 8 or more hours in the day. Your skin will dry out incredibly and leave it flaky, even more so if your convention is in the colder months. So make sure you moisturise before applying. Also, moisturisers made a pretty good base for foundations and primers.

3. Powder and Foundation The base of your make up should be a primer of some sort. I tend to use concealer under my eyes first, then powder to make a smooth all around complexion. Make sure you check your skin tone or ask a friend to help you pick a colour as close to your skin tone as possible! It will be really obvious if your face is orange and the rest of you is white.

4. Blusher Once you have a nice equal complexion on your face and neck (if that part of you is going to be exposed) you'll want some colour to your cheeks. Get a blusher thats a few shades above your natural complexion so its stands out, but isn't over the top. You can get blusher balls (but be warned these do go everywhere at times) or you can get compacts with four chades all together which are handier.

5. Eyeliner Some people like eyeliner, others don't. I happen to wear it on all my cosplays, so if you're the same, make sure you have a selection of different colours (for example I use black eyeliner on my Rogue, because it suits the character more. With Sailor Jupiter I'm more inclined to use brown or white, because its more gentle and fits the character). If you can, use liquid eyeliner, it stands out more and doesn't smudge as easily as pencil eyeliner when its dry. However, if you're like me and the thought of putting something like that too close to your eye makes you cringe, just keep reapplying eyeliner through the day and all will be well.

6. False Eyelashes These will make your eyes stand out beautifully in photographs. They frame eyes really well and are impressive and can give the right 'anime' look to a costume. Some people find them hard to put on, which is fair, its weird putting anything too close to your eye. Many people have their own techniques for putting them on, I apply the glue to the eyelash, wait 30 seconds and then stick on from the inside of your eye to the outside.

If you're wearing them for the first time, make a few early attempts to see how best works for you.

7. Mascara Invest in a good mascara for god's sake! If you're scared of false eyelashes, mascara can work wonders to make your eyes stand out! (Co-incidentally, only apply mascara when you're wearing false eyelashes if you feel its necessary, and do it sparingly. Mascara and false eyelashes are not best friends at times. It can make the fibres clump together, big time.)

Shop around for different mascaras. If you're not sure, ask the shop assistants what they would suggest for models or stage performers - what they'll suggest will be the kind of thing you're after.

8. Eye Shadow I rarely bother with eye shadow, because very few characters actually appear to wear it. However, that said, it can add a lot to a face to have some more colour. If you invest in eye shadow, ensure its fitting for the character and for the costume. No point invest in some bright turquoise eye shadow when the costume is purple - it'll clash.

9. Lips People find different things help with lips. I don't like lip gloss personally so I don't wear it. Instead I just use lip balm. It keeps your lips looking moist (provided to remember to apply it) and its not fiddly or sticky. Of course, wear lipstick if the costume denotes it (Aurora from Sleeping Beauty is a good one: 'lips the shade the red, red rose' etc).

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