Zombie Makeup Tutorial!

 I am so excited to be doing this blog post! Halloween is one of my favourite holidays and it's in 3 days ahh!! As you can tell from the title this is a makeup tutorial and I'm no expert when it comes to makeup but in transition year, which I wrote a blog post about that you can read here, I did a theater makeup class which taught me how to do special effects looks and at the end of the class we had to do a project. In the project we had to include a 'character at home' which is when you do your own look and explain how you did it. I did this zombie look on my little sister and these are the pictures from my project. My sister wanted me recreate the look on Halloween and on the last day of school because on the last day before mid-term the students get to dress up. My mam and sister were telling me that people were coming up to them asking was my sister going to be a zombie again this year and that they hoped she wasn't because she was really scary! I was thinking that because people remember this look a year later it must be pretty good and I decide to share how I did it because it was really easy but really effective, so here it is.

What you will need:
The products you need for this look are really basic and easy to get, the only thing that might be hard to get is probably the special effects wax but I'm sure you could probably get it in an art shop or something. These are the products I used.
1. Green, red, black and white face paint. I just used really cheap ones from the pound shop and they worked fine.
2. Foundation. This is optional, but I didn't want my zombie's face to be completely white so I used foundation to make them look a little bit human. Any foundation will do, I just used my everyday foundation because it's what I had.
3. Special Effects Wax. I used Snazaroo Special FX Wax, which was about €12 and I got it in a local art shop. Again, any special effects wax will do and you could probably do this look without it but I think looks so much more realistic with the wax.
4. Fake blood. All zombies need some fake blood, and if you can get your hands on some gel blood that would be great for this look but if not that's fine. I've done this look with and without gel blood and it looks fine both ways.
5. Sponges. Any cheap sponges that you don't mind throwing away will do the trick.

On to the look:

Step 1. Firstly, I created the bullet wound and the cuts on the face with the wax. Just get the amount of wax you think you'd need for each cut and mold them into shape. For the bullet wound I made a Malteser shape and for the cuts I made little wormy shapes. The size and shape all depends on how you want them to look. To make the mold on the side of the face a flattened some wax on the cheek and picked at it with a cocktail stick. Be very careful when doing this!
 I put the wounds onto the face and flattened them a tiny bit and smoothed them on to the face. You can stick these anywhere on the face, again it depends on how you want it to look. If you're finding it hard to smooth down the wax, use a little bit of Vaseline and it should make it easier to smooth down.
 Then, using a pen, I made a hole in the bullet wound and I used a knife to make a slit in the cuts. Be careful when doing this!

Step 2. I mixed foundation with white face paint to create the pale shade for the skin. You can make the skin as pale are dark as you want or you could do it completely white, it's all up to you. I used a sponge to apply this all over the face. You can put it on the wax if you want but they're going to be covered by bruises and blood anyway so it doesn't really matter.

Step 3. I used the corner of the sponge and a little bit of red face paint under the eyes and around the nose to create a sickly look. I then applied red and black face paint in the wounds and the black was mainly concentrated in the center of the wounds to add depth to the cuts.

Step 4. I used black and red face paint on a sponge and applied it around the bullet wound the create a bruised effect and I applied some green and black face paint on the mold, again concentrating the black in the middle of the mold to create depth.

Step 5. When I was doing the look for my project I had some gel blood and put that in the wounds but when I recreated it I just put some fake blood in the wounds and it looked fine. So if you have gel blood put it in the wounds, if not just put some fake blood in them.

Step 6. Just drip some fake blood from the wounds and anywhere else you want and you're finished!

 I did photo shop the picture at the top of the post but you could always go all out and add some coloured contacts, but I just thought it was a bit of fun. And don't worry, I asked my little sister could I use these pictures of her! Hopefully these steps were easy enough to follow and that you found this post helpful. Any questions or queries can be left as comments, and if you do recreate this look please let me know or send me a picture. All my contact details are on my Contact Me page, which you can go to here. As usual, thank you so much for reading and I hope you have a Happy Halloween! x