Put On Your War Paint - Girl Gang Makeup Tutorial

I sadly lost a friend very recently, and I'm still working through a lot of how I feel about that. You can read more about all the sad and painful parts of it over here, but in this post I want to do something a bit different and celebrate one of the really positive aspects of my friendship with Chloe, rather than just mourning her loss.

You see, Chloe and I both had a tendency to get a bit...angry. Okay, that's a total understatement. Even when talking across the world, we could wind each other up to an absolute frenzy of delighted ferocity, so I can only imagine what would have happened if we'd ever been in the same place at the same time. Chloe had far more reason to react violently to people that pissed her off than I did; she'd been through an absolute fuckton of shit, and comparatively nothing particularly bad has ever really happened to me. But we both got the same fierce joy from the idea of punching out the teeth of people who deserve it, and I took a lot of comfort from her acceptance of my burning desire to break some faces when I got angry. I always felt like that urge, that desire for violence was something to be denied at all costs, and hidden at all times. But Chloe not only accepted that part of me, she actively encouraged me to get it out and explore it - intellectually at least, since the fact is I would be a dreadful physical fighter. We agreed that should we ever get into a physical fight together, I could do the kicking because of my powerful horse thighs, but she would have to do all the punching because I'd be sure to break my hand. One day, while complaining about people we wanted to punch that we weren't allowed to punch, and imagining what we might do about it if we could, we came up with the idea of starting a girl gang.

This image created by BabsBabsBabs

Not just any girl gang - the punkest, femmest, most misandrist girl gang ever. We were going to ride into town on bright pink, bedazzled, loud as fuck motorbikes, and start fights with sexist assholes. We were going to kick in teeth, break arms, and punch the wind out of people until they understood that women are not to be trifled with. We were going to have jackets, like The Pink Ladies, but way more punk, in pink denim with studs and dripping letters and artfully tattered edges. We were going to have tattoos across our knuckles that spelled out MISANDRY.* There would be No Boys Allowed, and it was going to be BAD ASS.

Don't Be Afraid of The Blues

When I was a little teenage proto Cassie, I already believed that the realm of makeup was full of unbreakable, inarguable rules, before I ever picked up my first lipstick. You must wear this, but only if X, in which case you must wear Y. You must NEVER wear Z, especially not with W, and on and on and on. I got the impression from my purloined copies of Cosmo and what I could glean from wiser friends that all makeup other than totally neutral, bland looks was "tacky", and obviously I didn't want to be tacky. But these looks were...well, kind of dull. It didn't really seem worth learning all these rules just so I could play with like, four colours of eyeshadow, and two lipsticks. The only payoff I was promised for all this effort, maybe, if I did everything JUST right, was a slightly prettier face. Well, bugger that, I thought. I'd rather read another book than bother with this.

Ironically, I am actually wearing some makeup in this picture.

Antipodean Beauties - Red

Hurrah! I managed another AB challenge! I'm pretty proud of myself. The theme this week was "Red", and since I knew that everyone was going to go for red lips, I initially tried to do a red eye look. I hear it's "on trend" or something, but it just make me look like I had a nasty infection, so I scrapped that and went for red lips as well. BUT, for flavour, I decided to do a whole red outfit.

Antipodean Beauties - No Makeup Makeup

 Good lord, two AB posts in a row! What IS the world coming to? It's actually because my last one was extremely late, and this one is more or less on time, so there isn't likely to be another until next Monday.

This week's theme was "No Makeup Makeup", and I considered being a smarty pants and putting up a photo with no makeup on at all, and try and convince you that I was wearing some complex "au naturale" regime. But for ONCE, I decided not to be sarcastic and actually do the theme as intended, mostly because I have a really lovely lipstick I want to show you that totally suits the theme.

Eccentric Cosmetics presents The Fall - Indie Loose Eyeshadow Review

Browsing Etsy the other day looking for new (to me) Australian indie cosmetics makers, as I am won't to do, I came across Eccentric Cosmetics in Victoria. The gorgeous array of loose eyeshadows on offer was enough to convince me to make a purchase. But then I noticed that the maker behind Eccentric Cosmetics happened to be one of a very small group of people other than me that have seen the criminally overlooked 2006 film The Fall. Tarsem made his name (and money) doing projects like The Cell and a slew of TV ads for companies like Coke, but The Fall was his pet project, his labour of love, and I think it's magnificent. If there's something I love just as much as giving exposure to overlooked indie cosmetics creators, it's babbling to people about films they haven't seen but they should!

Firstly, let's look at the wonderful products that Eccentric Cosmetics have created in tribute to this fantastic film. The formula of all the shadows I received were just perfect - really pigmented, great staying power, and stunning colours. None of them were dusty OR clumpy, and because they're slightly less sparkly than some of the others I've been playing with recently they were really easy to blend smoothly and perfectly.

Red Bandit is named for the lead character in the story within a story in The Fall, played by Lee Pace.

This character is way hotter than a man in this much gold braid has any right to be.