As I mentioned in my previous Halloween post of the year, I, along with several of my friends, are going out as the Guardians of the Galaxy. I’m one of the lucky ones out of the group and managed to buy my outfit on Ebay. The big issue with my outfit was going to be turning my skin colour green. I’ve never worked with full body makeup or anything of that ilk, so this was going to be super interesting for me!

So this was my first time trying out this kind of makeup. I picked up MAC‘s Landscape Green Chromacake a few weeks back after doing a little bit of research. It’s a water-based cake makeup that applies quite easily to the skin (as I quickly discovered). I did find I needed several layers (roughly three in the last photo on the bottom right) to get a somewhat even texture. I’ll probably do an extra layer on the night of Halloween just to make sure it’s extra smooth.

The Chromacake pigment does feel a bit tight on the skin. It doesn’t feel as emollient as foundation does. In the hour that I wore the pigment, it didn’t crack on me, but it never really felt completely comfortable. (As a side note, foundation itself never really feels “comfortable” on me either, so ymmv.)

Since the green on its own would be too flat, I had to add in some shading. I used MACPrint eyeshadow to carve out a bit of my cheekbones. I found that blending was somewhat difficult: If I blended out too much, I ended up removing some of the green Chromacake. I also used Print to fill in my eyebrows. For highlighting, I used MAC‘s Whisper of Gilt Extra Dimension Skinfinish on the tops of my cheekbones and down my nose.

My lips turned out to be a bit of a disaster. Gamora has darker green lips but I didn’t have anything that would really work. I tried using a dark lip colour mixed with gloss but I don’t like how it came out, so I’m going to have to try something else.

Those silver lines were created with eyeshadow and didn’t turn out so hot either. Argh!

Lastly were the eyes. The promo shot seems to show Gamora having a dark purple outer corner of her eyes. I deepened it up with some black, but like the contouring, I had a heck of a time blending on top of the Chromacake. I also had a heck of a lot of fallout from the shadow – something to be aware of the next time I try this! I’ll definitely throw on a pair of huge false lashes for this when I wear it out on Halloween – that should help cover up some of the terrible blending!

So in the end, it was a decent first try. I primarily wanted to get a feel for the Chromacake and what I would have to do with it on Halloween. It seems very easy to apply to the skin, although blending is still my major problem. If you have any suggestions for me – either a great silver liquid liner, or a way to blend out the shadows better on top of the green paint, I’d love to hear them!

And no, this stuff was not fun to take off!