Benefit Bargain Freebies with £2 Magazine!

It's that time again when the lovely people of Benefit do their amazing magazine freebies!!!  Always worth it and I always go and get me some goodies, silly not to right.


Look out for the July issue of Glamour magazine from Thurday 31st May 2012, costs £2.


So what's up for grabs this summer?  Ask no more I'll happily tell you;


Choose from: 'The Porefessional' 7.5ml (pore minimiser) which Glamour says is worth £10, 'That Gal' 7.5ml (face primer) worth £15 and 'Bad Gal' (mascara) worth £10.  

These are 'luxe minis' rather than full sized products.  So for £6 you could get your hands on £35 worth of Benefit goodies!

I'll be stocking up for sure, how about you?

Happy shopping.
Diane x

Catwalk Makeup done on me!

Hi guys,

I thought it would be fun to show you the Catwalk look Agi created on me on our AOFM Foundation Level course, I really got into character as a joke, I did it for a millisecond and snap went the camera.

Shame about the double chin, but you'll have to cut me some slack, after all I'm knocking on 40 in a few months!

I think Agi did fab creative work.  Hope you enjoyed the photos.

Diane x

AOFM Foundation Level - Day 5: Catwalk Makeup

Today is an exciting day, we get to learn some behind the scenes background information for Catwalk makeup.

Today's tutor was Angela Davis-Deacon.  I picked up lots of awesome tips and she kindly let us have a look through the items that she had out for her demo.

Angela and resident tutor Maria Papadopoulou (fab name) were really great with their support, encouragement and advice.  Most students decided to go along the route Angela had demonstrated for their Catwalk looks, which involved lovely colourful bold looks and experimenting with textures.

I knew I wanted a statement look and had a very good idea of the structure I wanted but was keen to keep it clean and simple but yet visually strong.

I'm really pleased with what I came up with and the tutors that day were kind enough to compliment my work.   It received comments of being a clean, modern and edgy Catwalk look and Angela pointed out to a few fellow students that my work was an example of what she had said when she showed one of her images from her portfolio, that "sometimes it's not so much what you do but what you don't do that makes the look".

I got to work on Agi a fellow student, she is beyond lovely, cannot tell you just how much fun we had working together!  Brilliant day!!!

The brief was to have the foundation to look like skin, brill for me it's what I always try to do, and for the rest we were left to play with our creativity.

Having a blast on this course. 

Diane x 

AOFM Foundation Level - Day 4: Contouring & Highlighting

Day 4 on the foundation stage of my AOFM Pro Hair and Makeup course started with contouring and highlighting.

We are very lucky to have one male student in our class, and I was extremely lucky to be able to work with Li for the contouring and highlight segment.

I cannot tell you just what a good sport Li is, he's been through all the looks we've covered on the course so far, glam, bridal, catwalk, the works and he's so cool about it.  Thanks so much Li, it's brill having a male model to work on and very much appreciated.

We were asked to apply the contouring shades heavier than I would normally go for in every day life, being on shoots with all the lighting, we would have to be aware of the colours being washed out.  The idea being to start off lightly and then keep an eye on the photographers screen to see if we need to add more depth.

I found the guide provided about contouring and highlighting on different face shapes a handy aid but the emphasis was on us deciding what needs to be done on an individual basis using our own judgement, fab to hear, there are no textbook faces :-)

We did not put a base on, just powdered the face, and then got on with the contouring and highlighting.

We didn't think to take a before photo at the time, so Li was really kind enough to take one for me at another time, so below is how he looks on an every day basis. The before photo was taken in artificial light and the after photo in natural light in the studio but I'm grateful to have any before version to show you.

I'll be loading more as soon as I can, have my catwalk look and makeup for black and white photos to show you.

Diane x

AOFM Professional Freelance Hair and Makeup Certificate - Days 3 and 4

Covers Foundation Level Makeup, Advanced Level Makeup and Hair Styling

Another fab weekend, feel lucky I'm in a class filled with such lovely sociable students.

Day 3 - First up was a talk from today's tutor lovely Barbara Carranza ("BC"), originally from Mexico, eyebrow specialist.  I have to say she was an absolute joy, so fun.  We always get to hear the background of our tutors and how they came to be where they are today, very interesting.

All of us were due to get one eyebrow done my BC and then our partners for the day would try to follow the guidelines to create the other one.  We were asked to combine this with a glam look and attach a strip lash to one eye and individual lashes to the other, oh and lest I forget, we had to use red lipstick, no exceptions.

We did not have time to do any work on the skin so what you will see on Ndidi below is just her eyes and lips done by myself, she did however manage to put on some foundation before I took the photo - result!

I will point out that Ndidi's eyebrows are naturally high and unless she was to get rid of all her eyebrow hair and have some new eyebrows added semi-permanent/permanent ink lower down, this is the way she will stay.  BC did show her how her eyebrows would look lower down by filling in one temporarily before we started.  Made such a difference to the balance of her features, I thought that would be interesting to share but alas it seems I fudged taking a photograph of it :-(

BC did the eyebrow on the left (left eye has the individual lashes) and I did the one on the right (this eye has the strip lash).  I was so happy when BC and another tutor both said I had done a great job when checking out my eyebrow efforts, but then BC bowled me over by saying that my one was better than hers, such high praise!  Chuffed to bits :-)

One interesting fact for you, BC told us that none of the ladies in Mexico use eyelash curlers yet they still curl their lashes, how do you ask? well...with a spoon of course!  Seriously, I kid you not, she even did it on me, really works too, amazing,

Day 4 - Our tutor was Barbara Braeunlich ("BB"), specialising in beauty makeup, to see some of her work click here.  She has an amazing highly successful career and it's still growing strong.  Again we heard all about BB's background and heard some very fascinating insights into the beauty industry.

Today's goals were contouring and highlighting and then later bronzing to produce a summer glow makeup.

I was very fortunate to be able to work on Lee for the task or contouring and highlighting, who just so happens to be the only male student on the course, he's such a good sport and a lovely person.

Lee let me take some before and after photos on his phone as I didn't have my one to hand, unfortunately numpty that I am I forgot to give him my email address.  I'll post the pictures later if I get manage to get hold of them.

Next up was the summer glow makeup, most people went for golds but the tutors were keen for us to experiment using brighter colours on the eyes, which is what I used but I went for a wash of colours rather than pack it on.  I was asked to up the bronzer which I did,  in fact we were told not to be shy with it at all for this type of look, I usually would prefer to be on the cautious side.  Here is the lovely Stephanie:

We were lucky enough to work with Armani foundations and liquid illuminators, a first for me, I mixed a luminous but deeper shade of foundation than Stephanie's skin tone to give her a glowing summer tan, I took it half way down her neck as didn't want to get foundation on her clothes, you can see the contrast with her natural skin colour.

I was pleased that the Armani foundation could be layered to take down any redness on the skin in specific areas and then in other areas let the skin show through, especially Stephanie's few gorgeous freckles.  Was a lovely consistency, I think it was the Armani Silk.

We had another visitor pop in to the studio and it was Kim Borio, Kim's website, a well renowned celebrity makeup artist from L.A.  She is such a fun bubbly person, I wished I'd had more time to talk with her, she sure knows her Armani :-)

So all in all another very enjoyable weekend and lots of friendships forming, like I said a sociable lovely bunch of people, most of us go to lunch together, it's such a pleasure.

This weekend will be the last of the foundation classes, so we will be saying goodbye to those that are only booked on the foundation course and saying hello to whomever will be joining the rest of us that are staying on for the advanced course.

Hope you are enjoying these posts, as much as I am enjoying sharing my experiences.

Diane x

The Road to Becoming a Makeup Artist

Hello everyone,

Sorry I've been AWOL, my PC just upped and died one day, which left me with an unexpected expense of getting another computer, it's so nice being back :)

I'm so happy to say that my yearning to become a makeup artist has finally taken it's first step to becoming a reality, as last weekend I started my Pro Hair and Makeup Course with the Academy of Freelance Makeup Artists (AOFM).

To say I'm excited at what I will learn is putting it mildly and am already enjoying myself thoroughly.  As luck would have it my class has a good mix of different skin tones, ages and there is even a lovely man, so we will all get a wealth of experience with the challenges each person presents to us.

AOFM Professional Freelance Hair and Makeup Certificate - Part-time

Covers Foundation Level Makeup, Advanced Level Makeup and Hair Styling

Academy of Freelance Makeup AOFM Foundation course stage - Days 1 & 2

Day 1 was focusing on two totally different looks, first up was perfecting the no makeup makeup look, clean fresh skin and subtle enhancing of features.  My model was a fellow student that just so happened to be a pretty young woman, I loved doing this makeup, having to mix a matching foundation (Mac Face and Body) and concealers, unfortunately with all the excitement I didn't think to ask for my camera so no photo to show you :(

We are not allowed any personal belongings in class, especially not phones which I use as my camera too, but we can ask for them at appropriate times to take photos of our work, so thankfully I did think to ask if I could go get it for the next look.

The second look was a black smokey eye, we only have time to do each look once on the day, so what you see will be my one and only attempt but I will admit that one eye was done by the tutor for the demo and I did the other eye, I did my best to get my eye to the same standard as the tutors.

We were literally just focusing on the eyes and by this stage the natural toned down lip colour for the no makeup makeup had been long gone and my models lips are naturally quite pigmented, if we had been focusing on the whole look, I would have definitely tried to mute them down to balance out the strong eyes.  However, I'm pretty happy with the outcome for a first try, here it is:

Day 2 was all about bridal makeup and our lovely tutor was Annabel Callum, the morning session was all about the practicalities of being a bridal mua and was very informative, so grateful for everything I learnt.  After lunch we then watched Annabel demo a pretty fresh bridal look and then had to create a look ourselves.

Again I was lucky to be paired with another naturally pretty student, whom is a shade or two lighter than me.  We were given Shu Uemura products to work with which was a treat, however, the liquid foundations were very limited, just 3 but that gave me the chance to customise a foundation shade and with the blue tones under eyes and around the mouth I again was mixing concealers/correctors.  Really enjoyed working with the MUFE concealer palette for darker tones, such lovely consistency.

We were advised to go for matte products, unfortunately the matte shade range was not geared for Asian skin tones and I decided not to go with the more vibrant warm earthy shimmer tones that I was directed to as I still wanted to see if I could create a pretty fresh spring like bridal look from the the options available, limited choice for what I had in mind and shimmery but I tried to tone that down by mixing them with the lighter matte colours available.

I let my model choose the lip colour from swatches on my hand, I used an awesome Paris Berlin lipliner, it did come out just a tad darker than I would have chosen but it's in the same tone range that I had in mind, I then tried to mute the colour with a paler brownie/pink lipstick from the Shu Uemura selection, which was very sheer.  I'm very happy with the over all look, I think the lovely Jas looks gorgeous and best of all she was really happy with it too, which pleased me no end, here is it:

Of course I can look at these photos and see things I'd like to improve, probably will always be that way no matter how many goes I might get to create a look!

Loving getting all the tips, direction, information and getting hands on experience on other faces.  I'm especially looking forward to doing makeup on a guy, that'll be new.

The only thing I could ask for is an afternoon tea break, I do so love a cuppa :)

Next we will be covering glam makeup looks for events, eyebrows, contour and highlighting, yes!

Bring it on :-D

Diane x