Flower Crown Friday: Eyelash Competition

My friend Alysia has been giving me eyelash extensions for a few years now. Eyelash extensions are my favourite, and probably only, beauty indulgence. I like how much elegance and femininity they give my face without me having to wear make-up. I love not having mascara smudges under my eyes, and also being able to do everything I would normally do in life without wearing any make-up. She’s recently started doing Russian Volume lashes, which are so light I can barely feel them, and she’s even got in brown lashes just for me. So when she asked me to work with her on eyelash competition I was so excited.

She went into the creative category, which meant she had to do something a little out of the ordinary. She decided to go with brown with some gold glitter lashes worked throughout, and I started coming up with ideas for a costume that would go with it. I’d wanted to do a ‘before and after’ shot of my face void of make-up and styling on the blog for a while, and we thought it would be a really fun opportunity to combine the two ideas: we do a glamour shoot for her comp and I get to contrast that with a make-up and edit free portrait that shows the blank canvas.

Our brainstorming began to focus on a ‘woodland queen’ vibe, so I went out foraging with my sister and picked up some berries and twigs and branches and pinecones. Then I got some craft supplies and began forming them all together into a crown. Alysia brought her cousin in on the project to do my make-up and her dad to do the photography. So between the four of us, we created this really awesome woodland scene.

Here is also a portrait of my ‘blank canvas’ face; a cold sore starting on my lip. I’ve put it before a focused shot of my face so you can see the difference in the finished artistic piece. While the colours of the final image have been tweaked, my skin hasn’t been photoshopped. That’s just good-ol’ foundation and highlighter and a gold reflect disc (which you can actually see in the reflection of my eyes).