October 1, 2020

Today is the first day of October, and seeing as this is my favorite month of the year I have decided to participate in a challenge that has long inspired and intimidated me: the 31 Days of Halloween makeup challenge. The challenge was started by Amanda Chapman in 2015 to challenge herself and other artists to create masterful works of spooky magic every day for the month of October. Initially, it was an Instagram exclusive, with an overwhelming spike in the use of the hashtag in the month of October and 775,000 posts. It draws some of the best makeup artists in the world and celebrities like Patrick Starrr participated on TikTok this year. I've enjoyed watching the creations that the various artists produce during the challenge and have saved them in a 'Halloween costumes' board on my Instagram for almost two years thinking that someday maybe I'd have the skills to play with the "big boys" and then I realized that I have never had more of an abundance of time on my hands, and I would never magically get the skills that these other artists had. I had to work on my makeup abilities if I wanted to be able to create masterpieces as detailed and as whimsical as the artists I looked up to like Instagram makeup artists ohmygeeee, gabxxrielle, and the_wigs_and_makeup_manager.

I've always enjoyed playing with makeup, but I've never strayed very far from playing with a fun eyeshadow look. Trying neon pink? Sure, that was right up my alley, but I hardly ever wore lipstick and my face makeup was just a nicer than natural base. That is to say, I have never done eyeliner, applied lashes, used face paint, liquid latex, fake blood, spirit gum, and a whole host of other supplies I purchased for the challenge. I know that I'm going to fail a lot, that not every look is going to be like the ones inspiring them, that most of my looks will be my best attempt at recreating the unique works of other artists and in those cases I will be sharing the artists who inspired me and the images of their work for reference. I don't expect to be as good as they are overnight, but I figure I might as well try to learn something during this challenge!

For day one of the 31 Days of Halloween Challenge, I choose to recreate a voodoo doll look by beautybymols. My face paint hasn't arrived yet so this was created using eyeliner and eyeshadow and I definitely hope to do it again better next year. Deciding to do it was the hardest part since today was day one and I'm terrible with commitment. But hey, I went for it, there's a video on the internet forever of me with half-decent Halloween makeup on and we can only go up from here.

I also tried to get the Hocus Pocus Colourpop collection which launched at 10 AM today. It was incredibly frustrating because it when it was supposed to launch the Shopify servers got overwhelmed so I spent about half an hour refreshing the page to make sure everything didn't sell out before I even got a chance to try to buy it which is what happened with the Conspiracy collection by Jeffree Star Cosmetics. That was the last collection I tried to buy so I was beginning to feel a bit like the universe just didn't want me to have any makeup or that I must have amazing taste since the only two collections I've wanted in the last year and a half have been desired by so many others. They've delayed the launch until tomorrow so now I have to decide whether I even still want it after expending so much energy for nothing.

Today was also the day that my research for my graduation thesis got forwarded to the ethics review board for approval. That's the last step before I can begin collecting data for my project. I'm researching how social isolation and knowledge of COVID-19 are affecting participants' mental health and behavior with a classmate. When we get approval I hope that you choose to participate! With how relevant this research is during this present time of stress I'm hoping to get started right away not only to sate my own curiosity but also to see whether my findings can help us get a better grasp on how we can best solve this issue that is swarming our society. We will eventually exit the coronavirus pandemic but will we have succumbed to an insurmountable mental health crisis in the meantime?