Monster High Monday: Dance Class Howleen

You'll have to bear with me while I catch up on posts I've missed this week. My little sister and I bought tickets ages ago for The Big Reunion tour (the show on ITV2 that reformed 90's bands) and so we set off on Tuesday and stayed overnight in Glasgow and got back yesterday. Can you believe it was the first time I've been away since I went to my friends wedding in Aberdeenshire 3 years ago? I definitely don't get out much, so it was a nice little break. I'm pretty shattered and sore from the trip, but keen to get back into a routine. Monster High Monday was pretty much a disaster this week though. I woke up on Monday feeling fine, then within an hour I started sneezing. Not just once or twice, about 60 times in 20 minutes. Sneezing constantly is exhausting! I wasn't sure whether it was allergies or the cold, but then my nose started running and I figured it was the worst possible moment for me to start feeling ill. I couldn't breathe, my nose was blocked, but running like a tap, I sounded choked up and I was still sneezing. My nostrils were so sore and all red, that the last thing I felt like doing was putting on makeup and getting dressed to go out. However I did. Strangely enough I still felt sick on Tuesday morning, but it subsided throughout the day and other than being left with a sore nose, I have no signs of a cold whatsoever. Must be my temperamental hay-fever which disappears for years and shows up when it feels like it. Anyway, besides feeling like poo, I completely stuffed up the makeup on MHM. I thought Howleen would be easy to emulate because it involved a lot of neutrals and looked simple enough. How wrong was I? I spent around 20 minutes on Sunday colour matching and thought I'd come up with close enough shades.
 
Come Monday, I felt my colours weren't as perfect as I'd thought and it turns out I'm not much of a brown eyeshadow fan (always knew that), so I was struggling to find something close enough. I have a neutral drawer of colours and besides looking through every eyeshadow in that, I refused to start sifting through mixed-palettes for the correct colour. There's literally thousands of eyeshadows to check through and off the top of my head, I couldn't even think of any and there's only so many hours you can dedicate to finding the right products. Now you see why I rarely use palettes! Add to that the fact I don't think I even got the lips right, this week felt like a fail for me. I might just write it off or maybe try it again some other time if I ever have the patience to find better colour matches.
So starting with the face, I applied Yves Saint Laurent Le Teint Touche Eclat in BR10 with Dainty Doll Hot Pour Concealer in 001 Very Light under the eyes and on blemishes. I finished with Clarins Ever Matte Mineral Powder Compact in 00 Transparent Opal and also used a little MAC Legendary powder blush on the cheeks. Although Howleen doesn't wear a cheek colour, I needed it and it's a light enough peach to not detract too much from the rest of the face.
Now is where it gets complicated and I use a lot of colours, so I'll break it down. Howleen has a highlighter/sheen shade along the lower lashline and under the brow. She has what looks like a very pale pink on the lids up to the crease. A black thin line along the crease and then a reddish brown between the crease and highlighter shade. So that's four different shades. For the highlighter I used the pale pink shade from Lancome Ombre Subtile Duo in 351 Rose Garden. It didn't look quite frosty enough, so I applied some Lancome Poudre Superbe in 02 Argente over the top, which is a shimmer powder rather than eyeshadow.
For the pale pink lid shade I used the bottom left colour from Givenchy Prisme Again! Eyes in 3 Purple Emotion. For the black line in the crease I applied The New Black from my Lancome Color Design palette and decided it wasn't quite intense enough, so added a little Barbie Loves Stila Smudge Pot in Little Black Dress. My eyeliner is YSL Waterproof Pencil with Lancome Artliner for the flicks and mascara is Rimmel Lash Accelerator Endless.
So far, not too bad, but it was the warm red toned brown 'crease' shade I struggled with. Colours were either too bronze or brown, not enough red, too light, too dark, too shimmery. So I ended up applying a pale but pigmented peach shade from Versace Eyeshadow Duo in V2038, then applied Givenchy Prisme Again! Eyes in 1 Zen Pastel (the top right colour) over that. It's a peachy, mauvey brick reddish colour, but I felt I was lacking the brown base. So over them I applied Prisme Again! Eyes in 2 Brown Caress (the top right shade) which is brown.
I still can't say I'm happy with the outcome, it was a little too orangey and less tan than Howleen. Plus it was shimmery looking and Howleen's is matte, but the finish was the least of my worries to be honest! At this point I got Mum to come and kill kindly release a huge spider (thankfully I didn't freak too much because I thought it was a couple of really black moths or a beetle or something) that was wedged between the pleats in the top of my curtains. I got a 'you can barely open your eyelids because they are so heavy from all the makeup you're wearing' comment from Mum and knew it was time to finish up!
For the lips, I'd found a couple of close-enough shades on Sunday that I thought I could mix together to get the right colour. They were both MAC lipsticks, so I applied Colour Crafted (Frost) as a base and Creme Cup (Cremesheen) over the top and my liner was MAC Naked Liner. I'd describe the colour on Howleen as a dull peach, but I found in reality it leaned either too coral or too nude, it was really difficult to find a balance between enough colour but not being too bright. I can't recall what I thought at the time of my finished lips, I think it was that they were lacking in the coral shade, but in the photos it's come across as much brighter, lighter and more colourful than real life (like a lot) but actually looks to be a perfect match to Howleen here. Again, my lips looked really shiny and on the doll they look matte, but she's painted and I'm using real makeup, so that's my excuse!
I have no plans to revisit this anytime soon, but would like to re-attempt it at some point. I think I mismatched my colours and finishes and my nose was red-raw and I couldn't pose for photos without having to stuff a tissue up my nose!  I have a hilarious uncropped eye close-up where you can just see the tissue blocking my runny nose! Attractive (!) I'm definitely finding a trend of those dolls that look complicated turning out to be easier than I thought and the simple looks being difficult to replicate. How do you think I did this week? Howleen certainly lived up to her mischievous and troublesome nature!