So I thought I would use the Instagram #transformationtuesday and go a bit crazy. I've sifted through a ridiculous number of photos from the last 12 years or so and picked out ones that show how my makeup has changed over the years. Unfortunately I wore the same look every day for most of those years, as you will see for yourself.
I saw a
blog post in the last week where the writer said that Davey Havok was her high school inspiration, so definitely true for me. I fell in love with all things AFI when I was about 13/14 and loved DxH so much that I made (and still have) a folder in which are about 1000 printed out pictures of him...in rough chronological order. Sigh. Black was the colour. Oh yes. Black everywhere. Let the pictures begin.
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| No face. Black nail varnish. Yes. Age 13 |
First I should mention it's rather hard to find photos of me pre-Myspace. All of photos of me show my hand or the back of my head. I hated photos. Then I discovered, along with everyone else, that you can use photos to project a certain idea of yourself. I chose moody.
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| April 2004, age 15. |
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| 2004, age 15 |
I thing my black lipstick was a Stargazer one. I can smell it now, crayons, it was so disgusting. My eyeliner was whatever cheap black pencil I could find. I had black eye shadow that I would apply with a wet sponge applicator to get as dark as I could. I don't think I even used mascara. Ugh.
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| Jan 2004, age 14. |
I detest this photo so much. I know it was taken on my sister's birthday and we went out for a meal with one of her friends. White foundation, big lack of concealer and patchy lipstick. Great.
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| Nov 2004, age 15 |
So many photos taken in my bedroom with all my posters. My room was painted navy blue as I wasn't allowed to have black. Posters covered every single inch of the walls, even areas where there were tiny cut outs from Kerrang and Metal Hammer magazines. I was extremely proud of my room, kind of still am. :-P
When I was 16 I discovered Cyberdog, a cybergoth, rave clothes shop in Camden, London. I fell head over heals in love with the aesthetics. This coincided with finding the Urban Decay counter in my local Boots (I loved the counter, you could often get them on 3 for 2, yes!). I bought almost all of the Deluxe eyeshadow singles and lots of the 24/7 pencils and would wear them in thick, unblended splats on my eyelids, interspersed with a bit more black of course. Aged 16-17 my photos are pretty much non-existent. Sadly all my files got corrupted when transferring them to a different PC.
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| 2005. Forced this upon my sister. |
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| 2006, age 17 |
For my 17th birthday I had my first rat, Lady Porphyria Havok (Lady P for short). She featured in most of my photos while she was alive, something that would continue with my other rats and hamsters.
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| 2007, age 18. |
This was Urban Decay Deluxe shadow in Peace and their lip stain in Greedy. Around about this time I realised you could enhance your eyebrows with makeup, it just hadn't entered my mind before. I quite often used only brow gel but did use a matte shadow too sometimes.
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| 2008, 19 |
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| 2008, age 19 |
Argh, bright colours but no eyeliner. So painful for me to look at now but something I did a lot.
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| May 2009, dressed up as Lenore for London EXPO |
When I started uni I experimented a bit more with liquid liner. I had used it before but was never very successful. I still didn't wear lipstick all that often. Until my third year in uni I could count my lip products on one hand, that seems so crazy to me now.
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| July 2009, age 20 with my hamster Isis |
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| August 2009 at a friends' wedding. |
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| Feb 2010, age 21 |
Some of my favourite liquid liners were MAC's Liquid Last in Aqualine (bright bright turquoise) and Electro Lady (purple). They were amazing, didn't crack or transfer but were sooo difficult to remove. Unfortunately you can only get the formula in black now. I started layering eyeliner with these bright, opaque liners.
I can't get over how much better my skin looks in these photos. I took Roaccutane for my acne when I was 16 and for a few years my skin was really clear. Now I'm more back to my 15 year old skin, great.
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| June 2011, age 22 |
Obligatory cheesy wedding photo, pre lip application. I used mauvey tones in a lightly smoked eye with brown liner for my wedding day. I wore MAC's Brave lipstick. I'm still quite happy with how I chose to do my makeup although I'd probably do it differently now. It was researching for my wedding day that
really started my makeup obsession. While I did like it a lot already and had a fair amount of makeup, it wasn't until this point that it took over all my other hobbies and passions. I was looking at other people's faces a lot more and constantly devouring magazines and online pictures for inspiration.
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| All taken in May 2014 |
Which leads to today. Still the black-rimmed eyes girl on the inside but a more polished version of the colour crazy one. Still devouring makeup pictures. Still obsessed.
Hope that was somewhat interesting to look at. It was kind of fun to make, only mildly horrifying. I do wish I had started experimenting a bit sooner, never mind.
If you have a similar blog post I would love to see it. What has your makeup journey been like?
Rachel
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