My Top 10 Festival Beauty Essentials

It’s that time of year again, music festival season! Every summer, a killer combo of awesome music and fashion hits the fields around the country. Whether you’ll be attending V fest, Reading & Leeds, 2000 trees or others, the beauty trends pretty much work at all types of music festivals.
For a start you don’t want to be bringing tonnes of products, so I’ve rounded up the top 10 must have beauty products from my own experiences at festivals and the current trends.

For your base makeup a BB cream with SPF is the best way to go, the Rimmel BB Cream 9-In-1 Skin Perfecting Super Makeup £6.99; primes, moisturises, minimizes pores, conceals, covers, smoothes, mattifies, brightens, and helps protect your skin with SPF 25 which is so important if you’re out in the sunshine all day.
A cheek and lip tint is a great multi-purpose product and long-lasting, the Benefit Lip and Cheek Tints £24.50 come in a variety of shades, smell amazing and stay on all day.

For eyes waterproof mascara is a must as there’s a high chance you’ll get sweaty in those big crowds and the last thing you want is to look like a panda, the Maybelline Colossal Mascara - Volum' Express Black Waterproof £7.19, won’t let this happen and it creates great volume without the clumps.
The brow trend is still going strong so keep brows bold and shaped up with the GOSH Long Lasting Brow Pen £6.49 as it’s so easy to use, looks natural and is long-lasting.A big festival trend this summer is bright colours, use a bright coloured eyeliner on your upper or lower lash line instead of black to really make your eyes pop, the Bourjois Contour Clubbing Eyeliners £4.99, are great as they come in lots of fun colours and are also waterproof. If you really want to go all out UV paint or glitter eyeliner is the way to go, you’ll glow and sparkle in all the flashing lights and can create lots of fun shapes and styles especially with the Urban Decay Heavy Metal Glitter Liners, £11.50.

Rights given by Umberto Giannini for photos

Often at festivals it’s difficult to give your hair a proper wash so a dry shampoo is a definite must have, the Umberto Giannini Glam Hair Morning After Dry Shampoo £6.00 is clear meaning it leaves no grey marks whilst creating volume and absorbing excess oils.
A major festival hair trend is tousled waves, which can be easily achieved using a salt spray, the Umberto Giannini Glam Hair Grunge Glamour Tousled Salt Spray £6.00 is perfect as you can use it on wet or dry hair and it creates lovely waves with so much texture. Don’t forget to bring some hairbands and grips as these can help create endless amounts of different styles from braids to up-dos.

At the end of the day its important to remove all your makeup so facial wipes are great to bring along, they’re easy to pack and do the job without the need for loads more products. I recommend Simple Kind To Skin Cleansing Wipes £3.20, as they are gentle on the skin and can even remove waterproof makeup.

Have fun, be creative, stay safe and tweet me your looks or your must have festival products @alexandraahowe

I originally wrote this post for Platform magazine at http://platform-online.net/2014/07/top-10-festival-beauty-essentials/

Makeup For Fashion Course at Central Saint Martins

This week I attended a short course in Makeup for Fashion for a week at University of Arts London, Central Saint Martins. I've been wanting to do a makeup course for years to get a chance to learn new techniques, use new products and tools and just to become more experienced with makeup. 

As I'm studying Fashion Communication at university we do quite a few photo-shoots so gaining these new skills in makeup will really help me make the most of these shoots without having to pay someone else to do it whilst building up my own portfolio of skills.

Kristina Vidic ran the course for us, she is a highly experienced makeup artist, working for some of the top designers out there and as a tutor at the university. You can look at some of her work here. She was an amazing tutor, I could ask as many questions as needed and she would give really helpful tips, tricks and advice. 

Day 1

In the morning we learnt about the different skin types and how to care for them, as well as what can sometimes cause imperfections. As we were focusing on base makeup we looked at the different types of foundations, concealers, correctors, contouring and highlighting powders. 

After lunch Kristina gave us a tutorial on how to apply the best possible base and then it was our turn to try it out. Before now I had only ever done makeup on western skin and it was great to try out doing the base makeup on Asian skin as it's totally different! I forgot to take a before photo but here's the after photo of my first attempt at base makeup on Asian skin.

Day 2

On day 2 we focused on natural makeup and brows. Kristina was working on a Chanel Haute Couture show so we had a friend of hers take over for the day. She started with a tutorial showing us tips and tricks to create the best natural look and then we had to create the same look on each other. I learnt methods which I had never tried before which I may write a separate post about in the future. Due to time we didn't get round to actually doing brows on each other but she did show us how to do them and  how to find the perfect brow shape.

Day 3

Kristina was back from her show and we got to be a bit more creative today. We started off with just basic eyeliner and then moved onto doing interesting shapes, cut creases and wings. It was interesting to see how different styles of eyeliner works and doesn't work on different eye shapes.
We then moved onto creating the perfect lip, we were challenged by only being allowed to use red. It is surprisingly difficult to get each side equal on the lips, I found it more difficult than the eyeliner!

Day 4
In the morning we had the chance to go down to MAC and receive 35% off for being on the course so we could build up our kits, how could you so no to that much money off?! I bought a few items, for just £50 I got a full size Face & Body foundation, an eyeliner, a blusher and an angled brush!
In the afternoon it was all about smoky eyes and colours. Kristina created this very fun look below when showing us the techniques. I had so much fun using bright colours as a contour, so much more fun to play with than just a basic contour colour.

Day 5

On our final day we got to do any look that we desired, I went for a look that was a bit of a challenge for me. I was inspired by this image I found on Pinterest below, I adapted it to fit my model as no face or eye shape is the same and also my models hair colour was much darker.
After we completed our look we had a professional photographer take photos of the look so we can add it to our portfolios. At the moment I am waiting for that photo to be sent to me so for now I just have some photos I took on my own camera.

I made some new friends, learnt so many new skills and techniques and had an amazing time. Thank you to Kristina for being an amazing tutor. I am now a qualified beginner makeup artist!
I would recommend this course to anyone who want to learn the basics of makeup or brush up on the skills they already have. They also do an advanced course in September where you get to be even more creative which I hope to do in the next few years.

Benefit Cosmetics Gabbi's Head, London

I'm currently in the middle of a studying a short course in London at Central Saint Martins but normally London is a bit of a journey from home. I had heard about Benefit Cosmetics, Gabbi's Head in Covent Garden and I just had to go whilst it's still around and I'm actually in London.

With 2 other girls on my course we decided after our course yesterday afternoon we'd go to it for a drink and just to see how cute the place was, fair to say it was very pretty and pink. 

It was tucked away in Covent Garden upstairs in a normal pub, when we went upstairs we were surrounded by cute pink furniture. There was so much attention to detail, even all the coasters had cute quotes on them. You could get a makeover or your eyebrows done for just £5 and also 10% off their products but because we were already all made up from our course we decided not to but were very tempted.

Instead we treated ourselves to a cocktail, they were so scrumptious, all themed to be pink and came in pretty jugs and martini glasses.

The whole point of this place is to come and watch the FIFA World Cup but we didn't stay late enough for the next match, nor did we really want to stay to watch it as it's not our cup of tea! The whole concept was adorable though, making a more feminine pub for those who do want to watch the football instead of the classic rowdy pub, there was even a football table you could play with.

It's such a shame that it's not staying, I would visit every time I go to London.

If you're around or able to visit London before the end of the week, then go before it's gone!