Archives for September 2009

Evening, ladies. How was your Tuesday? Mine wasn’t bad, except that I spent my whole afternoon stuck in the East Bay with car trouble. I’m finally back home now (a little worse for wear).

The post that follows is a reprint of one of my favorites from last year, and with Halloween approaching it seemed particularly apt. Hmm… Is it too early to start brainstorming costumes for this year?

Every girl deserves a makeover from time to time. My last one was ages ago. I’d been itching to try a new look, so yesterday I made the short trip into San Francisco hoping to find inspiration.

I hit my usual haunts — MAC, Dior and Chanel — but I was in the mood for something, well, kinda different, so I kept looking.

I was almost ready to throw in the towel when a sign on a building caught my eye: Kryolan Professional Makeup. Curious as ever and not wanting to head home defeated, I decided to check it out.

Jake, the Kryolan showroom manager, gave me a tour of the place and described their products and services.

The company offers a full line of professional and consumer beauty products but specializes in theater makeup and makeup education. I was immediately drawn to their Aquacolor wet cake makeup — pans of highly pigmented, glycerin-based face and body makeup available in 250 different shades ($6 each).

Once I spotted their beautiful brushes (high quality, and generally more affordable than department store lines), body paints and, um, fake blood, I knew I was in for a different kind of makeover. Sign my booty up!

Dominic, Kryolan’s director of education, got me ready for my makeover, sitting me down beside a counter covered in Aquacolor pans. I told him to go nuts! I didn’t know what to expect, but I got a little suspicious when he glued a prosthetic cat nose to my face.

That’s when it dawned on me: homie was probably not going to do a simple smokey eye.

After all, Kryolan is known for extreme movie and theater makeup. You’ve probably seen their makeup at work in Hollywood films, and their credits include the makeup for The Chronicles of Narnia, Collateral and Pirates of the Caribbean.

With my new prosthetic cat nose in place, Dominic started layering different colors to develop the look. “The painting process is fun,” he said. “This is the most time consuming part of the whole process.”

The entire Karen-into-cat transformation took about 45 minutes, but here’s the condensed version…

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