I was originally going to upload this on my second channel, but for some reason I’ve been unable to access it for over a week because You Tube seems to think I’m hacking into my own account. I’d set myself a deadline for this and I really want to stick to it, so at least for the moment while I try and get this all sorted out I’ll be uploading everything on my main channel.

 Contribee • Instagram • Patreon

Over the weekend I uploaded my first video new makeup tutorial in over two years. It was a bit nerve wracking as I’m completely changing the way I’m making my videos, but despite that, I’m happy I’ve finally made the jump. The videos are longer (SO much longer) more interesting to watch and edit, and I can push myself  further in sharing not just my love of makeup, but also photography and design.

If you haven’t seen it already, I’ve linked it bellow:

I’m also going to make a big push for a new platform I’m joined recently called Contribee. If you haven’t heard of it yet, it’s essentially a Patreon competetor with some much more interesting features, such as being able to make a supporter exclusive shop. I’ve been selling my work on eBay for a few years now, but much like this current change in direction, I think I’ll be switching platform to selling exclusively on Contribee as a way of saying thank-you to all of my amazing supporters.

Finally, after well over a month since starting this piece, it’s finished, and the baby (my son) who inspired it has finally arrived. Want to know something weird? I got this idea when I was around 6-7 months pregnant, and once potato arrived, the baby in this piece actually looked like him. Yes, a little creepy, but I think it’s creepy in a beautiful kind of way.

Personally, I’ve always found the character of death to be very misunderstood. I’d imagine that if I was writing death as a character in one of my stories he would be a very sad one. So when I was doing the sketch for this I decided I wasn’t going to make death look angry or scary. Rather, it would be sad, looking at this baby and dreading the day it would learn to fear death.

I also wanted to make this piece very much open to interpretation with the quote at the bottom. Is it the baby saying don’t cry to death or the other way around? As for the crown deaths head, to be honest I chose those because I have a serious love for Ivy – so much so I wore some in my hair for my wedding – and poppies, I thought, were the perfect flowers for death to wear; bright red and the colour of blood, extremely delicate flowers which wilt the moment they are picked and also a symbol of remembrance.

Ivy also represents eternity – quite fitting for death – it’s also one of the toughest little plants ever! If you don’t like it and have some in your garden, well, I wish you luck removing it.

What I used:

• Cold Pressed Paper
• Uni Pin Pens in the sizes 0.05, 0.3 & 0.1
• Gesso
• Travel Paintbrushes
• Watercolours – My custom made palette + Winsor and Newton travel palette

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The original painting has already been sold, but if you want a print or other merch with this design you those are available here.

It’s been a while since I made a new fabric design, and I’ve wanted to make some more bee themed fabrics for the next batch of wax wraps I’m making. If you don’t know what those are, I’m working on a video for on over on my lifestyle blog SimplyKlaire.com which will hopefully be up in the next few weeks, and I can show you then.

At the moment I’m having a bit of a bee and insect obsession. Especially after I did my cockroach design I noticed just how beautiful some of the colours are on creatures we normally don’t look twice at (or run screaming from). Some moths, for example, have some of the most amazing colours on their wings, when normally we think of them as the dull cousins of butterflies, so I think I’ll do one of those next. Or maybe a scarab…I’m not sure yet. Maybe both?

I’ll be giving away one of these on Patreon and the other two are up for sale on eBay already, but if you wanted to see how the design went from start to finish I’ve show what I used and how the first fabric swatch turned out. In the end, the first swatch came out a little too dark, but the second swatch which arrived a few days ago was absolutely perfect! It didn’t arrive in time for me to include it in the video, but I’ll be able to show it to you over on SimplyKlaire.com once my beeswax wrap DIY goes up.

You know, for something that was so fun to draw and paint this piece was an absolute nightmare to scan. At some point, I think I might have to replace my scanner to something a little more powerful, because all the subtle yellows, greens, and blues were getting completely washed out. Which on one hand makes me quite proud because I wanted those tints to be subtle, I just didn’t expect them to be so subtle that the scanner wouldn’t pick them up.

Anyway, enough about my scanning issues, this is the first/next piece in the Emotions series, and funnily enough, I wasn’t looking forward to working on it that much. When I originally sketched it I wanted to get started on Apathy right away, but my Patreons wanted to see resentment first, so I got started.

Normally before I start painting I make notes on important details I want to include, this way I can’t start experimenting and forgetting about my reasons for painting the piece the way I’d planned. As I got painting I did made a few changes though, the hair especially, which I’d originally planned to be a very natural red, but it didn’t seem quite right after I’d finished her skin to just make the hair red. I felt like it needed to look a little more colourfull, especially since the skin was bordering on a radioactive wash of colours. While the pose is quite relaxed overall I wanted everything else to radiate resentment and anger. At first, I considered doing more of a natural blend of colours, but when I tested it out it made her skin look to zombie-ish, so I switched to using a mixture of watercolour and inks in the final piece and I loved how they turned out!

I’d planned to use watercolors in the background of the next piece in the series, Apathy, but after seeing just how vibrant the inks I used turned out I think I’ll use those instead.

If you wanted a downloadable outline of this piece I’ve made it available on my Patreon

Édith Piaf is one of those singers who, even if you don’t know who she is, you’ve almost definitely heard her music at some point. For the historical makeup series, I thought I would start out with her look rather than start off with something like Marilyn Monroe or Audrey Hepburn. I’ll do those looks eventually, but I think that there are so many other famous looks which often get overlooked because of them. I’m dying to do some of my all-time favourite looks, such as Boudicca, Nefertiti and Cleopatra (the actual historical makeup, not the Hollywood versions).

That being said, I will do more modern looks like  Audrey and Marilyn, but for once I’d like to people like Édith and Nefertiti to be shown first.

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As some of you know from my last tutorial I’ve been playing around with my background and lighting to see what I could do with my photography. This one was a little frustrating at first (I’m so used to working with a black background) but in the end, I was happy with all the interesting colours I got, the reds, the magenta and shades of blue too.

The idea I had for this look was it would be an addition to my emotions series, specifically, I imagined it as self-repression or emotional repression. Originally I was going to cover the mouth too in a bark texture, to visually illustrate the inability to speak and express, but in the end, I decided to make it a little more subtle and draw lip art which showed vines growing from the mouth. All the while holding the key which can unlock the lock over her chest/heart, but not using it.

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I made the crown for this look back in February, and it’s been sitting on my desk taunting me since then, but each time I tried to film a snow queen look I absolutely hated it. This time I decided to switch things up, change the background, experiment with my lighting and set up and even change my editing a little. It takes a lot more time to edit, but I’m in love with how everything looks so far.

Also, if you liked the crown I’ll be giving that away on my Patron account over the next week to say thank you. It’s been amazing how many of you have decided to support me on the platform, and I’m so excited for the future tutorials I’m planning for Patreon which will be exclusively for you guys. As for the giveaway, it’s going to be simple. Basically, if you’re a patron on Patreon you’re entered in the giveaway automatically, then once I’ve selected the winner I’ll announce it on a Patreon post. Hope to see you there, but if I don’t, I hope you like this tutorial.

My Patreon 

Now, before you freak out, don’t worry, I will still be posting a makeup tutorial a week, but things have got to change if I still want to be making content a year from now. I’ve resisted setting up a Patreon for a long, long time, but the way YouTube is going I won’t be able to keep making the creative videos I (and I think you) like.

While I will still be uploading my makeup tutorials on YouTube once a week, from now on any extra content, all (or most) of my DIY’s and art tutorials are going to be exclusively for my Patreon supporters.

I decided that if I was going to do Patreon I needed the perks for my supporters to be more than just an “Oh gee, thanks.” I want to create extra videos, new DIY’s, vlogs, downloadable illustrations/photography etc. Something that really rewards the people who are kind enough to support me. For the moment I only have 6 different Patreon packs, starting from $1 each to $10 each, but I hope over time to add more and more rewards to those tiers as (hopefully) my Patreon grows. So if you have any suggestions, let me know.

I don’t know why but I’ve been really into skull makeup lately, I think I might even keep doing them way after Halloween, but for the moment I thought I would keep up my ‘simple’ Halloween looks. I think a lot of people see looks like this and get a little intimidated, but they don’t have to be, especially this one.

For this tutorial, I used a stencil, but if you don’t have one like this it’s easy to make one. Just take a hole punch, a thick piece of card and punch a series of holes into it. Another method would be to use any kind of fruit mesh instead. Sure, it won’t be exactly like this one, but it would look just as pretty (and really unusual).

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