Beauty and the Geek – A Makeup Collaboration Inspired by Fantasy Water Creatures

Greetings from a band of true adventurers, fellow rogues!

Let me ask you this: what’s better than the wisdom and flair of a beauty adventurer? Why, the wisdom and flair of TWO beauty adventurers, of course! Today, I’m very excited to bring you yet another collaboration with the incomparable adventuress Melissa over at Kiss and Make-Up!

First off, I want to apologise to Melissa and her readers for the delay in my post going up! We had an internet blackout over here at Rogue Adventuring HQ, the scheduling of my post didn’t quite register, and all in all it was the kind of dungeon you end up scrambling out of in unseemly haste, pursued by minotaur shamans. However, we’ve lost the minotaurs, straightened out clothes, and here it is! I hope you enjoy it as much as I’m sure you enjoyed Melissa’s!

Right! The theme we chose for this collaboration was a fantasy water creature look! But not just any old mermaid, oh no: my water creature of choice is the merfolk wizard Prime Speaker Zegana, leader of the Simic Combine Guild in the plane-city of Ravnica (from Magic: the Gathering).

Prime Speaker Zegana of the Simic Combine, owning you in debate since the moment she emerged from the water.

Zegana is the kind of woman who doesn’t take nonsense from anyone. She stands up to unite and speak for her people, communicates with the other guilds and surface dwellers to make a better future for both, and looks bad ass while doing it. This is an aquatic lady who gets things DONE. Just look at that expression! That purple lip colour! A woman after my own heart.

I thought long and hard about the best way to try and translate Zegana’s look into our world, and decided on a two-pronged approach. First, I thought I’d do a wearable, silvery smoky eye look that is inspired by Zegana but doesn’t require you to bust out the liquid latex and facepaint. Indeed, you too can wear this Zegana-Lite look to any of your favourite evening occasions, dungeon raids and daytime events!

A wearable Zegana-inspired eye look for every day!

 

For this eye look I used a variety of sneaky cheats and substitutions, the details of which are below!

 

Liner and ‘lash’ detail for the Zegana-Lite look

 

Lid: Lancôme Erika iridescent eyeshadow all over, Urban Decay (UD) Gunmetal in the crease, and UD Money pressed into the centre of the lid. I wanted to get the silvery grey of Zegana’s skintone, with a little iridescent green /blue in there to push the water edge.
Upper Lid Liner: Maybelline Charcoal gel liner, winged out into a variety of little ‘lashes’ to simulate Zegana’s impressive winged eyeliner/lash combo. If you have falsies with a more dramatic outer edge, use those – I don’t have any, so this was my cheat!
Lower Lid Liner: UD Gunmetal and UD money smoked out along lower lid, with UD Uzi liner in the outer corner (I’m a bit new to gel liner, so I went back to my faithful UD pencil for a sofer lower-lid line.

Waterlines: Upper waterline is UD Uzi, lower waterline is a gold eyeshadow I had (#2 in the Lancôme Golden Frenzy Palette). If you have a gold liner (like UD Honey or El Dorado), feel free to use that. I don’t have one yet, although I wish I did! The yellow gold here is inspired by Zegana’s yellow eyes.

Lashes: Curled (I love my Chanel curlers, but any will do!), with YSL waterproof mascara on upper and lower lashes (plenty). Obviously, Zegana needs a good waterproof mascara, since she normally lives at the bottom of the sea. I had this one left  over from my wedding, but if you have falsies, once again, this may be the time to bust them out if you want more drama.

Brows: Darkened a little with a light stroke-through of Lancôme Très Chocolat eyeshadow (matte).

Lips: I would suggest your favourite nude (I don’t own one) or MLBB lipstick (I own too many to list) to offset the somewhat smoky nature of the eyes. If you want to suggest the blue-purple of Zegana’s lips without going the whole hog, you might have trouble, as most ‘purple’ lipsticks tend to be red-based. However, that shouldn’t stop you from busting out your Voluptuous Violet Clinique Chubby Stick or your Bloom Sheer Lipstick in Petal for a ‘hint’ of purple without the drama. Alternatively, try a gloss:

A nude or a purple gloss, fellow Zegana-wannabes?

 

OK, so now that we’ve covered a ‘Zegana-lite’ version that you can take anywhere, how about a full-on attempt at Zegana with only basic makeup products? I should note here that the shimmer in both of these looks is inspired by the fact that the first and only time I ever opened a Prime Speaker Zegana card (it’s a mythic rare), it was a foil! So I always think of Zegana in shiny terms, even though you could probably do something more convincing with more matte components 😉

You want to see my effort at this? Prepare to laugh your fashionably attired butts off, fellow rogues, here it goes!

 

Full on Zegana! This was way too much fun to do, actually…man, does shimmery eyeshadow ever show off ALL of your skin texture… :-S

 

Face: UD Money all over – I think I almost hit pan doing this, hehe! Shimmery eyeshadow doesn’t give the best coverage all over the face, to be honest, but I don’t own *any* theatrical or prosthetic makeup, so I’m going rogue and just using what I have to hand!
Gel liner: re-done with Lancôme Liner Plume in 01 Noir (liquid eyeliner), into more of a curly shape that mimics the Simic Combine’s logo (you can see it at the bottom of the Zegana picture above – looks like a curly tree).
Eyelid lines: drawn in with Maybelline charcoal gel liner then UD Cuff (silver eyeliner) and Lancôme Golden Frenzy Shade 1 (a pale white gold eyeshadow).
Brows: darkened with Lancome Golden Frenzy Shade 5 (black matte eyeshadow)
Squiggles: drawn in UD Cuff eyeliner, ‘turquoised’ a bit with UD Haight and Shattered eyeshadows, then highlighted with Chanel Illusion d’Ombre in Fantasme for extra sparkle and white iridescence.

A little detail on the liner and the squiggles – raking light to try and show the shimmer!

 

If I owned yellow sclera lenses or something, I would have put them in too. Unfortunately, I don’t, but they would certainly have completed the look!

Now, for lips, I couldn’t really stop here without mentioning my trusty MUFE #15. I wanted to put everything together on the face, but my lips are a bit of a disaster zone at the moment (most un-Zegana like), so I will have to resort to a previous photo:

Makeup Forever #15, Pearl Violet. The ultimate shimmery blue purple lipstick, in this rogue’s humble opinion. This look has a little MUFE #49 in the corners for contrast.

 

Alright, I hope that Full On Costume Zegana look gave you a good chuckle, and maybe some inspiration for your next Halloween or cosplay event! I hope I’ve shown that you can get a long way with just a bunch of eyeshadows and a couple of eyeliners, whether it’s a wearable every Zegana or an OMGZEGANA.

Melissa’s Fantasy Water Creature Look

Melissa based her look on a similarly kick-ass water creature, the Naga. These half human, half sea serpents have a spare pair of arms, temper to spare and awesome magical powers. Her look takes some fabulous, vibrant colours inspired by the sea and the Naga, and turns them into a vision of aquatic beauty. To feast your eyes on the awesomeness, click here to check out Melissa’s look!

Until next time, fellow adventurers, don’t forget to check for traps!

Syl

I am an adventuring rogue, not a mercenary for hire, and as such, all opinions expressed here are my own, based on a genuine fondness for/interest in this product. If you have any queries or suggestions, please do not hesitate to pin your parchment to the board (contact me) at thepaintedrogue [at] gmail [dot] com., or use the contact form provided! All images on this site, unless otherwise noted, are the property of Syl, and may not be reproduced without permission.

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