Cracked Doll

It’s day 18 of the 31 days of Halloween Makeup Challenge, and I couldn’t leave out the ever popular shattered doll theme. I was inspired by the cracked doll concept in general, but my biggest inspiration was an amazing, talented, very skilled body painter named Lex. She makes fabulous youtube videos and shares her boss body painting skills with the world. Here is here info so you can check out her work. I needed to give her a little nod for giving me the inspiration and the excitement to do this look. That being said, let’s get on to the makeup!

Costume

As far as a costume goes, I think a strapless dress works best so that you can really show off the paint job on the chest and neck without any straps distracting from the look. I found a blonde wig to be more doll-like, but you can obviously use your natural color or any wig. Adding little low pigtails to the wig really pulled it together and sold it as a porcelain doll.

Face

The face portion of this look, although it can be time consuming depending on your skill level, is not all that difficult. Start with foundation that matches your skin tone. Although our doll is a porcelain one, we don’t need to make her super pale or white. I used the Estee Lauder Double Wear Foundation in the shade Bone. Set that with a translucent powder, like the RCMA No Color Powder. *Pro Tip: if you are copying the positioning of the “cracks” on the face from my photos and sticking to one side of the face, don’t apply powder on that side so that the body paint apply in that area more easily. That being said, plan out whether you are going to be painting over your eyebrows or not for your “cracks”. In my case, I kept one brow showing and one as a part of the shattered portion of the face. So I used the Anastasia Beverly Hills Brow Pen in the Universal Deep shade to lightly even out the shape of one of my eyebrows. I don’t think they make this product anymore, but you can use your best judgement and go with the brow product you’d normally use. This matched the roots of the wig I used perfectly. Try to match your brow(s) to the color wig you decide to go with. 

The eye makeup is very simple, yet still wide-eyed and doll-like. I primed the eye with concealer, set it with translucent powder, and moved on to some eyeshadow. I actually used a blush for my lid color and ended up using the same one on my cheeks later. Its just a babydoll pink color from the Morphe 9B Blush Palette. I also blended a warm brown eyeshadow lightly in the crease of my eye. I then lined the top lash line with the She beauty eyeliner in black. I also applied a pretty large and flared out false lash by Luxy Lashes called Babydoll to the one eye with my Daiso glue.

The same one-side-only deal, for me, applied to the eye and cheek as well. Under the eye I used the NYX Jumbo eyeliner pencil in the color Milk to extend the white of the eye downward, making the eye appear larger. Underneath that I used the Nabi liner pencil in the purple shade to create a new lower lash line. I then went in and painted on some dramatic lower eyelashes with L.A. Colors black liquid eyeliner. On the cheek (yes, only one cheek) I used the same blush I used for my eyeshadow, applying a generous amount to the apples of my cheek.

Leave the lips for later, after the body paint. But when you get to them, you’ll want to make them smaller than your natural lips in a sort of heart-like shape on the top and bottom lip. To do this, I used a light wash of the red and white Kryolan Aquacolor body paint mixed together. I pat a bit of white onto the very center for some highlight. Cover the outer edges of your lips with concealer or foundation so they blend into the rest of your face.

Cracks

Before I even laid down any body paint, I used the dark brown shade, Sombre, from the Kat Von D Shade and Light Contour Palette to lightly shade the areas I wanted my cracks/holes on the doll face. For me, this was over one eye and a bit up onto the forehead and down onto the cheek on one side of my face, as well as a little part of my jaw on the other side. This will make it so that I don’t have to go in and try to do this later in between all my lines of the shattered areas.

For the “cracked” portion of the face, I used a very basic shadow and light technique, utilizing Snazaroo body paint in both black and white. Starting with a small detail brush and black paint, I started making little lines going outward from the center of each crack’s “origin”. I made one over my eye and one on jaw area of the opposite side of my face. Make the lines different lengths and widths. Reference a photo of shattered glass or cracked china to see how a shatter would look. Make sure to create an outline of small irregular shapes so that it looks like the porcelain has cracked, but maybe a few pieces haven’t fallen out yet like the all-black areas. I made the holes, or the areas where I wanted it to look as if the porcelain had all fallen out, pretty large. You can make as many or as little as you like, and of course, anywhere on the face that suits you. Just plan ahead as far as the application of your foundation on the parts of the face without the cracks. I then used the Snazaroo white paint to go in and highlight, right up against almost every black line. As always, I picked a direction that I wanted my light source to appear to come from and worked off of that to determine where to put the highlights. It also helped that I already had my shadow in place from when I laid down that brown Sombre color from earlier. After and only after everything dries, you can go in with blush on your other cheek, just below the shatter (in the event that you use the same placement as I did).

Lastly for the face, add in some vertical black lines with black body paint coming down from either side of your mouth to add in the puppet-like vibe. Shade on the inside of each line with the Sombre color. (This would be a good time to add on the lips).

Body

Now for the fun part! This is the point where we can really start to make this doll look like a little Marionette, with limbs that are attached by exaggerated ball and socket joints.

First, I used a mix of the white and brown Mehron Paradise Body Paint to map out the areas of shading for the…I guess we’ll call them joints. The best way I can describe this is to think of creating a collar and then the shape of tank top straps with the brown paint.This was a super pale/tan color, meanning I used a lot of white. But you want it to come out like a slightly darker shade than your skin tone. Make the edges of your skin the darkest and fade the color to an almost translucent wash as you make your way to the center of the neck and chest.

I then took the black Snazaroo paint and painted a straight horizontal line across my neck. I then drew in two lines, one coming around toward the center of the chest from each of my trapezius muscles. I didn’t connect those into a full line, but rather left a space. You want this lined area to look curved, as if it would complete a full circle if you could see it all the way around. Feel around your shoulders and determine where your actual ball and socket joints are to get the placement right for this next step. Basically, create a black outline in a little circle that covers the top portion of each shoulder. Then make a straight line down from that outline, toward your armpit and a straight line upward, toward where your collar bone connection is. Keep looking back at my photos to see what I mean. Try to get the shoulder top (blank areas) as similarly-shaped as you can. Fill in the space between these vertical lines and the circular shoulder outline with black paint. Now you can go in and shade against the inside edges of the black paint with the Sombre color from earlier.

There you go! That’s all you need to become a creepy shattered doll. It comes out looking really awesome, and this may be my favorite look to date. I’ll see you tomorrow for more 31 days of Halloween!