Little Red Riding Hood

Little Red was running her mouth… and this is what happened

I’ve had this look in mind for so long! I love combining beauty looks with a little blood and a fun storyline. The Big Bad Wolf gave Red a giant scratch, but she lived to tell the tale. First I’ll go over the beauty details and then I’ll explain how to get that bloody scratch.

Foundation first. You can prime if you’d like, but I just went in with my Elcie Foundation in the shade Vanilla. I concealed and brightened under my eyes with the L.A. Girl Pro Conceal in the yellow shade. Then I used the Fenty Beauty Match Stix to highlight and contour the rest of my face, i.e. my jawline, nose, cheekbones, and temples. The shades I used are Amber to contour and Linen to highlight, and Starstruck as a shimmer highlight on the tops of my cheekbones. I set under my eyes with my favorite, RCMA No Color Powder, and the Dermablend pressed powder on the rest of my face.

I decided to go over the cream highlight on the tops of my cheekbones to further enhance it with the J Cat Beauty Highlighter in the shade Bella Rose. I also grabbed a warm, peachy blush color out of the Morphe 9B Blush Palette to pop onto one cheek. The one that won’t have the scratch on it. *Pro tip: plan to put the scratch on your “good side”, so that you can show it off how you’d naturally pose for photos.

Moving on. I filled in my eyebrows with my holy grail product, the Anastasia Beverly Hills Dipbrow Pomade in Dark Brown. Don’t worry about the lips til the very end, or you’ll likely end up with a mot mess. No, not even hot. Just a mess.

Now for the eyes! I used the beautiful Jaclyn Hill Morphe Palette for most of the eyeshadow part. I used a warm transition shade in the crease of my eye to start off. Then I took a bronze/copper red shimmer shade and put that all over the lid. I took a bit of Anastasia Beverly Hills eyeshadow in the shade fudge on a bullet brush and blended that into the outer corners and very slightly into the crease of the eye. I took the same three shades lightly under the lash line in a gradient effect from darkest close to the lower lash line, to lightest fading downward. To really make it pop, I painted on some Stila Magnificent Metals liquid eyeshadow in Kitten Karma onto the inner half of the eyelid. I went back in with the shimmery copper red shade to blend the edges together. On the very inner corners of the eye and on the brow bone, I highlighted with some of that Bella Rose highlighter we used earlier on the cheekbones. Next, I created a dramatic winged black eyeliner with my L.A. Girl liquid eyeliner. Coat your top and bottom lashes with mascara and pop on some false lashes. Mine are some obscure off brand from China, but anything spikey will look cool for this.

Now for the fun part…the scratches. You’ll need liquid latex, which you can get here, or at halloween stores and pro makeup stores. Obviously don’t use this if you’re allergic to latex. If you’re unsure, do a patch test on your arm and observe it for 24 hours before going anywhere near your face with this stuff. Also, you’ll need a palette knife (metal makeup spatula) and brushes you don’t care about ruining. Trust me, you’ll never be able to save a brush from liquid latex. I recommend getting a giant pack of cheap paint brushes from the craft store. Keep in mind that you have a couple minutes to work with this product before it dries, so work efficiently and if it spills on something like a carpet, clean it off immediately. If it spills on a surface like a desktop or something flat, it will likely be easier to remove by peeling it off when its dry.

Before you start with the latex, get some paper towel and rip it into four thin strips. measure them against the face in the sizes you want each scratch to me. Make sure you don’t leave any straight edges on the paper towel. They’ll blend in better with the skin this way. Make sure they are thick enough to be able to cut in half. But you won’t be doing that part til later.

SO, paint on a little bit of latex in horizontal lines, where you plan on putting the scratches. Make four of them and be strategic about where you place them and how long they are so they look as convincing as possible in the end. Lay down over top and saturate the top with more latex. Wait for it to dry and add on more layers. Bend the edges by thinning out and smoothing the latex into the skin with your palette knife. Wait for everything to dry before you move on to ensure it doesn’t slip around for the next part.

Now get a pair of tiny scissors you’d normally use for trimming your false lashes. They come in manicure tool sets usually. Cut a little hole in the center to start making the horizontal cuts I mentioned earlier, in the middle of each paper towel piece. So you’ll end up with edges of the paper towel essentially glued down into the skin, with the middle part of the paper towel cut open to make the cuts. We’ll now paint the whole thing on the inside and outside.

We need to now match our scratches to our skin. If you paint over the kind of liquid latex that dries a white-ish yellow color with your foundation color, it will likely not match you and will be lighter. So just try to anticipate how the color of the latex will affect the color of the foundation you’re going to lay down on top. My advice would be to paint on a darker color first over the latex, then your foundation color to neutralize it. My latex dries to a light pink color, so my color matching went a bit differently, but just do the best you can. Color theory will be a whole separate blog post.

With my Ben Nye Bruise Wheel, I mixed the black and brown colored grease paint and painted that on my bare skin on the inside of each open space we cut. Paint the inside “flaps” of your paper towel skin with a mix of the red and brown grease paint. Lightly pat on some of that red grease paint over the edges of each scratch to give the illusion of slight irritation. This is just to make it look less perfect and placed when we add the blood in a minute. But don’t go overboard. We need to keep with the storyline- the scratches are fresh and the blood is still wet-looking, so the skin wouldn’t have had a ton of time to start showing redness and irritation yet. This is also why I’m not using the ever popular scab blood, which is darker toned and looks more clotted. The kind of blood I used to place inside of and dripping down from the cuts is just from target and the brand is Rubies. You can find it here. You can use the end of a makeup brush to dip into the blood and place it within the cuts. Add drips!

Now you can move on to the lips. I used a red lip liner and went over the top with a nude lipstick by MAC in the shade Siss. You could stick to classic red, or really anything that suits you.

All done with the makeup! Don’t forget your red cape with a hood. Now you’re ready for Grandma’s house, or wherever you plan on going! That’s it for day 9 of 31 days of Halloween (cha-cha-cha!). See you tomorrow!