Photoshoot: Gorgeous Mansion, Brazilian Swimwear, and Beautiful Makeup - Oh my!

This shoot was located at Georgiou's Place, a mansion and photography studio owned by French photographer and women's clothing designer George Georgiou.  The purpose of this shoot was to promote a Charmosa Swimwear by Brazilian designer Niede Hall.  I did makeup on sisters Alysia Michelle and Jasmine Rincon.  Because it was a swimwear shoot, the makeup was kept soft but very feminine and pretty.  The girls are so pretty that applying makeup on them was truly effortless.

Photography: Jeff Nguyen

Models: Jasmine Rincon and Alysia Michelle

Makeup: Me

Designer: Niede Hall of Charmosa Swimwear

Shoot location:

Makeup station.

The beautiful ladies and me:

I couldn't get over how beautiful the location was and how talented the models were!  The girls totally rocked it seeing how they were NOT professional models.  It was like a movie set!  What do you guys think?

Mylene: Cut, Color, Highlights, Brows

Since I've been in beauty school, I get request for hair services from my boyfriend's family whenever I go visit him in Quebec.  On my last visit, his aunt requested a haircut, color retouch, and highlights.  She requested a trim on the sides and the back, but wanted to try out side swept bangs to look more youthful and to get rid of the middle part.  She also requested more prominent highlights.  While the color was processing, I cleaned up her brows with tweezers.  The entire process took 4.5 hours.

Here are some before pictures:

After:

We mixed three different colors for the color service to get the desired deep reddy violet brown.  Funny thing is, her English is limited as is my French so I didn't realize she wanted only to touch up her roots at first.  What I ended up doing was coloring her entire head and we ran out of her usual color formula, so we used a violet on the sections from the occipital bone down.  On her fringe, I used a freehand technique for the highlights because I thought softer highlights would be more flattering.  I really wanted to style her hair after rinsing out the bleach but her hair has been heavily processed in the past (entire head of hair bleached) and we did a lot more processing today, so I let her hair air dry.  

Also, I'm very sensitive to smell.  Whenever I do a haircolor or perm service, I can taste the chemicals in my throat hours after the service.  Seeing as I didn't have any masks with me, I wrapped one of my boyfriend's shirts around my face as I did the color services.

Taking a food break while color was processing.
No worries--my gloves were clean.

If I had time, I would have liked to do a makeover as well, but Mylene had to get to work.  But it was a lot of fun!  Things would have been a little easier if I had access to a proper shampoo bowl.  All in all, I can't wait to do some more color and highlights!

I know a lot of you guys color your own hair at home (something I personally haven't done yet).  What are your tips and tricks when you do so?  I'd love to know!

My First Film Gig

The day before I flew out to Quebec, I was part of a team of makeup artists working on a short film called "Three Men and a Laptop."  The film is about how it is abnormal to date people online and some other stuff. As somebody who is in a long distance relationship as a result of meeting someone online, you can probably guess how I feel about that.  That in itself is a highly debatable subject anyway.  But it matters not because I was there for the makeup and that's that.

I was lucky enough to do makeup for the leading lady, one of the male leads, and some extras.  It was too crazy and hectic for me to take pictures of myself at work or the cast members I did makeup on.  I did snap a few pics of the scenes of the lounge, the makeup station, and myself with some of the MUAs on set.

My view from the makeup station.

You can see those bright bright movie lights.

The dinky makeup table shared between 4 MUAs.

2 of the MUAs (and former classmates!) and me

Overall, it was definitely an eye opening experience.  Doing makeup for film is much more different than any other gigs I've done before.  There is a constant need for retouching makeup as it tends to melt under the harsh lights.  I rarely do makeup for guys and I definitely lacked the supplies for it.  It was also rather difficult to work in such a tight space with such dim lighting.  I understand that as a freelance artists I may be called to work in less than ideal settings, but for a film...that's pushing it a bit since the camera tends to pick up all imperfections.  All in all I have learned a lot and I aim to be much better prepared next time.

In addition to more makeup, I intend on bringing my own table and some of my own lighting next time.  Anybody have tips or tricks to share?