Creepy Cosmetics: Staffer tries three different makeup looks for the spooky season

By no means would I say that I’m an awful makeup artist, but I’m never the friend that other girls ask to blend their eyeshadow or foundation while getting ready for a dance.

Despite my lack of talent, each October I check the YouTube trending sections to see which new creepy Halloween makeup tutorials are blowing up on social media. This year, I decided to test my creative side and try some of the looks I’m always so in awe of.

Countless Youtube videos popped up with Halloween makeup looks, so it was hard to choose the best to do. However, the word “simple” in my search bar helped narrow it down to tutorials I thought I’d actually be able to follow.

I chose the three that looked the easiest — and the hardest for me to mess up. The three that stuck out to me were an easy last-minute clown look, spider-inspired look and simple skeleton makeup.

I watched this video two or three times to make sure I had all the right products — red eyeshadow, eyeliner and bronzer — and thought this would be my best one out of all three because it looked the most doable. I was sadly mistaken.

The artist, Hannah Renee, has a well-regarded reputation with 546K subscribers as a makeup artist in the world of YouTube beauty. Although she was easy to follow, and was clear in her instructions, my lack of skills left me looking like a toddler who broke into my mom’s makeup drawer.

I did the eyeshadow first. It was the easiest task and something I knew I could at least partially complete. I initially had zero confidence when picking up my eyeliner, but went for it anyway. This is where things really went downhill — just what I was scared of.

My eyeliner looked like I had a hand spasm while drawing over my eyelid — which if you didn’t know, isn’t the goal. I sure looked like clownish at the end, but not in a glam and cutesy way Hannah did.

Although it had nothing to do with the tutorial itself and everything to do with my lack of makeup skills, this simplistic design was by far the most challenging — definitely not for a beginner.

The next look I did focused more on the eyes. It included a bold spider web with eyeshadow and more eyeliner. This seemed like a fun Halloween-themed look and something that was achievable — at least hopefully.

This video from Beauty Bay didn’t include clearly laid out instructions like the previous one. There was no talking or explanation, but more of an expectation to follow along as the video progressed. This intimidated me at first, but was actually easier to follow than I anticipated.

Knowing the only two supplies I really needed to use were orange eyeshadow and eyeliner gave me some hope. After what felt like a pound of orange eye shadow was on my lid, I was once again met with my enemy: eyeliner.

The spider web drawn onto my eye and cheek turned out better than expected, but the eyeliner — per usual — was a little messy.

I liked this makeup a lot — mostly because it redeemed a smidge of my makeup guru confidence — but it was also more fun to do and no doubt looked better than my clown attempt.

My third and final look was definitely the most fun and honestly my best work out of all three — which was probably due to its purposefully messy vibe. The look required some light powder, bronzer, brown and black eyeshadow and an eyeliner pencil for the little skull details.

This video by Tiani Nicole was well-filmed, walking me through every step and making sure I was on the path to perfecting the skull look — okay maybe a little imperfectly — but regardless, I felt good about this one.

Starting with light powder to give my face a deathly appearance, I then placed bronzer all over to accentuate my dimensions and make it look like I truly came straight out of a coffin — or at least that was the goal.

Lastly, I used the eyeliner pencil to add the details of the skeleton nose and teeth, finalizing the look. I ended up looking honestly pretty similar to Tiani Nicole to my absolute best ability. 

While I wouldn’t necessarily say it was perfect, it topped my other two attempts and was the most fun to complete for some pre-Halloween hype.