You know, I’m writing this in bed, and myself and the laptop aren’t the only two things in here.
I’ve got next to me a foot-high tower of books (half of them about David Bowie, half of them about makeup), a teetering pile of folded laundry, the suitcase I am currently using as my makeup kit (not even kidding), two supermarket bags full of groceries, and … nah, I’m not putting that last bit in, on the internet for all you sickos to see for all eternity.
In my makeup suitcase, I have a brush roll, and in that brush roll there are several makeup brushes by Crown Brush UK. If you, too, would like several Crown makeup brushes, buy ’em online and enter this code – FINAJ2014 – for 10% off your order from http://www.crownbrush.co.uk for the month of February.
When your brushes arrive, you can create artfully massive overdrawn lips like the ones I did on Shinnerz here.
I have been sitting here for a few hours now, trying to think of how to start this flog post, and more importantly how to end it. As dedicated flogstars will know, I could talk about Bowie until the cows come home, but I am without cows so it’d be a bloody long wait. I still don’t think I’d run out of things to say about David, his greatness and how much I luuuurve him.
So, this post is all pictures, not because I have nothing to say, but because I feel slightly overwhelmed by how much ground I could cover. We’d be here all night. And day. And then all night again.
I took these today on my camera but the real photos will be even better – these are just a cheeky little sneak peek, just close-ups of makeup but you just wait til you see the fully styled and finished shots.
Today’s team was:
Mega-babe models: Rebecca Goldie and Aaron Bird
Photographer extraordinaire: Paul Wylie
Hair magician: Gillian Cleminson
Wardrobe/styling genius: Kim Wallace
Bowie makeup specialist: Imogen Maxwell (that’s me, kids)
Location: The Buff Low Cafe, Glasgow (who very kindly allowed us to shoot on their premises when our first location fell through at the very last second!)
she was winking, you just can’t see it
my dedication to Bowie rivalled only by Aaron’s – shaved eyebrows. My hero.
Goldie by name, goldie by jacket/lip colour/forehead circle.
I’m messy and I take up ALL the space and I’m NOT sorry
I had the best day doing this; normally there are some butterflies that come with rocking up to a shoot not knowing anyone, not knowing how it will turn out, who will show up, what the atmosphere will be, whether my work will be good enough etc etc etc. But this was my total happy-place in every detail: doing my very favourite makeup amongst calm, focussed, organised, dedicated, professional creatives at work. Now, to find a way to get paid for this shit! 😉
Thanks to all those who were involved in making this shoot happen; I can’t wait to see the finished shots! Now just watch this just quickly.
And not even the whole week. This is just Friday and Saturday! Like I’ve said, I’ve been a busy beaver, flogstars.
Friday was the early early call time of 8am to do makeup for a short film being made by Barrowland Ballet.
I went along with two of the Belfast Babes (Saoirse and Magda) to do the very neon makeup of 4 lovely lady dancers.
Oh my god it was cold in that warehouse. It was also cold on Saturday in the studio where I did a bit of bodypainting on a 3-months pregnant model, but I wasn’t the one in the buff so I shouldn’t really be complaining about the temperature.
not sure what your WiFi’s like Chris, but this is for you 🙂
I realised the other day that I’m not worried about money. This isn’t to say that I have enough money or that I shouldn’t be worried. My mind’s just been on other things. Also currently not overly fussed about bum size. What’s going on?
It’s true that the early risers, by default, have ended up setting the schedule for the rest of us dreamers. We were too busy snoozing to stop them. Which is kind of annoying if you think about it. I think there should be a revolution to overthrow this cruel regime in which people are expected to BE PRODUCTIVE in the morning. Mornings are for eating croissants and taking your sweet time waking up, don’t you think?
or pancakes
The problem with the ‘morning people’ is that they say things like “I just can’t stay in bed past 8am, even on the weekends! It feels like I’m wasting the day.” When people say something like that, what I hear is “I am terrified of being alone with my subconscious, and I am also oblivious to the fun that can be had in a bed at any time of the day”.
And ‘wasting the day’ – what pish! What about wasting the deep, dark, glorious night? You’d have to be a bit evil to go to bed at 7:45pm so you can bounce out of bed at 5:30am the next day for no reason other than to lord it over everyone else.
Or maybe the morning people aren’t sinister at all, maybe they’re just scared of the dark, maybe they just like first go with the newspaper before it gets big splodges of jam on it. Who’s to know? So long as they can mask their amusement/disgust at my genuine emotional agony, as I stumble around the kitchen, blind, bloodshot and whimpering, seeking the coffee by smell and touch alone.
Anyway. The reason I’m telling you all this is because I have to BE somewhere at 8am on Friday for a (work experience) makeup job. I say ‘somewhere’ because I don’t know where it is, all I know is it involves a train-ride (sounds miles away doesn’t it) which will mean leaving home at … what, like 6:30am potentially? That’s the middle of the fucking night! But it’ll be good. This comes at a time when lots of fun and interesting makeup work experience opportunities have just sprung up.
On Monday just gone I helped out at a photoshoot that a handful of photography students from my college were doing…
me doing mega-babe Victoria’s makeup
DSLR magician Sharon shooting up a storm
being really helpful holding the light reflector thingy
In fact there are quite a few fun and exciting shoots coming up, so brace yourselves for some … significantly more professional-looking photos of the makeup I do. It’s funny, just recently I was really freaking out about where to find the models and photographers I knew I’d need to whip up a decent portfolio. Now it seems, uh, doable. It’s because I’m so well-connected.
Don’t worry flogstars, the photos might get more professional, but we’ll still be playing it pretty fast and loose here at Imogen Maxwell Dot Com. No matter how fancy and professional the photos become, they’ll still be accompanied by my sparkling banter and a bit o’ not-related classic rock or hair metal. Which brings us to tonight’s tune… oh what shall I pick?
A bit o’ not-related not-classic-rock-or-hair-metal! I heard this lil number whilst meandering around WordPress, and it’s been stuck in my heid for a few days, which as you’ve probably noticed is the most important factor in deciding what goes up on the ole flog here. ENJOY.
I didn’t give a damn about Pinterest until WordPress (hosts of this here flog) told me that if you’re blogging – or in my case, flogging – about subject matter with a highly visual element, such as makeup… then Pinterest is potentially one of your biggest referrers.
That means if I have pretty pictures of my makeup work on Pinterest, and people click on them… they’ll land right here. More site traffic = faster track to world domination. So now you can have a wee squizz at my finished works all in one place, if you so fancy. Quicker for when you’re telling someone about how brilliant I am, for example.
Pinterest, for those who don’t know, is an online pinboard where you can store and share pictures and ideas. Think… mood-boards for weddings, home decoration ideas…
does the carpet match the curtains?
…recipes, crafts, architecture, nail art, tattoos, photography… you get the gist.
I started an account a while ago with the thought that it would come in handy for college somehow, but only really started using it the last week or two. I just didn’t really get it before, but it’s fun and there’s loads of cool shit on there.
You can have as many pinboards on the go as you like, and I’m finding it handy for organising the pics/ideas that I use for inspiration in my makeup world. Plus, it’s yet another medium through which to obsess about David Bowie.
You are just perfection.
Speaking of inspiration. My own creative river hasn’t been flowing for a while now and I’m starting to get worried.
Makeup Is Art by Jana Ririnui and Lan Nguyen
I just bought this book on Amazon to try and rectify the situation. Do any of you out there have a favourite art/design/makeup book that you refer to during ideas-droughts? Let me know!
And so to bed. Tomorrow brings with it my first photo shoot of this year, and I’ve got brushes to clean!
Here’s Mick and the boys twerking in sailor suits to send you off to the land of nod. Sweet dreams, flogstars XX
Just over two weeks ago, I flew out of Glasgow, this dear green place. After what felt like one million hours in transit, I arrived in Adelaide and spent the festive season eating real fruit and vegetables (none of your painted rocks that you call ‘avocado’, ‘cherry’ and ‘mango’, Scotland), marvelling at the healthy and attractive Australians just wandering about the place all tall and tanned, and running around like a blue-arsed fly trying to catch up with every single person that I have ever met.
It was a pretty big two weeks, flogstars. I arrived back in Glasgow less than 24 hours ago. What would be hilarious, is if I tried RIGHT NOW to write a post that made sense.
It’s been an impressively productive 24 hours, mind you – I’ve done a load of washing, had my tranny-nails removed and replaced with a dark shimmery purple Shellac job…
real reason I didn’t flog while away – I couldn’t type
…attended to some overdue facial threading (everything really DOES grow faster in the warm weather), been to the supermarket twice, went for a hour-long walk, done a shift at the Qwik-E-Mart, and slept for 10 hours uninterrupted. I’ve also already made serious inroads into plans for my next holiday.
Australia feels like a distant dream already. Luckily I took a billion pictures so I know it did actually happen.
so trusting!
So, January… 2014! This bleakest of months, where we are encouraged to take a good, hard, critical look at our lives, dwell on our various failures and inadequacies, and make vague/unrealistic resolutions to BE MORE BETTER. I’ve been asked a few times what my new year’s resolutions are, but as I’ve never really been into deadlines, I haven’t come up with any yet.
Also, why mess with perfection? I’m still basking in the glory of successfully adhering to last year’s, which were “spend more time and money on makeup”, “buy (minimum) 1 x CD per payday” and “take every possible opportunity to see a live band.”
I slipped up on that last one when I didn’t go see The Who, but as I am so good at buying 79p classic rock albums second hand on Amazon, this wasn’t such a huge problem. Sometimes – if seeing The Who involves spending money you don’t have – you have to let it slide, flip through your millions of CDs, and listen at home instead. Ah, home. Where Keith Moon is still alive, beer doesn’t cost £6/pint, and there’s no queue for the toilet. Rock n’ roll.
There are important life-improvement lessons for all of us in that anecdote, flogstars. Know what you want! Be specific! Be realistic! Cultivate and nurture interests that make you happy! Be #YOLO, but not so YOLO that you can’t pay the rent! Be prepared! I’ve got it all SO figured out. Have a read of this Vice article about how to be less broke in 2014 – while I suspect that the guy who wrote it probably wouldn’t like me much, he does make some constructive points.
Despite being on an extremely winning life formula, I can admit that I need to be better at keeping in touch with friends and family back in the land of Oz. I have no intention of swearing less, drinking less, eating less, playing with my smartphone less, or partaking in any of the other most popular ways to be miserable, so “install Skype” it is.Here’s Har Mar Superstar, that’s right, TWO songs in one flog post. Lose control with me.
That’s me off to Oz, flogstars. At time of scheduled publication, Chloe and I will be kicking back in the business lounge at the Glasgow International Airport, supping down free cocktails and eating all the free cheese and chocolate like the high-rollers we are.
See you again in January. Maybe I’ll flog while I’m away, maybe I won’t.
Don’t miss me too much 🙂
A very good tune for the beginner air-drummer. Enjoy! And seriously, don’t you forget about me.
xX
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