Painted lady

The promised stage make-up tutorial never materialised, so I have been picking up hints and tips from various people such as my dressing-room-mates and my sisters. This week I also surfed over to expertvillage.com and watched a twenty-part tutorial video about stage make-up, so now I feel a little better about my somewhat deficient make-up-application skills.

Until now, my make-up routine (say if we were going out to watch a movie) was this:

• Put on brown eyeshadow

For Panto, it has grown into this:

• Use cleanser
  
• Put on moisturiser
  
• Foundation
  
• Concealer
  
• White eye-shadow at inner corners of eyes
  
• Light colour of eye-shadow
  
• Medium colour of eye-shadow
  
• Dark colour of eye-shadow
  
• Shimmery colour of eye-shadow
  
• Liquid eye-liner on upper lids
  
• Pen eye-liner on lower lids
  
• Mascara, mascara, mascara
  
• Red lipstick
  
• Shimmery lip-gloss
  
• Bronzer
  
• Rouge
  
• Setting powder

I don't really mind doing it all, but it's a bit of a pain if I'm in a hurry or crowded with a bunch of other people around limited mirror space (try seven girls and half-a-dozen boys in front of two mirrors). When I do it quietly, it's actually kind of fun.

Before this, I didn't own much make-up, just a few basics that I rarely used. I have bought so much make-up in the last ten days, it's ridiculous (I now own everything in the list above). At least, given the amount of make-up that I usually wear (none), this lot will last me several years.

I did already have an eye-liner pencil but I'd never used it, and when I tried putting it on last week I couldn't get it to leave a mark. So I went and bought liquid eye-liner. I was practicing using it at home a couple of days ago when a retired neighbour rang the doorbell to leave a message – now when he sees me in the street, he still looks at me funny. I hope he doesn't think I eat kittens.

Actually I am rubbish at putting the liquid stuff on, so the eye-make-up sub-routine actually looks more like this:

• Forget about putting on eye-shadow first
  
• Put liquid eye-liner on right eye
  
• Blink
  
• Make a mess on right eye
  
• Say some rude words
  
• Put liquid eye-liner on left eye
  
• Observe shaky hand
  
• Make bigger mess on left eye
  
• Say even ruder words
  
• Look around to check if anyone is watching the entertainment
  
• Use eye-make-up remover to remove errant liquid eye-liner
  
• Put pen eye-liner on lower lids
  
• Apply eye-shadow
  
• Apply mascara

Forget practice makes perfect, I'm actually getting worse at this as time goes by. Oh well, I suppose that my fine motor skills could use the exercise.