Heat testing

I have created a test weft to try heat on my synthetic hair. The website clearly states it will hold up to 80 degrees of heat, however have heard reports amongst my peers it may hold more.

First I tried GHD's on the hair, primarily because these are the straighteners available at the time. Below is an image of the results;

Initially from the stand on the right you can see as they were heating up it created a beautiful sleek effect, compares to the left hand side which is the original state of the hair. However as they got hotter the hair simply burnt and snapped near the root (image below);

Here is the join where the heat simply melted the hair and it broke away. I am now looking to trial some straighteners with optional heat levels, and also will be trying a curling wand with optional heat level (see below);

Cage 2 (Floral Wig) Make-Up Trials x2

The two designs I brought forwards to develop for this image were my 3rd and 4th designs seen below;

Following the same process as for all my trials and applications I first applied a Kiko Cleanser and Moisturizer to my skin, before applying Smashbox Photofinish Primer to prepare the skin. I then applied a revlon foundation in shade 180, before applying MAC Blush again in Dame (see images below) I then applied some colour to the brow and also applied a brown brow set. This will be blonde on my models complexion. I then used for the first trial, a pink eyeshadow in MAC pro pan 'paradisco' before using 'creme de violet' and 'parfait amour' to blend into the purple outer edge of the designs. The two purple shades were not as pigmented as I had thought, therefore will require a little more application on the day. I again applied fake lashes which will be a lot smaller and more natural, as large eyelashes do not convey the aspect of beauty I was hoping for. I then finished the lip with a rose based MAC lipstick in shade 'fast play'. The look was very feminine and although I feel it may compliment the shades of the wig, the narrative suggests that on this look she is reclaimed by nature, and will need to have more natural aspects brought onto the face. Therefore I then replaced the coloured eye with more natural browns and creams, with added shimmer to keep the magical aspect in the face. Applying MAC pro pan colours 'shroom' 'retrospect' 'honesty' and ''patina' I blended a brown smoked eye again with the lashes, which I am keen to keep throughout the toning down of the make-ups as a continuity aspect of my work. I also changed the pink lip to a more nude, orange based matte MAC lipstick 'Pander Me'. This did not work with the brown tones on the eyes, and clashed quite a lot. Therefore I looked at other colours in my kit and chose to use one of my violet toned pinks which was MAC fantasy of flowers ltd edition  'snapdragon'.  This worked so much better bringing some feminine aspect into the make-up and I feel would pull the wig and make-up together. Therefore I will be developing Look 3 as my final look.

Cage 1 (Tall Wig) Make-Up Trials x2

The two designs I brought forwards to develop for this image were my 3rd and 4th designs seen below;

For the purpose of time management I have chosen to apply the test make-ups to myself, before my model, so that I can utilise my time to try other ideas I may have.
First I applied a Kiko Cleanser and Moisturizer to my skin, before applying Smashbox Photofinish Primer to prepare the skin. I then applied a revlon foundation in shade 180, before applying MAC Blush in Dame (see images below) I then applied some colour to the brow and also applied a brown brow set. This will be blonde on my models complexion. I then used three green MAC pro pan eyeshadows in shades 'lime' 'kelly' and 'aqua'. The pigmentation was very good when using these products and I was happy with the coverage. I then applied some eyelashes, which I know now were too large and I will be applying some very small natural ones for the nature of the project. I then applied a very light layer of MAC prep+prime for the lips before applying the heroine lipstick. I didn't use a brush for this as it is my own product and does not need to be decanted, however I will be doing this taking some from the length of the lipstick and applying with a clean brush to my models face. I repeated this with an orange shade LP348 from my Kryolan Lip Palette.

I was unsure about how useable the purple lipstick was at first and if it was too dramatic a make-up, however when referring back to my narrative this is where Titania really wants to impress and is the most dramatic phase of all three looks, therefore I believe there is place for colours this strong. The pink peach based lip is too complimentary and also on my models peach skintone may not stand out as much as my yellow skintone. Therefore I will be choosing to take on the purple lip of design 4 as my final developed look.

Lace Front Wig Initial Designs x2 Make-Up Trial

Below again are the designs I have chosen to develop; 

Again I applied a Kiko Cleanser and Moisturizer to my skin, before applying Smashbox Photofinish Primer to prepare the skin. I then applied a revlon foundation in shade 180, before applying MAC Blush in Fleeting Romance (for design 6). I then applied some colour to the brow and also applied a brown brow set. This will be blonde on my models complexion. Continuing with my application on design 6, I then applied 3 tones of MAC pro pan eyeshadow in parfait armour, fig.1 and creme de violet. these blended from lightest to dark around the eye framed the face well, and looked very feminine and also mythical - purple being a colour outside of the box for a regular make-up application. I then applied a pink gloss lip, which I believe made the face look glassy - and as she has just emerged from her faerie habitat may make her look like an illusion almost. The colours worked really well together, visually presenting the feminine aura of my ideas. The second look used these colours again but in a very alternate way using a lot of sculpting with colour. using an inverted contour of light under dark, I sculpted the cheeks again using MAC parfait amour and also paradisco. This worked very well against all odds, however the repeated application of these colours around the eye and then an application of an orange neutral lip in shade 'Pander Me' made the piece look a little too out of place with the other make-ups, and also contradicted my ideas of a naturalistic collection of images. Therefore I will be taking forward design 2 to complete as a design.

Final Face Chart - Lace Front Wig

The lace front wig will be accompanied by possibly the brightest of all three make-up designs.
The intense purple eye offers the aura of dreams as purple is a colour highly linked to dreams. The shape of the eye is to be exaggerated into a feminine, organic rounded shape, which will compliment the nude pink colour on the lips. I was not keen to apply another bright colour to the lips, as this may run the risk of the make-up being too colourful, not meeting the overall naturalistic idea of the shoot.

Final Face Chart - Cage wig 2 (floral)

The second make-up is to compliment the second floral cage wig. It is to correlate with the narrative where Titania is being reclaimed by nature.
I have chosen to apply a brown natural eyeshadow, as discussed within the design and trial stage of the body of work. This still gives an aura of femininity and glamour, but is a lot less colourful than the other two make-up designs. It is paired with a violet pink lip, which is sheer and is to work to combine the colour of the wig and even out the ratio of colour from the top to the bottom of the face.

Final Face Chart - Cage Wig 1

As discussed after the designing stage and also after the make-up trial stage, the design I chose to take forwards contains a high contrast of an intense green eye, to represent Titania as 'a green eyed monster' which contrasts against the high fashion purple lip. This is I believe an appropriate solution to the make-up which will compliment the extravagant colourful make-up. The hair will be blended into the wig, with barrel curls around the back of the wig, replicating an extravagant terracotta plant pot. Flyaway's are also strategically placed and left loose to make her look natural and not perfected, still presenting herself as slightly 'wild'.

Design 4 (Designed to fulfil Rachaels Brief)

This look is as mentioned before, designed solely for Racahels project and is not one of my 3 designs specified in the proposal. As I am working in a collaborative project it is important to contribute to Rachael's outcome also which needed 4 different hair and make-up styles. She requested simplistic, naturalistic hair and make-up that works with the rest of the designs. Therefore I used the floral hairband also seen on the long lace fronted wig, to combine this hairstyle with the rest of the designs, and to keep the hair simplistic simply tied it up with a strip of hair covering the hair tie adding security and neatening the look. The make up used a combination of neutrals on the eye, and uses a matte neutral lip which worked with the final make-up of the floral wig to continue on from there. 

Final Shoot Week - Weather Check and Schedule of Shoot Day

The week approaching the week of the shoot is solely a week we have designated to planning and scheduling the shoot day to run as smoothly as possible, and also to analyse the weather. Myself and Rachael have been watching the weather already for a week, but now needed to make a decision on which day we would choose to take forward to the shoot, as our model needed to have a clear idea by Monday the 24th.
After many days of deliberation we chose to take Saturday as the day of the shoot, as I felt my work would be completed to the correct high standard and I would be prepared to complete the shoot on this day. It was also the day that was going to be the warmest brightest day - and as the week progressed Sundays forecast only went downhill, so it was the correct decision to make.

Rachael created a call sheet, as this is something her course requires her to do as a professional photographer, although we did work the timings out between us prior to this.
I have chosen to apply the tall cage 1 first, as this will take the most time, and although regrettably it has the most amount of product in, and therefore will ruin the hairs form before i create the other looks, the hair is mostly wrapped so I am not too concerned about this and would rather have the correct amount of time to complete the wig.
A problem we did have after scheduling is that (thankfully) I checked the venue website and they do not open until 10.30am. Therefore we decided to push all the times back an hour, as we did not want our team to be sat around and the model to have the wig on too long as this was rather hard to wear. I requested make up change times of half an hour, as this is my final project and therefore extra time is very valuable, however I am expecting to be finishing within the 15-20 minute mark for changes.
The sun is set to go down at 3:58pm and therefore we have planned to end the shoot just before this, and be packed up before it gets too dark.
Overall I am happy with the consideration of the planning, and have run this past the crew and also the location managers who are very happy with the timescale of the shoot.

Stage review 4 27/11/14

After working through the week to complete the practical aspects of the project ready for my final shoot this Saturday, I am constantly referring back to my learning objectives to make sure I complete the work to a standard that meets the criteria, and also matches the practical guidelines I have developed through the project. I thought it would be a good recap to actually write down what I want as an outcome from Saturday here, so I can discuss this in the next Stage review after the shoot.

The 'story' behind my project has developed throughout and also changed a few times. It has always been based on a young Titania, the queen of the faeries in Shakespeare's ' A Midsummer Nights Dream'. The images will be shot within the grounds of a stately home next to a small fernery where the faerie queen has emerged from to discover human society and the regality of the human monarchy. She is unseen as she is a faerie and her styling progresses from a long wig with a flowery crown, and a bright purple feminine eyeshadow, into a tall, show stopping wig as she is trying to be seen by the humans, green eyeshadow which represents envy of the human monarchy. This is set to slowly backfire on her as the wig changes to one made completely of flowers, with small sections of hair plaited and coming from a flower dressed from hair, symbolising nature and almost signalled to put her back in her naturalistic environment, with brown smoked eyes and a subtle pink lip. One of my outcomes was to be able to use intellectual thinking and be able to explain and justify every step in the process leading up to my final outcome, and writing this down as I have ensure myself that I understand my narrative, as does the assessor of the unit and also any viewers on this blog.

To meet my learning objectives on Saturday, I need to stick to the time plan set out by myself and my photographer, work to a high standard and be self critical of my work, getting the best result I can. I need to be able to explain my ideas and their intellectual reasoning which I have just done above - and be able to work in a team, this is a collaborative project and myself and my photographer will be working in a team of 6 now rather than the two of us it has majority been throughout.

Magazine Pinterest Board [visual]

http://uk.pinterest.com/charleelouisehu/magazine-cover-inspo/

Make-up Trial

Prior to my wig trial I decided to trial the make-ups, to consider the colour combinations against my models skintone and also how the colours work together with that of the wig flowers.

 The first look I trialled was the look for Cage 2, which was the most naturalistic colours, which used a lot of nude eyeshadow colours, and a pink gloss lip. I was pleased with the suttle look, and the colour combinations, which echoed the naturalistic look of the design, and worked well with the wig, which I quickly placed on my models head, just to consider the colour of the flowers. I would potentially apply more blusher as I think it was applied too sparingly.

 The second look I trialled was the look for Cage 1, which uses a deep green eyeshadow, paired with a bright purple lip. The contrast in the colours is very fashion based, and the natural green shade on the eye is to combine with the feminine fairy like style of the shoot through a purple lip. Unfortunately I didn't get an image of the purple lip, and also ran out of time with my model who was in-between rehearsals, to trial the 3rd look, therefore I will refer back to my earlier developments of trialling this on myself.

Hair Trial

Once my wigs were complete, I needed to run a hair trial. Unfortunately this was two days before my final shoot, which didn't leave me much time for any amendments to the wig, so hopefully the careful making stage of the wigs means there won't be many if not any alterations needed.

 The first wig we applied was cage 2 which I consider to being the simplest wig which requires the least product, so I could keep using the hair throughout the trial, and also on the day. I created  flower at the back of the hair very quickly, but it added a nice effect to the wig, blending in a lot nicer than I thought. The front of the wig will need to be pulled down further and the hair dressed after I have the wig in place.

The second wig I applied was the wefted wig, which I had wrapped the hair very quickly prior to application. The wig fitted well, and suited my models skin tone, which I had been concerned about before as her hair was such a warm tone I thought the cooler tones may not work. Once the wig is attached and in place I added the hairband onto the wig which didn't pull back on the wig or cause any kind of tension on the hair, so my model was comfortable underneath.

 My first method to apply the tall cage 1, was to pincurl the base tightly, before placing the wig on and using geisha grips to pin the wig in and also using the 4 tabs, made from tutu net and pinning them in with grips, however this didn't hold on the models hair and unfortunately continued to fall down, snagging on her hair every time, so I had to be quick and concise, and also had my assistant constantly holding the wig on, and supporting it.

The next method I trailled after quickly consulting the internet, was to create some braids that would hold the hair in place, however I didn't have any small bands to tie the braids with, so they were not tight. Therefore I plan to go home and practise braiding the hair, to thicker braids which will hold the wig better.

Lighting Ideas

http://uk.pinterest.com/charleelouisehu/technical-inspiration-specialist-practise/

Myself and Racahel had a quick meeting about technical contributions to the shoot today. As the shoot is tomorrow its good to have knowledge of what kind of aspects I would like to bring to the photography style, and not relying solely on my photographer to design the whole shoot.
Without wanting to step too far into her specialist subject I made a very small board of pinterest images which seen above, show alternate sunlight based images. Rachael had created a board very similar to this and it seemed we were on the same wavelength for the style of photography, as she would like to utilise the sun and naturalistic theme to create some beautiful nature based images, much the same style as the ones above.

Communication with photographer prior to the day

 Again I have listed some key points of communication with my photographer this time regarding our scheduling for our final shoot day - my messages are highlighted in grey and hers in blue.

The message below was prior to me picking Rachael up to go and do a final hair trial on our model - it also regards feeding our crew on the day and making sure they are catered for which as silly as it sounds was important to care for the crew as effectively we are their 'employers' that day.
We then began to discuss our final timings for the day and how long I predicted everything would take to complete, so that Rachael could put this into a schedule for everyone to have a copy of.

We then began to discuss the weather on the day and the timespan we had to complete the images. The sun rose at 7.50 am and set at 3.51pm. The venue didn't open until 10.30 which is something we didn't actually realise until the night before when I checked the website, therefore we had under 5 hours to get the images and complete the wig and make-up changes on set.  

Rachael then was able to send me a mock of the timings which would be altered if need be and then attached to the official call sheet. It was important that we communicated fully as we would both have a complete idea of the schedule and we would be able to pass it on clearly to any of our team who were unsure of what will be doing at certain times.