The easiest DIY mermaid makeup tutorial ever. You are welcome.
Bags of candy have been purchased, the house is clad with a mountain of fake spiderwebs, and official costume prep has begun. We’ve shown you some cute halloween costumes like Holly Golightly and some less cute zombie makeup, so today we’ve got something in between with mermaid makeup. That’s right — all your dreams have come true. MERMAID MAKEUP.
Makeup Geek Shades: L-R Row 1: Hot Pants, Blacklight, Limelight. L-R Row 2: Fashion Addict, Pillow Talk, Epic.
First things first you’ll need to gather your mermaid eyeshadows. All six of the shades I used are from Makeup Geek. For this look I chose fuchsia and green eyeshadows to shake things up a bit. Other cool mermaid color combos could be blue and green for something a little more traditional, or grey and green for added spook factor. Because most of the shadows I’ve picked have a duo-chrome finish, they catch different colors in different lighting. This helps to give a fishy vibe to the makeup.
I started off this look with a bright smoky eye. To keep the makeup from wandering off, I used a primer on my lids. I also topped it with a thin layer of the only matte shadow for this look, Fashion Addict, all over the lid and crease. A matte base layer makes things easier to blend on top. On the lid and lower lash line I used the shade Hot Pants. It’s a gorgeous duo-chrome that goes between fuchsia and a light blue, so it adds lots of dimension. For the inner corner I used Pillow Talk, a lavender/silver duo-chrome, and for liner I wet a thin brush and applied Limelight.
The rest of this look is based on making scaly mermaid makeup prints. So you can get the scale look, you’ll need some sort of mesh barrier. I’ve seen a lot of people do this with a pair of fishnet tights, but I chose not to for a few reasons. First of all, any makeup you have underneath will be rubbed off by the band of the tights, and they usually make the scales too big for my taste. Also when you’re done you’re stuck with a weird streaky pair of fishnets. Instead of dealing with that mess I just used a piece of plastic mesh that I can wash and re-use whenever I want.
To make the scales just hold the mesh taught on the skin while you apply shadow on top! It’s really that easy. For my cheekbones I applied Epic all over and topped off the middle with Blacklight. I did the same thing on my jaw, but I used Hot Pants as the base. After applying the shadow, lift up the mesh and you will have your scales.
To make sure you don’t just have weird chunks of scaly skin, you will need to do some blending. After you remove the mesh, take a large fluffy brush and sweep it towards your hairline around the edges of the scales. The brush will pick up some of the eyeshadow and make sure your scales are nicely blended.
I also applied some scales to my lips because, why not? For lipstick I used the Smashbox Always On Liquid Lipstick in Chill Zone. I applied the lipstick as usual but didn’t let it dry down, so the scales had something to stick to. I placed the mesh on top and tapped on Blacklight with a finger. I love how this turned out because you can really see the purple to blue transition of this shadow.
The finishing touch was applying Blacklight as a highlighter all over my face for an extra etherial fishy look. Although you probably won’t be using this scaly technique for your daily makeup routine, it’s a fun and easy way to get a halloween costume out of some makeup and mesh you already have.
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