Anxious to put my newly acquired special FX makeup skills to the test, I gathered all of my crafting supplies together to transform myself into Ms. Sandman for an upcoming performance at the Austin Writers Roulette.
The first thing I had to do was glue down my eyebrows. In class, I’d used a solid glue stick, but I made due with what I already had.
Since my transformation would eventually involve painting liquid latex over my eyebrows, I had to glue them down so I’d still have eyebrows once I peeled the latex off after the show.
I’d only ever painted with glue to decorate shoes or bind puzzle pieces, but never directly on my face.
I used a blow dryer to speed up the drying process and then headed outside on my balcony.
I set up my usual painting station. I have hardly ever used this music stand to hold music. Instead, it’s held various canvases, and for this endeavor, my recently purchased Goodwill mirror.
I’d planned to remove all the oil from my face a section at a time since I have such oily skin, but I only remembered to do so for my forehead. I honestly don’t know, in retrospect, whether that step was needed.
I went to two costume shops to find a light brown latex, but settled on one that dried clear instead.
I chose an old paintbrush with which to apply the latex on my face.
As my special FX makeup teacher warned, “Once a latex brush, always a latex brush.”
I quickly saw what she meant since there was no way I’d spend the painstaking amount of time to get all that latex out of the brush.
I absolutely enjoyed the cool sensation of painting the latex on my face.
Knowing that latex dried rather quickly, I poured out a portion in a plastic container just so I could keep the bottle closed for most of the time.
The trickiest part of this whole process was applying the sand. I had to lean over the balcony backwards with my eyes closed and pinching my nose with my fingers. Now, I guess technically I didn’t have to lean over the balcony, but I wanted to limit the amount of clean up afterwards. One thing I didn’t count on was how to remove the sand in my underwear.
I couldn’t do such a thorough job on the balcony since that’s technically “in public,” but I also wanted to limit the amount of sand tracked inside my apartment. I did a section at a time to make sure I could target a small area before the latex dried up.The only part that I didn’t like was the sandy chin. So I peeled off the sandy chin and sanded my lips. I liked the texture of it underneath my lipstick.
Here’s the complete Ms. Sandman costume.