patriotdreams:

Over the course of AUSA I had quite a number of people ask me how I did my troll make-up, which I found a little odd since I didn’t think it looked that different from the Ben Nye method which most people use. But I’ve gotten a lot of good feed-back on it, and I’m really fond of this method myself, which I have sharkpuncher to thank for introducing it to both me and snowchildhero, so I figured I might as well write up a post to share. I’d say that short of airbrushing, this would be my troll make-up method of choice.

A few caveats before I start. Like any professional quality make-up, you have to be willing to invest some money into your supplies. This method is a bit pricer than Ben Nye, I think, but the make-up goes pretty far, especially if you get a larger size cake. Also, you might not get it right the first try! Be patient and willing to experiment and make mistakes. Practice makes perfect~

So, for this method you’ll need:
~1 water-activated make-up cake. The one I’ve been using is the Wolfe Hydro-color cake in Gray, which is a bit darker than the Ben Nye creme liners, but is an acceptable shade for trolls and photographs nicely. Any appropriately colored cake make-up should work fine, though. I’ve heard you can mix colors, but I’m not exactly sure how well that would go, so don’t take my word for it.
~1 bottle Ben Nye LiquiSet. You’ll be using this to activate the cake and apply the make-up.
~1 bottle Ben Nye FinalSeal for setting the make-up.
~Make-up sponges. I’d recommend a less dense sponge for this method, but you don’t want to get one that’s too porous or it will end up absorbing the make-up and you’ll be wasting about half of what ends up on your face, so be careful!

Applying the make-up is very straight forward. Simply drip a bit of the LiquiSet onto the cake and rub the make-up into the sponge or wet the edge of the sponge with the LiquiSet and pick up the make-up that way. You don’t want to use too much at once otherwise you’re wasting LiquiSet, and you’ll probably be picking up more make-up than you think anyway! Use the sponge to stipple the make-up onto the areas you need to cover. You can spread a little for a base coverage of wider areas, but you don’t want it to look smudgey or streaky— Stippling on gives a good, even coat.

Continue applying over all the areas you need, leaving your hands (or palms and fingers at least) for last. Before you do your hands, I’d recommend making sure the rest of your make-up looks good, setting it with the FinalSeal and then getting all the other little bits of your costume on and finished. Finish up your face make-up with some contouring to help bring out your features and make your face look less flat from the gray. Once you’ve got everything else on, finish your hands. It really helps to have a non-gray buddy for this part, because it’s near impossible to completely cover your hands evenly and well by yourself. Once you’ve got your hands all covered, spritz them over with the FinalSeal and you’re done!

Just a warning about the FinalSeal— It takes about 10/15 minutes for the FinalSeal to fully set, even if it feels like it’s dry, so just be careful about touching things until then. But once it’s set, you can rub it all you like and it stays fantastically, and will only rub off very minimally on your clothes. The only trouble I’ve had with it is getting it to stick in high-friction joint areas, like the crook of the elbow. It seems that no matter what, by the end of the day, the make-up will rub off there. But other than that, it covers well and looks great, so I highly recommend it!

I think that covers just about everything. If you have any questions, feel free to drop me a message. Good luck!