Check out the great new video of summer body art at Happy Slap Boutique by the fine folk over at Fresh Cut Media! The footage is taken from Sunday at Kendall Calling Festival as Grace McComisky and I did our Alice in Wonderland themed bodypaintings on the beautiful Delia Mur and Lizzie West. Thanks again to everyone involved in that scrumptious weekend :)

Tuesday 15th was a happy day for Australians. The long awaited online store Vegan Beauty launched itself into action on the world wide web, bringing us a great selection of scrumptious vegan cosmetics and styling products. This gem of online shopping is run by the wonderful Veronica Lee; after becoming vegan in 2012 she realized the difficulties in sourcing animal friendly products and so set to work building the store. Having conducted independent research into various companies she now offers great range of high quality cosmetics that are all 100% vegan and cruelty free including brands such as OCC, Lime  and Giovanni. So whether you're looking for makeup, styling products, nail varnish, lotions, fragrances or even soap head over to www.veganbeauty.com.au and fill up those shopping baskets!

Check out the delicious make up from Vivienne Westwood's spring collection at Paris Fashion week - just gorgeous!
Really beautiful use of colour and I absolutely adore the lashings of gold, scrumptious! 

I'd like to share with you this little beauty of a product: Studio High Definition Powder from E.L.F (Eyes Lips Face) Cosmetics. I discovered it a couple of years ago when working on a film in Sydney. The camera we were shooting on was very new and of the super intense HD variety - news which immediately put me on the case of ensuring that I had a good range of HD friendly makeup at my disposal. When looking for a good translucent powder the first product I came across was Makeup Forever's HD powder which had great reviews and comes at $48 a pot. Luckily I continued my research and stumbled across this little beauty which is pretty much exactly the same with one major difference - its only costs $12!! Plus there's the fact that all of E.L.F's cosmetic ingredients happen to be certified vegan friendly and cruelty free by both Leaping Bunny and P.E.T.A - something which unfortunately Makeup Forever currently fall short on on both accounts...
This product is really wonderful - its very fine and smooth, completely translucent and is perfect for setting makeup for the all seeing eye of the HD camera. Simply buff a small amount into the skin with a kabuki brush and your makeup is set, shine free and ready to film!

E.L.F cosmetics have a large line of very reasonably priced cosmetics (the rest of which I have yet to try) and are available via national websites in Australia, the USA and some of Europe including the UK, France & Germany. Visit their websites to check out their full range and get this amazingly valued addition to your kit.

*Do note that E.L.F's some of E.L.F.s brushes contain horse hair - however I've been assured that the professional line is 100% synthetic.

The term "Maximum Tolerated Dose" refers to an animal/human experiment which is still used to determine the highest levels of a chemical that a group of test subjects can withstand without dying due to toxicity. As I'm sure you can imagine to determine such a dosage often has fatal consequenses for a horrific number of subjects and let's face it - they're not really going to be doing these tests on human are they?

Canadian director Karol Orzechowski has borrowed the term to title his new documentary - the first feature length investigation into the hidden world of animal testing and vivisection. Containing footage and testimonials from former lab workers who had a change of heart about their work as well as charting the lives of the animals who have suffered in 'the name of science', Orzechowski's documentary is said to approach an old debate with new insight and is set to become a very important work for the animal rights movement.  Since it's release in Canada, the States and the UK last year M.T.D has won Best Feature for Animal Advocacy at the Artivist Film Festival in California and was the proud recipient of the first LUSH Public Awareness Prize.

For those of us hanging around in the Great Down Under - Maximum Tolerated Dose will soon be premiering in Melbourne (5th Feb) and Sydney (12th Feb). Visit Humane Research to book tickets to the screening and a Q&A session with the director.

To find out more visit the Official Website and join their Facebook Page

I love plaiting and weaving hair, so when the postman bough this bundle of red lusciousness to my door it was the perfect opportunity to have a play and see what could be done! Most of the styling I've been doing recently has been quite bold and theatrical with lots of accessorize so this time around I decided to bring more focus to the hair by going more modest in size and aiming for a classical look with intricate woven detailing.

I've been very inspired recently by Victorian Mourning Art - a practice in which locks of hair were collected from the recently deceased by close friends and/or family and then woven into intricately detailed patterns to be either framed or placed in lockets. As I couldn't seem to find any instructions or tutorials for how to do this (which surprised me greatly as I thought there was a tutorial for everything on the internet) I studied a series of photographs and spent a couple of afternoons experimenting until I'd come up with some pieces I was happy with. I then had quite a lot of fun playing with variations on the base technique I'd devised and happily wove away until I had a nice selection both in red and in the dark purple which has to bee used to lowlight the wig hair.

To style the hair I started off with the section at the top of the head where I have used a very basic basket weave which feeds back into itself- this shows up rather nicely thanks to the contrast the purple undertones give. Next I plaited vertically back from each ear using 4 sections of hair and both French plait and waterfall braid techniques, joining the two braids where they met and decorating over the top with pre-woven sections of hair. Lastly to hide the hairline around the back of the head I used similar plaiting techniques as before as well as weaving in some twisted sections.

Once all the hair was styled I added in some extra sections of 'mourning art' and finished by sewing in some aged fake pearls - these haven't come up very well in the photos but in life they have a nice iridescent pearly finish.