Easy on the eye: Makeup ideas for Halloween

Spooky season is fast approaching, and if you're a beauty lover it's one of the best excuses to play around with makeup and get extra creative. There have been many looks circulating social media that look like works of art and presumably require loads of time, effort and makeup that some of us just don't have, but there are also some simple yet effective ones that will still get you noticed at that upcoming Halloween event. Here are two of my favourite looks to wear that are both easy and impressive:

Red Devil

What you'll need:

- Light concealer

- Red face paint

- Red eyeshadow

- Black eyeshadow/eyeliner

- Mascara

- False lashes and lash glue (optional)

First of all, you want to create a white (or pale nude) base for your eyelid, so you want to grab a flat eyeshadow brush and carve the bottom of your eyebrow. With the remaining product, drag this down to cover your eyelid and pat it in. Then you want to get a beauty sponge and bounce it over your lid to set the product in place.

It's important at this stage not to set the concealer, because the creamy product will really make the eyeshadow pop. You then want to take a small eyeshadow brush, with a darker red shadow and tap it into the crease and blending it out towards the inner and outer corners of your eye. Then, with a blending brush, take a lighter red/red-brown shade and blend out the top of the the crease colour.

I then took a sparkly red shadow, and used my ring finger to pat this all over my eyelid, underneath the crease. The reason I use my finger is because this really helps to pack the colour on without losing any of the pigment in the brush.

Now for eyeliner - I'm usually rubbish at eyeliner and end up giving in after a few attempts, but I used a hack for this look that came in really handy. Instead of using a liquid liner and drawing the wing on free-hand, I used my drivers license (you can use anything with a flat, straight edge) and held it where I'd like the wing to be. I took a really small eyeshadow brush and tapped it into a black eyeshadow, then swiped it across my license to make a really sharp, precise wing. It worked perfectly! I then went in over the top of the shadow with a black pencil eyeliner, and dragged this across to the middle of my eyelid.

With the sparkly red shadow we used earlier, I took this on a small brush and swiped it across my bottom lash line and up into the black winged eyeliner to tie in with my lid.

Moving onto brows, I used Anastasia Dip Brow Pomade to fill in any sparse areas, and took a clear brow gel to set them in place. Now onto the fun part - the devil!

You want to get a really small brush, so that you're able to really get the precision of the tail and horns just right. With a bright red face paint, or alternatively a sharp red eyeliner pencil, you want to draw two little horns at the front of your eyebrow. Once you've added some more product, you then want to create the tail, making a wavy line weaving in front of and behind the rest of your eyebrow, and drawing a small triangle right at the very end of the tail.

Once this is complete, you can apply your mascara, and false lashes if you want to and you're good to go!

Spider look

What you'll need:

- Light concealer

- Red eyeshadow

- Black eyeliner

- Mascara

- False lashes and lash glue (optional)

This is a really easy look, and one that looks effective and is perfect for Halloween! It's quite similar to the above look, as I used the same technique with the red eyeshadow - so follow the above look if you want to use red shadow again.

Alternatively, I think this would great with any colour, especially purple, orange or green to really fit in with the Halloween vibes.

I used a black face paint on a small, flat eyeshadow brush to really get the precise lines of the spiders web. You want to draw four lines following down from your lower lash line, and then with a black eyeliner pencil you want to draw some curved lines in between, joining them up in each 'column'. Then, with the same brush and some more black face paint, draw another single line hanging down from the web. I used a black eyeliner pencil to draw the spider, as it was easier to get the circular shape of the body, and the precision of the eight legs.

These looks are great for those who want to make an impact with their makeup look but don't have time to do a full face, or for those who believe that less is more.

Happy Halloween!