Deer Costume Makeup Tutorial

Last Halloween Adam and I debated a ton about what to dress up as. I have always loved dressing up in "group" costumes - Three Blind Mice, Banana Split, Ghosts, and I could keep going, but I will let you use your imagination. Now that I have a permanent group with Adam, I am fully prepared to take advantage of the opportunities to dress up in a couple costume. Especially since the year before we didn't dress up and I had to use my go-to costume of dead ballerina. I was over being dead things all on my own - it was time to dress up with my husband because obviously, that is one of the perks of getting married. It is serious business... and after a ton of options (which shall remain secret so we can use them in the future) that were thrown around, we landed on the deer and the hunter. Mostly because I was obsessed with the deer costume I found on Pinterest and we had easy access to camo from one of Adam's teammates. The only tricky part? Learning how to recreate the deer costume makeup. No matter where I looked... there was NO tutorial. So I spent a few night trying out different products to create something perfect. And this year, I am sharing the wealth with a deer costume makeup tutorial.

While I know you can't just go out and buy a bunch of makeup - I wanted to share everything with you including the exact makeup I used to create my look. Here are the makeup products you will need. Feel free to substitute products in and out:

Foundation. Use what you have. This just makes a clean canvas to start with to apply the rest of the look. My favorite foundation is the BareMinerals liquid foundation.

NYC Bronzer in Sunny. You could really use any bronzer that you have in your house. I prefer this one because of its matte shade, but it is also my daily bronzer.

NYX Jumbo Eye Pencil in Milk. I tried the white Halloween face paint and I tried smaller pencils. This one is by far the easiest to use for this look. It applies easily and stays on all day, plus it covers a lot of surface space at one time so it doesn't take forever to apply the white.

NYX Slim Eye Pencil in Black. I like this pencil for the exact opposite reason I liked the jumbo pencil. The word slim isn't in there for fun - it really lets you apply the thinest of lines which is helpful when outlining and drawing on lashes.

Nude Lipstick. I went with nude lips for this look so I didn't distract from the rest of the makeup. I have a few different shades but my favorites come from The Buffs collection by Maybelline.

Now let's get to the nitty gritty of applying to get your deer look.

Step 1: Start off your makeup like you always do. For me it goes like this. Wash face. Apply primer. Apply foundation. Add concealer where needed. Do whatever you need to do for a base coat. Then fill in your eyebrows as you normally would. If you don't fill in your eyebrows normally , no big deal - but if you want to start I would recommend this little tool - you can skip the "eyebrow fill in" and just proceed with the tutorial.

Step 2: Use your bronzer to get some deer like color. My best advice is to contour like you normally would and then apply bronzer in place of the blush you normally apply. Make sure the bronze color on your cheek is a little darker to really give you a good color. If you arent much for contouring follow the image below - start with a light layer of bronzer around your hairline and down to your cheek bones. On your cheek from the op of your cheek bone to about your lip line double or triple up on the bronzer to get a deep color. I did mine on a slight engle from the inside of my nose to the middle of my cheek for the inside portion of the bronzer.

Step 3: Add white accents. Pull out whatever you are using to add your white color. Start with coloring in the top of your nose from the bridge down to point, only in the center. Then color up in between your eyebrows and using your finger lightly spread it up onto your forehead right above the eyebrows in a sunrise shape. Next, line your lower lash line with the white on under the lash line and on the water line. Last, add the white freckles to your cheek and lower part of our forward. I did about 5 dots on each cheek and 4 on my forehead.

Step 4: Now comes all the black coloring. Start by lining you eyelid with a thick line, right along the lash line. Extend 3-5 "eyelashes" by drawing a straight line from you lash line up towards your eyebrow. Next line your "lower lid" below the white you just added. This makes your eyes appear larger like a deer. Then add some lashes to the bottom by drawing a handful of little whisps. After that move to your nose. Line from your eyebrow to the tip of your nose with a thin black line, along the sides of the white you colored on the top of your nose earlier. Where your eyebrow meets the black "nose line" thicken the line to match the thickness of your eyebrow. To make sure the black matches your eyebrow feather black into the thick part of your eyebrow by blending thin lines. Last, color the bottom of your nose around your nostrils black to give it a deer nose look. Make sure not to itch your nose that night - it becomes a serious problem.

Step 5: Apply mascara to your top eyelashes for a little extra pop. Apple nude lipstick.

And there you have it! It is as simple as that. The real trick, besides finding the right makeup, was figuring out the order to put it on. Sometimes when I was first trying things out my white and black would make a nice muddled grey color, which is why I separate the two colors and put the white first. Because black will cover white but white over grey - no good. So there you have it. A deer costume makeup tutorial. I wore brown leggings, brown boots, a tan undershirt, and a tan sweater with a tail sewed on for my outfit. For my ears I cut out and glued felt around a headband and put twiggy things in for antlers. Done and done. I feel like I am going to have a hard time trumping that this year. Do you know what you are dressing up as this year? What is your favorite costume of Halloweens past?