Hello My Pretties,

We are well into the most exciting months in the Cairns calendar of events for 2015 and this last weekend was no exception with the first ever Tropicon, entertaining over 2000 attendees from far and wide celebrating everything that is “Pop Culture”.

Tropicon first became known to me a few weeks ago when a beautiful client contacted me to make a booking for costume makeup. As I live a rather sheltered existence, I didn’t know what Tropicon was all about so I went along to my trusty advisor (Google) and asked there… One thing led to another and before long I was watching YouTube Videos of Comic-Con, a convention in the USA about Comic Books and everything to do with that stream of culture.
I was practically jumping out of my skin with excitement!   An entire gathering of Dress Ups ~ Oh Yeah!!
And to make things even better, my client had requested Harley Quinn costume makeup (with a dark twist ~ but more on that later!) which is a look I have been keen to create for quite some time now.

As Tropicon approached, I was contacted by beautiful Rachel who owns and operates the fabulous, Cairns Costume Hire shop.
Rachel invited me to paint faces with her and some of our other Cairns Face Painting friends at the event.
Well, that was an invitation I could not resist!   This Tropicon thing was sounding pretty cool to me.

So, the day before, I met with Mysan (my Harley Quinn) and her husband to sketch out Mysan’s mask and have a quick brief regarding their makeup, then I was off home to practice.
As Tropicon was an all day event and we live in the tropics, the element I was most concerned with was the longevity of the makeup.  I decided to create their bases and Mysan’s mask with an alcohol based airbrush makeup ~ in my opinion, that was going to be the toughest, longest wearing product which would keep their makeup intact in a festival style environment. With the base being so durable, I was able to use pretty much anything else I wanted to create the rest of the looks. Mysan wanted her mask to look like it had been stitched on so one of the final stages of her makeup creation consisted of sticking individual stitches around the perimeter of the mask. I did consider painting the stitches but I really wanted them to stand out off the face.

The end result was pretty cool but in hindsight, I would have preferred if the thread had been a thicker grade so it could have been more visible.**note for next time**

Marius, was the Joker and his look was fairly straight forward, as before, I used an alcohol based airbrush makeup for his base.

Once the Joker and Harley Quinn had left the studio, I packed up my Face Painting gear and headed off to Tropicon! **Excited Excited**

Arriving at the Cairns PCYC was more exciting than I had possibly expected ~ the entire street leading up the venue was lined on both sides with parked cars while hundreds of costumed characters made their way to and fro.

The entrance was filled with a long, thick gathering of characters eagerly chatting and mingling as they gradually made their way inside the main arena.
Once inside, it was large, warm, bustling, lively and a little overwhelming at first.
I found the Costume Hire Shop booth and set myself up to Face Paint. And what a fabulous afternoon it was!

I was so impressed with how many cool peeps there are in Cairns. There were so many people dressed in costume!
So many characters, so much fun!

Congratulations Cairns, Tropicon was such a cool event, from all accounts I believe this first ever Tropicon surpassed everyone’s expectations and there are already plans in place to make it a two day event in a much larger venue for next year! **woohoo**

A big Shout Out to Charles and everyone involved in making Tropicon happen and Thank You also to Rachel from Cairns Costume Hire for inviting me to play at her booth.

Woo-Hoo! My Beautiful Harley Quinn and Joker even made the news!! Check it out My Pretties…

Until next time my pretties,

❤

D*