Happy New Year everyone! I hope that you had a fabulous Christmas. I had a great festive season with all my family and drank loads and absolutely stuffed my face. So of course this has led to a whole host of New Years Resolutions.

Over the last two years I have just piled on the weight and have gone from 58kg(9st) to nearly 80kg! (12.5st) I can’t believe I am actually putting this down on my blog its a bit embarrassing) but I guess that it is important in reaching your goals is telling people about it.

I attribute this incredible weight gain, to being too happy haha, I met my boyfriend Ronan nearly two years ago now and we have had many a good meal out as well as lots of movie nights with crisps, chocolate, ice-cream you name it!

So to combat this incredible weight gain myself and my friend Jess are aiming to run a half marathon in Connemara in April. A bit ambitious really seeing as I do absolutely no exercise now that I have my car (I used to cycle everywhere). I have gone for one walk/run and so far so good. I am using the Couch Potato to 5k app on my iphone which I have heard great things about. It eases you into your running programme so that you don’t injure yourself.

I have also started doing Bikram Yoga in Init Yoga Studio in the Docklands. My first foray into this exercise ended with me thinking these people are crazy! Who’s idea was it to exercise in a sauna, as they need to get their head checked! I barely made it through the class to be honest. When you walk into the room it is already quite warm, there is a slight smell of Urine which I can only attribute to ammonia, which the body releases into your sweat when you are eating into your energy reserves during particularly strong exercise. Firstly you do these breathing exercise, which reminded me of the Kecak Monkey Chant, a scene in one of my favourite films Baraka, if you haven’t seen this, do check it out. Anyway everything was going well during the class I even naievly started to think this is easy…but then…oh then, they crank up the heat and bring it to furnace tempreture, I think I actually started to melt, I was sweating from places I didn’t even know I could sweat from: even my calves had beads of sweat on them!

I somehow made it through the class-barely and had the worst headache ever…I think this could have been because I had drank a bottle of wine the night before and only had a coffee before going to class (you are supposed to keep yourself hydrated, but I had done the exact opposite) I ended up having to go to bed for an hour with some headache tablets it was so bad. So as you can imagine I had no desire to go back, but after a bit of convincing from Jess, I ventured back a couple of days later. I think because I knew what to expect this time I was better prepared and drank a litre of water before and after the class NO WINE the night before . Anyway during the class I realised that it was great to sweat so much as surely you must be releasing all these toxins out of your body, also your heart beats quite fast at times pumping blood all over your body and a lot of the movements massage your body, this has to be good for cellulite right? I am definitely going to stick with it, so I will update you with the benefits of Bikram. If anyone has done it, please do share your experiences too.

I am not only revitalising my body this new year, but I am also going to breath new life into this blog. I have started to become a bit lazy with my baby mainly posting images and videos and not really giving much information. So I will endeavour to make the blog a much more interesting interactive read. I want to start doing video tutorials of the kind of stuff that I like seeing on other blogs that I read. Also I would like to start showing how I did things on the TV Shows, films and other work that I do. If you have any suggestions for me or if there is anything in particular you would like to see or learn about, leave a comment at the bottom and I will be sure to try and do it for you. Be sure to let me know what your new years resolutions are too.

Look forward to another exciting year and I hope it is a good year for everybody.

All the best

Emma xx

As a member for the Irish Film and Television Academy I was invited to Dublin’s Gibson hotel on Thursday the 29th September 2011 for ‘The Craft of Make-Up’, the Academy’s annual event hosted in association with MAC Cosmetics, featured the work of two IFTA winning Make-Up artists Jennifer Hegarty and Linda Mooney.

The event was hosted by Tv3′s Xposé presenter and Karen Koster. Jennifer and Linda share behind the scenes secrets from their award winning careers in film and television. It was a really informative event with a great insight  into the industry.

One of the things that I noted was that as make-up arists they never stop learning. Jennifer said that she started her career by going to London to do a few courses, but that she still learns all the time. She said that the industry changes so fast that you have to keep up with the times. Also it was great to note that there was no overnight success for Jennifer, it was a very slow process. It was through hard work and dedication that she has become the success that she is today. The first time that she actually felt that she had made it was when she did Peter O’Toole’s make-up. She said on meeting him that she found it quite comforting, because he was very nervous that day and it made her realise that everyone is nervous about what they are doing, so you have to keep going and keep doing it. She still enjoys the job and sometimes has to pinch herself when she is on a set in an exotic location. She has worked on films from Lassie, to Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, to Harry Potters, so I am sure she has seen a few! On creating a character, she says that it is usually a collaboration between the Make-up Artist, the Director and the Actor, although it is really about trying to convince them to do what you want . The products that she can’t live without are her grease palette and her skin illustrator and her brushes in particular the MAC foundation brush. For people starting out Jennifer would recommend taking up painting. If choosing a school, find out what the background is of the people you would be learning with.

Linda came to her career in a little bit of a different way. She was from a family that did hair and would have seen her mom make wigs for the Abbey. She is a fully trained hair dresser as well as a professional make-up artist. She found herself having to go abroad alot because the union in Ireland is quite restrictive and you can’t really do both. She is fluent in German and spent some time over there. Linda felt that she had really made it when she got to do a Deaf Leppard album cover, she had to turn the clean looking young men into 80s rock stars so lots of backcombing was required! Linda also mentioned is very aware that the women in the industry have missed out on family, that you have to try and strike the balance. She feels that she is a better mother when she is working. She was working with 21 women at the time of the talk and only 3 women out of that had a family.When asked what tools she couldn’t live with out, her immediate response was: Good brushes! When you are starting out Linda thinks you can’t beat being on set, try and get some work experienc. You will realise what it is really like and see what end you would like to go to.

They are both very warm people and it is easy to see that as well as their skill and talent that their personalities have brought them a long way too. They both touched on having the right personality for the job and being easy to work with and letting things go over your head. Also it is about knowing what battles to fight, when to take a bit more time doing a make-up and when to just let a bit of shine go…. Someone asked a question in the audience about whether they ever looked at another make-up artist’s work and said “what were they thinking” and they both agreed and said that they wouldn’t judge someone else’s work as you never know what kind of stress or what the circumstances were surrounding the job. Never a truer word was spoken! As a makeup artist if the day has run behind, you could sometimes be asked to do a make-up on set with the whole crew looking at you, when usually the make-up could take an hour to do normally!

It was a great talk and I hope that the Academy run more events like this in the future. It was great to meet fellow make-up artists and we got a free lippy to boot!

While I was at the Makeup Show Europe I attended Loni Baur’s make-up demonstration. It was a fun and energy filled performance of make-up to music. She used a toothbrush to flick on the colour which had a gorgeous airbrushed effect. Unfortunately I was too far away to take a video, but I managed to take a few photographs so you can recreate the look yourself.

Loni is a very successful German makeup artist who has worked all over the world in fashion shows and events. She has opened her own school in Hamburg called the Colour and Creme Academy. This is a picture of her work from her website, she is absolutely amazing!

I did Tara O’Farrell and Georgia Salpa’s makeup for the Creatures of the Night Photocall for Miller.

It was a sultry scary look that compromised of a black smokey eye, blood red lips,  paired with freaky yellow contacts and vampire fangs.

We had hoped that it would hit one or two newspapers, but we lucked out as it made it into the Sun, Metro, Mirror and Star. We even got a front cover!

To create the look I used:

Graftobian HD Airbrush Foundation in Dessert Sand
Contoured with a darker shade airbrush colour
MAC Skin Finish Powder in Dark for additional contouring
MAC Blacktrack Gel Liner
Nars Night Breed Eyeshadow
Rimmel Black Eyeliner on the lips
Lancome L’Absolu Rouge Lipstick in Red
Lancome Hypnose Mascara in Black

Photographer: Conor Healy @ CH Photography
Models: Tara O’Farrell & Georgia Salpa @ AR Model Agency
Hair and Makeup: Me @ PR Hair and Makeup

It was a great excuse to get away and I was delighted to have a jam-packed eventful as well as relaxed holiday.

I went Dolphin watching and managed to see about 30 dolphins which was sooo cool.

Also we were really lucky to see a turtle, I seem to have a strange connection to turtles…I did my college thesis on them, then when I went Scuba diving for the first time I saw one (which apparently is really unusual), then my first Christmas with Ronan aka my gorgeous boyfriend he gave me a turtle ring and then our first proper holiday together we see a turle…what are the chances?

So again, apologies about the hiatus, but there are loads of posts coming soon

This is an update to a behind the scenes post called Behind the Scenes: Alana Carroll Bodypainting. Possibly the funniest/weirdest concept that I have worked on in a long time, this is the video from that day.

The behind the scenes photos that I posted have had a huge presence over the internet. The last post was picked up by the pop culture website Oddee.

Model: Alana Carroll @ Assets
Brand: Flexxivan
Bodypainter: Emma Farrell @ Dublin Bodypainting
Bodypainter Assistant: Stefania Maniscalco

The theme was vintage debs, with alot of our inspiration coming from the 1920s. I will do another post with the actual photographs where I will explain what make-up I used.

Model: Aisling F @ Assets Model Agency
Stylist: Rosemary MacCabe @ The Fash Mob assisted by Róisín Finnegan
Photographer: Ailbhe O’Donnell @ Ailbhe O’Donnell Photography
Hair: Michelle O’Halloran @ Hairaware
Make-up: Emma Farrell @ Dublin Fashion Make-up Artist

The girls were more adventurous with colour than usual for weddings, so I was delighted. Jennifer went for a beautiful purple eyeshadow smoked out to really accentuate her green eyes, with a nice black eyeliner and thick flirtatious false eyelashes. All the bridesmaids opted for variations of a navy blue smokey eye and lashes and everyone had a nice neutral lip to really play up the eyes.

Bride: Jennifer Claffey
Make-up: Emma Farrell @ Dublin Bridal Hair and Make-up
Photography: Pat Claffey

A while ago I posted some behind the scenes photos of this shoot. Well here are the professional shots.

Photographer: Edel Kelly @ The Secret Boudoir
Model: Azaria Starfire
Make-up & Hair: Emma Farrell @ Makeup Artist Dublin

I use a Dell Inspiron 6400 Laptop, it is as old as the hills, but I added extra RAM so it still runs quite fast, only problem is that a couple of the keys have become quite sticky, so if there are ever typos that is probably the reason! I have the whole Adobe Creative Suite, so I use this for editing photographs or making graphics. The odd time that I edit a film I use Windows Movie Maker. I also use the WordPress platform for my blog.

Another REALLY important piece of kit are my hard drives. My laptop has no space left on it as all the programmes take up much of the limited space. So I have two hard drives, one with everything on it that I use daily and then another which is a backup of all my files that I update once a month.

Also not pictured is my iphone4 (I had to take the picture with it).  As I no longer have a proper camera this is what I take all my pictures  and videos with. The camera is great, but the only downfall is the flash is not great, sort of makes everything look yellowy, especially foundation for some reason. It really does the trick for behind the scenes photographs and with the likes of Instagram, you can get some really nice finishes on your images. Most of the images on my website though would be taken by professional photographers who have amazing cameras and lighting equipment. You can see a list of who I have worked with here.

For writing articles I usually get information online, from blogs, catwalk reports, television and magazines. I probably buy about one magazine a week and I cut out work that I like and put it into a folder of images that I can look at if I am ever in need of inspiration.

The only other thing that you will find in my little office is a cup of something, either coffee or my favourite herbal tea rooibos. You have to keep hydrated