Goldie Starling's Awesome Halloween Makeup Tutorials

Glam Meets Gore: Goldie Starling's Awesome Halloween Makeup Tutorials - A fierce pirate wench, with puckered scars running along the side of her face. An eerie doll, with pursed lips and hauntingly oversize eyes. A grim Jack the Ripper and his final victim, Mary Kelly, her throat slashed and oozing blood.... Goldie Starling's Halloween make-up creations are a creepy combination of glam and gore—and she shares her beauty secrets in her deeply detailed video tutorials.

Goldie Starling's sultry, DIY Spider Queen look for Halloween. (Photo: Goldie Starling/Facebook)

"When I started making tutorials there weren't a lot of people uploading artistic tutorials so I decided to try it out," Starling, who lives in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, told Yahoo! Shine in an interview. "There was definitely a learning curve but after four years I feel like I've grown so much as an artist. And my subscribers have helped encourage me the most. When I learn a new technique I get excited to share it with them. That passion for learning has kept me going."

Starling, whose real name is Angie Davis, has no formal training as a makeup artist—she has a Bachelor of Fine Arts in graphic design and computer animation—but her love of drawing and painting helped her hone her makeup skills. (You can see some of her other amazing looks on her Facebook fan page.) She currently works as a freelance makeup artist, a cake decorator, and a graphic designer, she says. And of course Halloween is one of her favorite holidays. 

For 2012, "I had grand plans to make a Zoltar costume from the movie 'Big' but I may actually go as Vincent Van Gogh," she says. "I just filmed a tutorial based on one of his self portraits and I really like the way it turned out, plus he is one of my favorite painters." 

Her attention to detail (and her super-steady hand) is clear in every video she posts. A simple tutorial may take six or seven hours to make from start to finish, she confides in one of her videos, but the theatrical Halloween how-to's take much longer. 

"For these Halloween videos, it's been quite the labor of love," she says. "At least 20 hours, 30 hours per video just from conception to visualization, going and finding products and costumes, backgrounds, things like that." And that doesn't include the days of prep work before shooting. 

"It's something I just like to do, though, so it doesn't bother me," Starling adds. "I'm also a night owl, so all of my creative juices are flowing at night." 

An amazingly detailed take on a watery Davy Jones. (Photo: Goldie Starling/Facebook)

Some of her Halloween looks, like her sultry Spider Queen, can be created with products many women already have in their beauty bags. But others, like her version of the horrifying deep-sea denizen Davy Jones—her all-time favorite video tutorial, Starling says—requires liquid latex and other specialized products. She made latex starfish using a candy mold and dipped cheerios in liquid latex to make barnacles, which she glued to her face using a medical-grade adhesive. A sea sponge dipped in watered-down face paint adds texture. For really complicated designs, she maps features out with a white eyeliner before filling in with face paint and white foundation, which she mixes with different pigments to get custom colors. 

"I apply my foundation with a brush and a sponge," she says in that video. "I find that by doing it this way you're able to get into the cracks and crevices around the barnacles." 

Her other secrets? Plenty of powder, to set the makeup and prevent smudging. Don't be afraid to use eyeshadow in unusual ways. Lipstick is awesome ("I know a lot of people think lipstick is outdated but I love the way it defines the lips," she says). And make sure to properly prep your "canvas." 

"I'm all about taking care of my skin," Starling told Yahoo! Shine. "In the morning I wash my face, moisturize and apply sunscreen. Then I'll apply makeup. Mascara and concealer are great to have when you want to appear awake. At night I will cleanse my face, exfoliate if I need to and apply replenishing moisturizers and eye creams." 

Though she's honed her makeup skills in a variety of ways, she says that painting has helped her the most. "You prep a canvas with gesso the way you would prep a face with primer," she explained to Styleist.com. "You paint on your design the way you would apply your eye shadow and lipstick. You add shadows and depth where you would contour. Painting translates perfectly." ( Beauty on Shine )