You only need $45 and two days to complete this Halloween makeup look

Trying to come up with new Halloween costume ideas every year is daunting. Some of us do our best with just red lipstick, while others among us have resorted to “ice cream face” as our Halloween pièce de résistance.

(Photo: Simple Symphony/Youtube)
(Photo: Simple Symphony/Youtube)

But Ophélie Marie t’Serstevens, better known as “Simple Symphony” on Instagram and Youtube, has fully committed to special-effects makeup looks that take hours to complete, like this “glam sugar skull,” making her a favorite on social media, with millions of views on her makeup tutorials.


Cut down on social media channels to just under five minutes, one particularly frightening makeup look took the 23-year-old French-Belgian artist a full two days to make, t’Serstevens tells Yahoo Lifestyle.

“On the first day, I ‘sculpted’ the prosthetic and the fake teeth,” she says. On the day after, she started working on her face, which took eight or nine hours.

t’Serstevens says her other looks typically take around six hours to complete, and she spends roughly $45 on accessories and makeup supplies for each look. She’s perfected her craft over the last year, after she started experimenting with special-effects makeup looks. Before that, she was a certified makeup artist, but she is pursuing certification in special-effects makeup so she can teach others her craft.

“I don’t like simple looks, I find them boring,” t’Serstevens says. “I couldn’t express all the imagination I’ve got if I was doing simple makeup looks.”

While t’Serstevens’ feels that the more elaborate the Halloween makeup is, the better, she does warn people to be cautious about the products they’re using on their skin. “You should never use something that is not dermatologically tested, or something that is not meant to be on your face,” she warns. “Some people stick some very sharp objects to their face (a cut can, for example, to make it look like it has exploded on the face)” she says, or too close to their eyes, all of which is very dangerous.

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