Louise Gray For Topshop or Beth Ditto For MAC? It's Time To Paint Your Faces!

From makeup going truly mega at Fashion Week to the Meadham Kirchhoff jubilee celebrations at Topshop and the Beth Ditto range for MAC as well as numerous celebs going creative with their slap, 2012 has surely been the year of face paint.

Whether you’re going to take advantage of the newly nice weather to go to a festival – and Bestival is around the corner – or maybe you're just thinking about throwing a mini painting party for your mates. Either way, here are some tips and wicked beauty products to get you started...

 Blue David Bowie makeup tips

We tried out a couple of styles. The classic David Bowie bolt over the eye was made by sketching out the shape with several different blue pencils. Barry M do both eye pencils and chunky eye crayons - perfect for colouring in a large area. Next we shaded the bolt in, corresponding light to bright blue with various shimmer eyeshadows, from Illamasqua to GOSH and MUA from Superdrug. Lastly we covered everything with a healthy dusting of MAC silver holographic glitter. We used a bit of mascara and then lip gloss with more glitter! Mmm - super.

neon face paint tips

Next up we experimented with a nifty neon pattern we thought went very nicely with a pair of giant lashes. We used Barry M and Illamasqua neon pencils to create some crazy shapes, and covered the pencil shapes with neon eyeshadows and from Stargazer and then neon glitter also from Stargazer. We went for an orange lip by MAC and some luscious Shu Uemera lashes.

For more face-spiration, check out our gallery above featuring Rihanna going Cleopatra and Pixie Lott's daisy prints. Happy painting!