Last-minute Halloween makeup using what is already in your bag

You do not need a special-effects kit to look like you made an effort on Halloween. The strongest last-minute looks use one dramatic feature and leave everything else alone, and almost all of them can be built from a dark lipstick, a black liner and an eyeshadow you already own.

Here are five, roughly in order of how little time they take.

1. The bloody lip (five minutes)

The one that reads instantly as Halloween without touching the rest of your face.

Line and fill the lips with the deepest red or wine lipstick you own. Then take a black eyeliner pencil, draw a thin line along the outer edge of the lip, and blend it inward with a fingertip so it fades into the colour. The darkened edge is what turns a red lip into something more sinister.

If you own a clear gloss, add it to the centre of the lower lip only. The shine reads as wet.

2. The gothic wing (ten minutes)

Take your usual winged liner and make two changes: extend the wing longer and sharper than you normally would, and take the line further in along the lower lash line than feels comfortable.

Then smudge. A clean, precise wing looks like a night out. A wing with deliberately smoked edges looks like a character.

Pair with a bare lip or a deep one, never a bright one.

3. Ghost eyes (ten minutes)

Skip the eyeshadow entirely. Apply a pale concealer or a white or cream eyeshadow over the whole lid and up to the brow bone, then brush your brows upward with a bar of soap or clear brow gel and go over them with the same concealer.

Bleached-looking brows and a washed-out lid make the whole face read otherworldly, and it takes nothing but products you already have. Add a lot of mascara to the top lashes only.

4. Smudged everything (eight minutes)

Take a black or deep brown pencil, draw it along the upper and lower lash lines, then smudge both until there is no clean edge anywhere. Keep going past the point where you would normally stop.

Leave the skin bare and the lips nude or lightly stained. The contrast between an undone face and genuinely heavy eyes is what makes it work.

5. Graphic liner (twelve minutes)

The most striking of the five and the one that photographs best.

Instead of following your lash line, draw a shape: a sharp line straight across the crease, a line up from the outer corner toward the temple, or a simple geometric mark on the lid. Use a flat brush and whatever black gel, liquid liner or dark eyeshadow you have.

Keep everything else quiet. A graphic eye with a bold lip is a lot.

The rule all five follow

Pick one feature and commit to it. A dark lip, or heavy eyes, or a graphic shape. The temptation on Halloween is to do all three, and that is exactly what makes a face look muddled rather than striking.

It is also what separates a look that holds up in photographs from one that does not. One strong element reads clearly from across a dark room; three compete with each other and all of them lose.

Things that double as Halloween products

Red lipstick works as cream blush, as a stained wound edge, or dotted and blended at the inner eye corner for a feverish look.
Black eyeliner blended out with a fingertip becomes a hollow under the cheekbone or a shadowed eye socket.
Brown eyeshadow blended hard under the cheekbone and along the temples reads as gaunt far more convincingly than grey.
Clear lip gloss over any dark colour reads as wet, which covers most of the sinister-looking territory.

See it before the night

If you want to know whether a deep gothic look suits you before you commit to it in front of a mirror at 8pm, Vélora renders it onto your own selfie.

Three looks in the catalog cover most of this territory: Soft Goth for diffused dark liner and a muted berry lip, Vamp for a deep wine statement, and Grunge for the lived-in smudged version. Pairing any of them with the Party occasion pushes the intensity up a notch.