I hope you had a safe and happy Halloween!

I had a great time, taking part in an annual tradition of joining a bunch of friends for a Halloween costume party/game night.  I used the steampunk-style costume I made for the Fan Expo 2014.  I was a dope that year and didn’t get any pictures of it, after having spent 6 months making the darned thing! This was my chance to actually take some pics! It was a lot of fun putting it all back together again.

That said, I wear a lot of makeup when I dress up in that costume.  It’s not just the usual layer of foundation and powder, but also a number of different types of blush, bronzer and eye shadow on my cheeks, not to mention the 2 types of liquid liner, eye shadows and even a stick-on gear/cog at the outer corner of my eyes.

Since I don’t wear that makeup every day and I have a budget that is next to nothing, a lot of the weird coloured products are from my local dollar store (though not the eyeliners.  I don’t put dollar store products that close to my eyes).

I knew my skin wouldn’t be happy and I was right. I took great care to take off my makeup that night but when I woke up in the morning, I had a nasty flare-up to deal with.  My face was red, inflamed, hot, stinging and even had a few little bumps.

My Halloween makeup created one scary set of rosacea symptoms!

If that weren’t enough, on Halloween I also ate junk food and candy (and possibly some of the punch…), all of which are not friendly when it comes to dealing with rosacea symptoms.

I knew that I was setting myself up for trouble and I was right. The next day, my face was a mess.

Instead of sulking about it, I’ve decided to take on a different strategy.  I created a little YouTube video (below) to document the flare-up.

I’ll use the red light therapy and amber light therapy every day and will make another video when the rosacea symptoms have cleared up so that I’m back to where I was on the morning of October 31.

I think it should be an interesting test.  My guess is that it will take 2 to 3 days to fully clear up all the symptoms (including both the visible ones and the ones I can feel like stinging and burning).

Please feel free to guess at how long it will take in the comments below.  Also, while you’re commenting, if you happen to know a rosacea-prone skin-friendly way to remove makeup, I’d love it if you would tell me about it.

I don’t usually wear makeup on my face, but there are times when I simply have to cover up my symptoms.  I have social anxiety disorder, but I still have to make public appearances at book clubs and other events because of Love at First Plight. I’ve been working very hard at overcoming my fears and am proud to be able to meet people who have read my book and who want to talk about it with me.  It’s the biggest joy of my life. Part of easing my anxiety in these situations is in feeding my vanity – if I feel I look good, my confidence is higher.  It’s shallow, but it’s the truth and I’ve promised to be honest with you, so there it is.

So in those situations, I do wear makeup to cover my rosacea symptoms.  I take it off as soon as I get home. I use baby oil and an extremely soft and smooth microfiber cloth.  I follow that with a gentle but thorough cleansing with my normal cleanser (which just isn’t strong enough to take off makeup on its own).  While that process does get the makeup off, I don’t think the baby oil is the best thing to apply to my skin – it’s just the gentlest thing I know about.

Any (non-spam) recommendations are welcome.  I’d love to hear about your tips and tricks in makeup removal for rosacea-prone skin. That said, I’d also like to hear about your own experiences in treating rosacea as a whole. The more we all share with each other, the better we’ll be at figuring this out.

That’s the scoop for now.  I’ll keep you posted about my progress in clearing up my current scary Halloween flare-up.

See you next time!