My dear friend, Megan, had the creative and brilliant idea to design a Halloween costume based on a painting.

She wanted me to photograph everything and for my amazing makeup artist, Stephanie Foote, to do the makeup. I know both of these creative ladies from art class in college, but somehow they didn’t know each other back then.  They met when we did a previous shoot a few weeks before this one.  (I’ll post about that one eventually.)

The painting Megan chose is “Swarming Butterflies II” by local artist, Ashley Longshore. It’s a beautiful painting that happens to include my favorite shade of teal.

I was immediately scouring Amazon for sets of butterflies and texting links to Megan. She found a few sets she liked and I found the perfect teal foam core boards at my beloved Hobby Lobby. Megan also found a pair of clip-on pearl earrings, almost identical to the ones in the paintings…eBay score!

The day of the shoot arrived and Megan brought over a bunch of butterflies attached to floral wire and stuck into a piece of styrofoam. She was stumped as to how to make the actual headpiece, lol. Luckily, I had just bought a styrofoam head (to hold a wig for a shoot I have yet to do). I slid the headband onto it and started wrapping wire around the headband. I loved that the wire was stiff enough to stand on its own, but pliable enough to be put into place. It was also fun that it was so bouncy.

Stephanie did a phenomenal job with the makeup! Which, I’m not really surprised about, seeing as we first met in drawing class in college. But I was astounded by her ability to render the painting on half of Megan’s face.

Here’s the final image!

We posted it to Instagram and tagged Ashley. SHE IMMEDIATELY RE-POSTED IT! She also tagged Megan and through some sort of magic, Blake Lively liked Megan’s post!!! BLAKE LIVELY!

All three of us were freaking out!

Last time I checked, Ashley Longshore’s repost had 1,921 likes!

Now, Megan, Stephanie and I are brainstorming our next art-to-life-to-art piece. I’ll try to get video next time.

FOLLOW MY FRIENDS:

Check out Stephanie on her Instagram page.

Megan takes the most epic images of her dog Oakley.

Browse Ashley Longshore’s paintings.

And here’s a link to my Instagram page.