DIY Miss Peregrine’s Makeup, Hair and Nails
Miss Peregrine is the very elegant and proper head mistress of a special home for peculiar children on the island of Wales. She is played by the gorgeous Eva Green whose naturally unique looks lend themselves to creating the polished, sophisticated bird-inspired look of Miss Peregrine.
Make-up and hair designer Paul Gooch worked to create a unique hair and makeup look for each of the actors that reflected the peculiar’s particular unique ability. Miss Peregrine is a Ymbryne. One of her peculiarities is that she can turn into a bird.
Costume designer Colleen Atwood combined Victorian, 1940’s (Second World War) and Gothic/Steampunk influences for this movie.
To make it easier to find this page focuses on make up, hair and her nails. The costume ideas are located on a separate page.
Make up Design Secrets
In interviews with Paul Gooch, makeup and hair designer for the movie, he shared some of this thoughts behind how he created the looks for each of the characters.
Many of the characters in the film have some kind of magical power, so I wanted to reflect this in their appearance…
[For] Miss Peregrine and Miss Avocet’s [it was] bird colours.
The two Ymbrynes, Miss Peregrine (Eva Green) and Miss Avocet (Judi Dench), both turn into their respective birds forms as part of their peculiarities. Gooch’s design intent was to convey their birdlike qualities with both their human hair and makeup.
Blue highlights were added to Eva Green’s swooping updo hair style, while black and white stripes were added to Judi Dench’s hair to suggest that they had both bird and human forms.
Eva Green’s make up also reflected the bird-like qualities with her pointed eyebrows and feathery-like eyeliner and black talon, or claw-like fingernails.
Miss Peregrine Makeup
Eva Green’s beautiful ivory colored skin, vivid blue eyes and naturally unique looks helped to inspire the bird-like hair and makeup for Miss Peregrine. To recreate her look see what you need for the base makeup, eyebrows, eye shadow, eyeliner and lip color.
Ivory Makeup Base – Use a light ivory matte makeup for the skin color.
Eyebrows – The eyebrows are very dark, full and arching, extending down to a fine point past one’s normal eyebrow line.
Smoky Eye – The eyelid colors are a dark, smokey gray, with gray eye shadow extending out, like winged eyeliner, but with using shadow powder, as seen in this image.
Eyeliner – The feathery-like eyeliner may be seen best in the top image. Dark eyeliner or black coal is added to the waterline and extends into the inner corners of the eye, further defining the shape of the eye and creating a more bird-like effect.
Lip color – The lip color varies depending on whether you are recreating the look in the poster version above (darker peach) or the movie look in images above and below (nude).
Natural or nude is the color she is seen wearing the most. A light lip color like Covergirl Outlast Lipstain in nude kiss or a slightly tinted lip balm would work well.
The NYX Smokey Look Kit seen to the right has the eye shadow and lip gloss colors to complete her elegant, sophisticated schoolmarm look.
For more visual help see Natalie, from Vintagious, helpful video tutorial below for excellent tips on styling Miss P’s makeup and hair.
Miss Peregrine Hair
Makeup and hair designer Paul Gooch came up with 12 different hair styles when looking for the right updo version for the movie. The main inspiration behind her style was to include birdlike qualities that suggested both sides of her character—the bird and the person.
What he came up with was the swooping, bob-like, feathery updo with blue highlight streaks seen in the different views below.
Her sculpted, perfectly, elaborately arranged coiffed hair gives the impression of being alive. Her hair combines that of a normal person’s hairdo with that of a bird. The blue streaks up curling hair has the feel of feathers.
To recreate the look you need create volume and fullness, tuck up the hair in an updo and add in blue highlights.
Right (swooping, curling) side – The right curly side needs to be styled on the top in smaller curls (curling iron) and underneath with larger curls (waver iron) and pinned under in the back in a faux bob.
Left (smooth or feathery) side – The left side (not seen in this photo) is the easiest to style, by combing and sweeping the hair to the back and pinning it under.
Back – The back is tucked under or rolled under in a faux bob style.
DermOrganic has a helpful tutorial on how to transform long hair into a bob.
In the video below Natalie from Vintagious in the U.K. does an amazing makeup and hairstyle tutorial for our favorite head mistress coming up with her own interpretation of her lively swooping, bob-like updo hair.
She also shows how to use hair chalk to get the blue (green and purple) highlights in the hair.
If you do not have naturally dark hair, or if you don’t want to style (or color) your own, you may want to work with styling a short to medium length black wig getting a style that is already bob length and then focus on adding in the blue highlights and flippy/feathery curls.
Temporary Blue Hair Color Chalk & Spray
To complete her hair design, you need to add in blue highlights. This can be done using blue hair chalk, hair spray or hair mascara to create temporary blue highlights.
Costume Tutorial
Sofia and Ellen from Look Like Studios in Sweden offer their makeup, hair and costume ideas for recreating Miss Peregrine’s movie attire. They have created the feel for her costume by adding puffy velvet sleeves over an existing garment.
Sofia and Ellen even created their own crossbow from a tree trunk for their cosplay orphanage mistress costume.
Miss Peregrine Nails
Miss Peregrine nail design reflect that she is is part bird. Her long nails give the impression of being shaped like bird talons
In the pictures of her hands above, Eva Green is wearing black almond shaped talon false nail tips on her fingernails to create the bird-like claws.
In creating your own stylized fingernails, those with long enough nails can shape their nails into almond shapes (see the tutorial below from Ariane) and paint them with black or a midnight blue color.
For those without long nails, pre-shaped and painted nails like false talon nail tips to the right or using acrylics like the almond-shaped nail tutorial by Suzie with Nail Career Education below and then painting them black.
Almond Shaped Tutorials Black Nails
For those with long enough nails to use your own, Ariane from abetweene shows how to shape almond style nails.
Some of the options for black nail polish or black nail lacquer include:
To create your own nails Suzie with Nail Career Education shows how to create an Almond-Shaped nail using acrylics.
Pocket Watch Resets Loop Day
In the image to the right shows good view of Miss Peregrine’s black talon shaped fingernails with her very important pocket watch, a key accessory for any costume.
Miss Peregrine is what’s known as an Ymbryne* (Imm-brin), who’s main peculiar skill is the manipulation of time for the sole purpose of protecting her peculiar children. As she explains the loop to Jacob/Jake
We choose a safe place to stay each day and create a loop (the last 24 hours).
Rest the loop and the day is yours to live in again.
Reset it daily, and you can stay there forever, entirely safe from the outside world.
* According to Ransom Riggs you pronounce Ymbryne as “imm-brin” both syllables having short “i’s.” This is how Miss Peregrine pronounces the term in the movie when she is explaining her role to Jacob.
Loop Day Pocket Watch
The time, 9:07 p.m. just before the Germans drop a bomb on their home for peculiar children located on the fictional island of Cairnholm in Wales.
Resetting the clocks every day has allowed her (and her peculiar children) to stay safely hidden away from the outside world, in a time loop, in the 1940’s.
The Gold Pocket Watch is a close replica of her loop pocket watch. It may need to be aged just a bit to look more like her well-worn vintage watch.
More Costume Ideas
To make it easier to find the Miss Peregrine’s costume details we’ve split the clothing, shoes and accessories from the Make-up, Hair and Nails. The peculiar children costumes have their own separate pages too that are in the works.
- DIY Miss Peregrine’s Costume Ideas
- DIY The Masked Peculiar Twins Costume Ideas from Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children
- DIY Emma Bloom from Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children
- DIY Olive Elephanta from Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children
Our Pinterest Board for Miss Peregrine & Peculiar Children Costumes
Our Pinterest Board has a collection of ideas, inspiration and images for making your own costumes featuring Miss Peregrine and the Peculiar Children Costumes.
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