I tried fake freckles

Don’t bother


Fake freckles were actually a thing last summer. Topshop even brought out a freckle pencil, and so people gradually started dotting pencil on their faces as if they had truly been snogged by the sun. Those of us who were teased for our freckles at school, having endured many references to poo and spit, resembled Simon Cowell on the subject; it’s a no from us.

Now that the sun has appeared everyone is desperate for summer and these stupid fake freckles are coming back again. I have natural freckles, well muted freckles at this time of the year as my skin is basically the colour of watered-down milk, so now that freckles are a trend I wanted to see just how much of a fashionista I could be with fake freckles.

My beginning thoughts were mostly negative. You can’t just draw on freckles in an attempt to look cute, that’s just not how freckles work. Surely your friends and family will know that you’ve never had freckles before? They don’t disappear and then later reappear like your drinks on nights out.

Nervous pre fake freckles freckly face

I chose a tutorial on youtube to follow. The beach babe told me the trick behind freckles is to dot a brown eyebrow/eyeliner pencil on my face in a ‘summery’ way. How the hell are you meant to do that? My pencil doesn’t come with a summer sun feature, wbu?

Am I doing it right, mum?

I mean, it’s not exactly hard to draw randomly shaped and sized dots on your face, you don’t have to be a makeup artist. The tutorial only spoke of putting them on your cheeks because apparently that’s the most summery look, but believe it or not freckles actually can appear all over your face and body. I was feeling adventurous so I put some on my forehead too.

WHAT’RE THOOOOOOSE

At this point I looked like I had remnant splatters of a juicy nutella crepe on my face, not my best look. The ten year old poo smear jokes echoed in my head but I pushed through to the end of the tutorial.

After dotting the pencil on your face she said you’re meant to put powder or foundation or something over the top and repeat, but I don’t wear any makeup on my face so I skipped that step. Maybe it was crucial, maybe I missed the whole point of fake freckles, who knows?

Then it was time to press them in to fade them. I tried to used my finger to get rid of the nutella look, but that didn’t work at all so I ended up lightly rubbing them until they were the same colour as my natural freckles to achieve my ‘summer aesthetic.’

The problem with having real freckles here was that mid-fading I got confused. I didn’t know which were drawn on and which were real, and a couple of times I tried to scratch off real freckles in annoyance that they wouldn’t fade. I guess that means that they worked?

Look of surprise as they actually look real

Apparently you’re meant to repeat all the steps in order to achieve full freckleyness, what a pain. I already had enough freckles, both natural and fake, and I was getting a bit bored so I didn’t do this.

When I asked a friend if they noticed anything different about me they replied, with nervous hand gestures, “hair?” So they bloody worked and I can’t quite believe it.

When u realise freckles are the shit

My final verdict – fake freckles definitely look natural if you already have freckles and desperately need a top up. But if you don’t have freckles please don’t try and replicate them, don’t nip into toppy for the freckle pencil. Everyone who knows you will know that you never had freckles and it will just look a bit weird.