Style

This Woman Uses Real Bugs In Her Beauty Looks & It's Not For The Faint Of Heart (Or Stomach)

by Summer Arlexis

No, this is not a night terror. This is a real life nightmare. There's a makeup artist that uses bugs in her looks to take her beauty beat to the next level. And we're not talking fake insects picked up from a prank store or realistic paintings of creatures. Self-taught beauty guru Jasmine, known as @butterflyjasmine49 on Instagram, attaches real bugs to her insanely creative eye looks.

It's not surprising that Jasmine's Instagram boasts over 55,000 followers. Girlfriend can work wonders with a few brushes, pigments, and 3D embellishments, as evident by her endless feed of special effects and character makeup. She's certainly no stranger to pushing boundaries with her work, often covering her body in bold colors and dramatic designs. But her latest makeup series, dedicated to using insects in eye art, has to be her most jaw-dropping work to date.

First introducing her insect series back in November 2017, Jasmine began borrowing creepy crawlers from her yard and slapping them directly onto her lids. It's enough to send chills through anyone's body that gets squeamish around bugs. But no matter how creepy each of her bug-infested looks are, it's so hard to look away from such creative makeup looks.

Last summer, the Cali native began a mini botanical series in which she included a live snail and a dead wasp in a makeup look. The experiment gave her a new appreciation for nature, having had fun combining beauty with something usually considered to be grotesque. Later, noticing dead flies in her window sills, she became intrigued with how beautiful she thought they were, influencing the makeup maven to do an entire series dedicated to insects.

"I decided to look past the stigma and saw something really beautiful, and it sparked something in me," Jasmine tells Bustle. "I knew I had to find more insects. I had to learn about them and share it all to the world."

The insect artist uses any kind of bug she can get her hands on — butterflies, beetles, wasps, you name it. No part of her eye is off limits, either, when it comes to their placement. She's had a grasshopper for brows, spiders for an inner corner highlight, and worms for lashes, so this makeup maven obviously isn't afraid to do some digging in the dirt.

While most of the insects come from her own backyard, Jasmine has credited PetSmart, Etsy shops, and even her own friends for the bugs she uses. As if it makes her creations any less chilling, all of the insects are already dead when found, so no creatures are ever harmed in the making of her art. She even informed her followers, via an FAQ post on her series, that she chooses not to purchase bugs from online sellers that admitted to killing.

Even if it gives her followers the heebie-jeebies from seeing a gigantic bug smack dab on her lids, the final makeup results are always breathtaking. A single look can take the makeup artist anywhere from 45 minutes to four hours to complete. With the photography alone taking Jasmine around 30 minutes, it's obvious that she puts her all into her craft.

The hard work surely pays off, as those who stumble upon Jasmine's series are usually blown away.

"Most people have been greatly enjoying all the looks I put out, even if that particular bug makes their skin crawl," she explains. "I didn't really know what to expect. My goal was to do something different, sometimes beautiful, and educational as well."

With each post comes a fun fact about the creepy crawlers used in her look, so the artist is sticking to her goal of researching and educating via her craft. If you didn't know that "grasshoppers descend from ancient ancestors that lived long before the dinosaurs roamed the Earth" or that "bees are covered in an oil that makes them waterproof", well now ya know, thanks to this beauty influencer turned bug aficionado.

Whether you enjoy every look or are completely freaked out by them, you've got to give it up for Jasmine. For someone who used to be extremely creeped out by bugs, she sure has a knack for bringing out their beauty.

"I've researched all the bugs used, and in doing so, I've gained this great appreciation for our world's lil' creepy crawlers, " Jasmine mentions. "This series has forever changed my perspective and I have grown to like bugs— well we still have to work on spiders. They are still awfully scary."

Maybe, just maybe, if you can get past the fuzzy legs, slimy exteriors, and buzzing noises, her amazing art will change your perspective on the tiny creatures roaming beneath your feet, too.