h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Being a bit arty (and having a healthy interest in horror makeup), one of the best things you can ever get for halloween is a small bottle of liquid latex. You can buy it from art shops, but if you can't find any, then you can also use that kind of safety glue they use in schools - the type that turns to rubber and is easy to rub off your fingers.

IMPORTANT: Latext contains a lot of horrible chemicals and smells of babies nappies (probably thanks to the chlorine). Always make sure you use it in a properly-aired room, keep it away from flames and never restrict your airways.

To make some really cool monster effects, you need cotton wool, latex, some makeup and some acrylic paint.

First, put some face lotion or baby oil on your eyebrows to reduce the possibility of them sticking. If you have a beard, you might want to do the same to your chin. Pour some latex into a shallow dish, then take some cotton wool and dipin lightly into the latex. Place the latexed wool onto your cheek, along the line of your cheekbone. Now carefully mould it into place. Do the same for the other cheek. Now, you still have about a minute or so where the wool is mouldable, so you can shape both sides to look like sunken eye-sockets.

If you like, you can do a similar kind of thing along the line of your jaw, to suggest your jawline poking through the skin.

Once your face is dry (and for heaven's sake, so NOT use a hair-dryer to speed it up or you'll get burned!), you can stark applying colour. If you want to draw attention to the 'bone' that you've built, use acrylic paint to build up the tones (use it sparingly and be careful with it). the benefit is acrylics dry quickly and are easily removed.

Now you can add make-up to shad in your brow, your eyes and your cheeks to create a nasty zombie face.

This technique can also be used for Frankenstein monsters and other gruesome effects like wounds and gashes. You can use raw latex to create scars by painting it directly onto the skin with a brush and then using the point of the handle to draw through the latex to create the scar. Apply make-up or fake blood as required.

Oh, always make sure you wash your brushes with a little washing up liquid or they'll get clogged up.

Going to the opposite end of the spectrum, I present: Costumes for the Truly Lazy.

Take one black leotard and one pair of black tights. Now get creative:

1. Use white fabric paint or white felt to make a skeleton on the leotard and tights. Either paint your face or wear a skull mask.

2. Add white gloves, a red bow tie and make up your face like a mime. (Spend the rest of the evening annoying the cookies out of everyone. )

3. To the above, you can add a red-and-white striped 'Cat in the Hat' top hat.

4. Put your hair up in a bun, add ballet slippers, straight posture and your own innate grace, and become the Queen of the Dance. (Women can pull off this look, but it's really, really funny when guys do it - 'cause sometimes a guy just wants to feel pretty, you know?)

5. Add black gloves and plenty of jewelery, and you're a cat burglar.

You just can't go wrong with a black leotard and tights...

I was going to try to recreate this http://www.cockeyed.com/incredible/paparazzi/paparazzi.html But since I have to work from noon until late late at night, I'm just going to be use some zombie make-up and wear a ripped up pair of pants and an slightly shredded "American Pride" T-shirt and see if anyone gets it.

Me and my friends (yes i know that is improper english, so bite me) think that to scare people, you do not have to dress up as somthing scary. Just somthing absoluley weird. This halloween me and my friends have all gotten some white monk robes and we will all walk in a line banging bibles on our heads (watch monty python: quest for the holy grail). Things like this will send people scattering.

Another suggestion, dress up as ommpa loompas, but oes they wouldn't let in the factory (hobo ommpa loompas, slutty ommpa loompas, you get the picture)

Most things of this sort require little money and effort (the monk robes cost 5 dollors each where we got them)

Well, I'm being a "Split personality"

I'm being half a prissy girl, half a tom-boy.

I made the costume (with help from my mum) We cut a sun dress in half and sewed it to half a soccer uniform. My hair's gonna be in a side pony-tale (complete with bows) and half my face will be covered in make up. I'll be wearing one flip flop, one trainer/sneaker.

I'm gonna argue with my self all night, and dance with my self at parties.

have fun!

I myself am going as Malvolio from Shakespeare's Twelfth Night (yellow stockings, cross-gartered and all), but here are some tips for making "historical" costumes (the kind I use the most), with very little effort involved:

For male-style outfits:
capri pants/cropped trousers can make lovely 18th century breeches if they come to just below the knee, and you can wear them with normal stockings/tights and a somewhat loose blouse. A vest works well here, especially one with a pattern, and a jacket or cardigan with "skirts" on the bottom. If you have a somewhat decent-looking pair of baggy trousers/pants, you can tie these up at the knee and they'll make good 17th century breeches.

For female-style outfits:
A long, full skirt is of course a must, and a blouse with wide, full sleeves -- not too form-fitting -- looks nice, tucked into the skirt. Certain accents can be added as necessary, for example an apron, vest, belt, or fancy hat.

Any of these costumes can be tailored to fit your specific historical needs -- check in books or online for ideas. The two easiest things to go as are a musketeer (from The Three Musketeers) or (if you're American) a colonial from the American Revolution. I've done both. The best bit is that no one will know who you are, and you'll get to lecture all the people you meet about HISTORY!!!!

Another minimal cost addition to the basic black leotard & tights, or jumper & jeans, is to use black bin bags to make bat wings. Scissors, sellotape & safety pins can be used to sculpt & attach them at shoulder & wrist. Similarly bin bags can be used for cloaks. They can be a bit fragile & produce too much rustle though.

For a little more expenditure: try charity shops for a cheap evening dress or other black items that could be adapted. Black lining material is cheap & silky, to make cloaks, wings, masks. Pop socks/knee-highs can be transformed into fingerless long gloves for the female vampire look.

To complete the vampire effect, I have used gel to plaster my hair back (helps if you have a widow's peak!) & being very pale anyway, just used dark eye make-up, mauve lipstick & eyeliner pencil to make beautiful pointed arch eyebrows. I already have prominent canines to smear with red lipstick - false teeth as sold in joke shops are very uncomfortable to wear for long.

An easy costume - if a bit hot - is to wrap yourself up in bandages (or lengths of cut up cotton sheet) as a mummy.

For those not keen on dressing up, wearing a suit & marking a few 'surgery' lines on the face, neck & hands creates a passable 'Igor'.

The creepiest, scariest costume I've ever seen was The Grim Reaper. A friend and I were walking home from a Halloween party and spotted this guy wearing the hooded black robe and carrying a very realistic-looking scythe (it may have even been real, I didn't want to try it out ). You couldn't see his face at all. He would walk silently behind people, and being followed by this guy was really... weird. You knew he was probably just a university student dressed up and having fun, but... And even if he wasn't The Grim Reaper himself, he still could have been some wacko looking for a victim...

Anyway, the costume and the act were perfect. Merely suggest, and let your audience scare themselves silly...

I haven't tried this one yet, it's what I'll be dressing up as this year if I can get a date, but anyway:

Get a white cloak, generally available from costume shops with masks, fake knives, etc. Ditch the accessories, the cloak is what you want. It costs E25 from my local cotume shop, but those $5 things that Itselementary Watson mentioned would also work perfectly. Anyway, put thin on, go to a place with a fair bit of mud, and roll around a bit. Get up and dry yourself off - you don't want to be too dirty to get into a club.

Now return home and take two wire coat hangers. Open both of them out and attach strips of paper to make angel wings. Hold a lighter some distance under the paper to just blacken the tips of the longest strips. Bend one wing halfway along so that it points parallel to your back. Attach these to the back of your cloak in whatever way you want - string, sewing, inner strap, whatever.

Hey presto! You are now a fallen angel!

A spider costume is also easy:

Dress all in black. One year I was on roller blades too.

Get two pairs of black tights and stuff them with newspaper, attatch these at your waist (you already have four limbs, if people ask you why there aren't more).

Get some string and make a 'web', attatch this behind you and also attatch it to the tights so when you lift you arms up they come up to.

Finish with black hat, attatch bent black pipe cleaners for antennae.

Add scary make-up!

The favourite outfit I ever wore for a Halloween bash was a couple of years back - a psychotic killer clown.

I bought a pair of multi-coloured clown trousers from a standard fancy-dress shop as the basis for the outfit. Then a bought a pair of white cotton gloves from a chemist/pharmacy (don't know why, but the gloves were really essential in the overall 'look'!). The final elements of the outfit were a big red foam nose, and a bright blue curly clown wig.


To put the costume together, I took an old white t-shirt and splattered red 'blood' all over the front. Then, I put together the make-up (again, from a pre-bought pack) - ghastly white face, smeared huge red 'smiley' face, and pitch-black eye sockets. The final expense was a tiny bottle of 'teeth blackener', a product a bit like nail varnish that you could use to paint your teeth into vicious-looking spikes and fangs.

I really don't know what it is about clowns, but so many people are utterly terrified by them. And if you make the effort to make them deliberately creepy, you're definitely on to a winner!



Paully

Some low-budget costume ideas:

Transvestite - put on clothes belonging to a friend or sibling of the opposite sex, about the same size. Works better on men than women. Try going in pairs.

God - Write 'God' on a name tag or piece of masking tape and put it on your breast. God did creat man in His image. If you are a woman, insist that the Bible is gender biased and God is actually a woman.

Streaker - take off your clothes. You may wish to leave your shoes on.

Also, while clowns may occasionally be scary, puppets (particularly those on TV) are infinitely scarier. Partyicularly the ones on Thunderbirds.