DIY: Ghastly, ghostly Halloween makeup

From fake blood to fake skin, trying to create a horrifying or even out-of-this-world look seems like a huge task – and can also prove expensive.

I’ve gathered up a few tips and tricks that will make getting your face on for Halloween a lot easier, a lot cheaper and a lot more fun.

True Blood:

Fake blood is probably the most widely used effect for Halloween costuming each year. And if you’ve waited too long, sometimes even a small tube can’t be found. Simple fix: make your own.

If you do any cooking, you probably have most if not all of the ingredients in your pantry. If you don’t cook, all these ingredients are easy to find and pretty inexpensive.

Fake blood: what you’ll need –

• 1 cup of light corn syrup
• Hot water
• 1 tsp. of liquid dish soap
• Red food coloring
• Blue or green food coloring (optional)

Combine the corn syrup in a medium bowl with the hot water a little water at a time until you get the right consistency. (You want it to look like blood, of course)

Add two or three drops of the red food coloring, stir and repeat until you get the color you like.

Adding a drop of blue or green will make the “blood” darker. 

Mix in the dish soap last, for a bubbly effect.

Make sure to store in the fridge until you are ready to use it. 

Before you apply to skin, apply some face cream or lotion which will keep your skin form staining.

Give me some Skin!

Part two of completing a great, gruesome and hauntingly hideous Halloween costume is using some fake skin.

This requires a trip to the pharmacy, but otherwise it is still an easy and relatively inexpensive mixture.

Also, time is of the essence with this recipe, as the gelatin tends to harden pretty quickly as the hot tea cools.

Fake skin: what you’ll need –

• 1 tbsp. unflavored gelatin
• 1 tbsp. black tea
• 1/4 tsp. liquid glycerin – usually found at your local pharmacy
• Some cotton swabs
• Willing Victim!

Quickly combine the gelatin, tea and glycerin with a cotton swab. Let the concoction cool just until you can manipulate it with your fingers – literally only seconds – and begin constructing your scars, lesions or warts.

Once you’ve gotten your “skin” attached, you can then add makeup, like foundation or eye shadow and even your “blood” to make it more hideous and horrific.

A few ideas for your fake skin and blood:

• Thin your fake blood a bit and keep in a spray bottle, spraying clothes, etc. for a splatter effect.

• Add a few hairs to your “skin” for an icky wart effect.

• Attach old doll arms or legs with the “skin” to give you a mutated appearance.

• You can layer the skin with 1-ply toilet paper to give it a peeling effect.

• Or you can add some thread, like we did, for a surgery-gone-wrong look.

Happy Halloween! 

Thanks to Rosie for being my willing victim!

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Twinkle VanWinkle was born in a small town in Mississippi. A life-long lover of music, media and food, she grew up following those three things along her path. She has almost 20 years of professional cooking under her apron strings, feeding thousands of friends, family and other folks while working in restaurants and bakeries in Oxford, Miss. She baked 300 apple pies for the “Oprah Winfrey Show” and appeared on “The Best Of...” in the same year. Along with producing dynamic entertainment content for LIN Media, she is a mother, musician and social media fanatic.

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