Last year my oldest son, Will, decided that he wanted to have a more grown-up “scary” costume but he didn’t really care for anything we saw in the stores we visited.
We finally stumbled across one pretty gory photo on reddit and he LOVED the idea. Unfortunately we couldn’t find any instructions on how to make the costume so we completely winged it and came up with something that was pretty cool and very easy to do on our own! I’ve had quite a few people ask me how I made him look like this so I thought I’d share it here on my blog.
Zipper Face Halloween Costume
Materials Needed:
- Zipper (buy several in case you mess up)
- Foundation Make-Up (to match subject’s skin tone)
- Face Paint (Red and Black)
- Fake Blood
- Glue for Fake Eyelashes
Zipper Face Instructions:
1) I could not find a flesh-colored zipper so I bought a white one and then used foundation make-up (in a skin tone that matched my son’s skin) to cover it.
2) Zip the zipper closed and then carefully try to open it towards the middle to make a hole where the nose, mouth and chin will be. If you are not able to open just the middle of the zipper, don’t worry! You can also just zip it closed a tiny bit, fit it around the nose, mouth and chin and then make it look closed towards the bottom when you are gluing it to the subject’s face.
3) Try to determine which parts of the nose, mouth and chin will be showing and cover that area with red face paint. You can fill this in better once the zipper is attached to the face but it’s easier if you can get a good, basic, dark coat on beforehand.
4) Use fake eyelash glue to attach the zipper onto the subject’s face. Once the glue is dry, add more foundation make-up to the face and the zipper to make them match even better.
5) Fill in with more red face paint (if needed).
6) Add black flecks of paint onto the red. (I read somewhere that this makes bloody make-up look more realistic.)
7) Use the gooey fake blood on top of the other make-up. This ends up being really shiny and makes the whole costume look more realistic.
8) Add black make-up around (over and under) the eyes to add to the total effect.
This was by far the easiest costume I’ve ever pulled together…and the coolest as well! It was perfect for that tween boy age when they don’t want to wear a little kid costume but aren’t sure of what else they’d like to be either.
Happy Halloween!
