(Part 2) Best products from r/halloween

All stuff I got from Amazon. The beard and wig came together (also came with stick on eyebrows, but they weren't very comfortable or visible so I didn't wear them), and the hat, robe, and satchel were also a package deal. Then I got some kind of bling necklace, the dollar signs multi-ring, and shutter shades which were advertised as "glow in the dark" though the glow only last about 5 minutes even though I put them under a bright light all day. I also got a long sherlock pipe that was very nice, totally legitimate (IE could actually be smoked from, though I didn't actually use it) and came in a nice storage box with felt or something inside, and was only $20.

All told, I probably spent about a hundred bucks on the costume. Just summed the current prices, $115.06 including shipping for the things that weren't available with Prime. I think that's a few dollars more than what I paid, some of the prices have fluctuated.

The beard and wig were pretty good quality IMO. The beard didn't stick on, but instead had a couple of straps that go around the back of your head and are covered by the wig. The wig was pretty thick and full of hair and looked very nice. Drinking was kind of bitch with the beard on; I drank out of bottles with moderate success if I was careful, but had to use a straw with anything from an open glass. After a while I started pulling the beard down so the mustache was below my mouth, to make it easier to drink.

The robe was nothing fancy, but looked good and wasn't too expensive. The color definitely isn't genuine but the beard/hair made the Gandalf part obvious to anyone who knew who Gandalf was. The hat and satchel were both made of very cheap thin foam, and the strap on the bag isn't adjustable I found it hung too low to be convenient. The hat also easily slid off of the wig, I had to use a few safety pins to attach it to the wig. LPT: Don't stab yourself in the skull with safety pins.

Both pieces of costume jewelry -- the necklace and the rings -- were cheap plastic. I probably could have gotten better quality stuff for a similar price, or gotten the same crap for cheaper if I tried, but it did the job. The necklace didn't have a clasp, you just slide it over your head, and it was a pretty tight squeeze. Definitely impossible to put it on or take it off without removing the wig, and someone with a particularly large head might not be able to put it on at all.

Some people "got" the costume better than others as was expected. Most people at least knew Gandalf, but I got some confused looks when I tried to explain the Cray part. A group of people took to calling me Wiz, I think as a combination of wizard and Wiz Khalifa. I really enjoyed the costume and I definitely want to use it again, especially since it was the most expensive one I've ever had. It was a lot of fun to put together and the general reaction was pretty positive, so I'd recommend it to someone who wants to put only small/moderate amount of effort for a pretty cool costume.

Credit for the awesome fake glove idea goes to the guy who posted the Severed Hand Costume a year ago, not sure who, I saw the repost from a few days ago. His costume was a guy holding his own severed hand, and the top comment was “You were born with two right arms!!!” People were discussing how to solve that when I thought of this costume idea. You’re not holding your own hand, but a zombie hand. It just seemed like too cool of a project not to build, so I went ahead and tackled it right away.

Here is a little written guide on how you can tackle this yourself at home. Let me know if you have any questions.

Here’s what you will need-

•1 Black/red spandex glove

•~1 Pint Liquid mask latex

•2” thick styrofoam sheet, you only need about 4”x14”, plus a knife/rasp for carving.

•Acrylic paint- Black, Red, Brown, Green, yellow, fleshtone

•tin foil

•vinyl gloves

•rice/beans/airsoft BBs to fill glove for painting.

•sand for texture

•tissues

•Spray paint- black, brown

•gloves for fake hand

•jacket

First, take the long spandex glove and cut a 2”x1” hole in the wrist just below the palm that your real hand slips into. If you mess up, just turn the other glove inside out and use that one. Then carve the zombie forearm out of foam, keeping it really skinny and emphasizing the muscle shape. Then it goes into the back of the spandex glove up to where it touches your real wrist, with pins stuck into the foam to keep it in place and shape the fabric. Wrinkles are good here, you want a loose skin/vein look. Fill a vinyl glove with some rice/beans/air soft bbs and stuff that into the hand part of the glove temporarily while you paint it. Then use a liberal amount of liquid latex to paint it. Make sure you wear paint clothes or an apron when working with Latex. It’s messy stuff and will ruin your clothes/carpet. Put some tin foil down on your counter, and while painting the arm itself, mix latex into some tissues laid flat on the foil for skin muscle/skin texture pieces to add after they dried. You can mix normal acrylic/tempra paint into liquid latex to make different colors. Keep in mind it usually dries a lot darker than when it is wet, so don’t make the colors too dark. Start by painting the arm entirely black, then layer on red, green, and rotten flesh colored latex. Rub up and layer the tissue and latex pieces between colors to add texture to each layer. Sprinkle some sand on the wet latex to give it a really gnarly gross texture. Then carve a foam radius and ulna bone and stick them on the back with toothpicks and coat them with white glue to strengthen them/glue them to the arm. Layer more red latex on top to make them look like they go up into the arm. Then glue a dangly bit of latex as a snapped tendon. For detailing, flick some dark red acrylic paint on with an old toothbrush for some blood splatter in logical spots like the severed part of the arm and palm. Use a glossy latex-based spray for the exposed flesh parts to break up the flat texture latex usually has. You could also buy a bottle of GO2 brand glue and paint that on, it dries clear, glossy, and flexible in 20 mins. Optionally, cut a template for the tire tread mark and tape it around the zombie wrist in a logical spot, and just mist some black primer on top of that. Finally, mist some brown/black spray paint on to make it look dirty/burnt. Go light on it at first, you can always add more, it’s harder to subtract. Once everything is dry, untie/unclamp the vinyl glove filled with rice/beans/bbs and let those drain out through the hole in the wrist. This makes the glove shrink and wrinkle and also makes the vinyl glove easy to peel out of there.

Also optional, but you can add a $7 gold wrist watch from Walmart that you can grime/bloody up with latex (which should clean off fairly easily as long as it doesn’t soak in) Have that resting further down the zombie forearm.

Then the fake hand/glove around the wrist is just stuffed with some tin foil that you shape like the bone structure of your hand. Tin foil is good because you can bend and shape it. Then you shape the tin foil in the back of the hand so that it blends into your wrist. You can use two Velcro cable ties to keep it on your wrist, and put a safety pin through the Velcro, glove, and tin foil to keep them all together. Or you could just use a shoelace and tie it on. Make sure you put your jacket on BEFORE you put the zombie arm glove on. Then throw together a gross walking dead/ apocalypse look at a thrift store, add some cheap air soft guns and your melee weapon of choice, and you are done!

Here is a few pictures to give you a better look-

Painting the Zombie arm

zombie arm glove and tin foil hand

If you liked the video, I’d appreciate a x-post or share anywhere else folks might dig it! YouTube page I’d love to get it on the screens of anyone who might want to try it out in time for Halloween!

If you like this project and want to check out more of my work and tutorials like this, check out my YouTube page Here!

This is something very near and dear to my heart as both I and my oldest nephew have food allergies. There are tons of fun, non-food items you can hand out to trick or treaters that they will love. My favorite to hand out has been play-do. Other good ones are those Mardi Gras necklaces, stickers, or stamp rings. Please consider at least adding a few different non-food items to your normal candy giving.

...Btw, if you are looking for cool teal pumpkins and don't want to paint one yourself, Amazon has a lot of neat ones to put out. I'm told Target sometimes has them as well.

I suggest Gloom

​

> In the Gloom card game, you assume control of the fate of an eccentric family of misfits and misanthropes. The goal of the game is sad, but simple: you want your characters to suffer the greatest tragedies possible before passing on to the well-deserved respite of death. Play horrible mishaps like Pursued by Poodles or Mocked by Midgets on your own characters, while trying to cheer your opponents' characters with marriages and other happy occasions. Printed on transparent plastic cards, Gloom features an innovative design by Keith Baker. Multiple modifier cards can be played on top of the same character card; since the cards are transparent, elements from previously played modifier cards either show through or are obscured by those played above them. You'll immediately and easily know the worth of every character, no matter how many modifiers they have. You've got to see (through) this game to believe it! The second edition includes sturdy new packaging, rules fixes, timing icons, reminder cards, and more; plus it's fully compatible with the first edition game and supplements. It's sure to delight even the most despondent Gloom fan! 

Someone I know pointed this out to me about two years ago. I tried it out and it sucked. There's NO WAY the eyes in the OP's pictures were made with these decorations.

• The cardboard tubes aren't durable enough for long-lasting decorations. At the first sign of rain they'll turn to mush, and they'll soak up morning dew like nobody's business. A halfway decent breeze will send them flying, or at the very least dislodge them from their perches.
  
• They're difficult to set up, being round and all.
  
• Glow sticks suck. Even the big full size ones aren't bright enough to cast a good spooky glow on the clearest of nights, and if you've got a fog machine, or natural fog rolls in, or if the bushes you're hiding them in are somewhat dense, you're screwed.
  
• Glow sticks suck even more. They have to be replaced every night, assuming you want more than one night's worth of decorations. Aside from the cost, that's a lot of plastic to throw away.
  
• The light from the glow sticks is inconsistent, being brighter on the bottom of the tube where they're resting than in the middle or on the top, and a lot of light leaks out the sides.
  
  So, what to do?
  
  Spirit Halloween makes these ($17 as of this writing) which are pretty darned good. They're AC powered, three to a set, randomly blink, made of dark green plastic so they blend in really nice, and have some pretty sturdy plastic hooks to hang them.
  
  But you want to go homemade, here's how I addressed the shortcomings of the toilet paper roll version.
  
  

1. Crimp both ends of the tube into half-moons, like this, but large enough so the crimped parts overlap. Close one end and seal it with a piece of sturdy tape (duct, gaffers, etc).
   
2. Cut out the eyes as you'd want them.
   
3. At the top of the tube (defined as the highest point of the tube above the eye cut-outs when the tube is set flat on a table) cut two small holes about 3" apart, centered on the tube.
   
4. Run a black zip-tie through the holes and connect, leaving a loop of plastic to act as a hanger. Trim any excess zip-tie.
   
5. Spray the inside and outside of the tube with a quick coat of black PlastiDip. This will protect the tube from moisture. Allow it to dry.
   
6. Put a piece of painter's tape over the outside of the eye holes, then give the inside a quick blast of silver spray paint. Remove the painter's tape and allow it to dry.
   
7. Buy these. They're battery powered; I've had them last about four evenings without dying so they're pretty efficient, and the batteries are replaceable when the time comes. Put one or two into each roll, then crimp the other end of the tube shut and use a piece of tape to keep it closed.
   
8. If you want more of a "glowing" eye effect, tape a piece of frosted plastic over the eyes to diffuse the light. You can also color the plastic with markers to get difficult colors and patterns, like bloodshot eyes and such.
   
   Yeah, this is pretty complex for a little DIY decoration. OTOH, my daughter and I had fun making them together and we now have about a dozen of them that are now going strong on their third Halloween.

I know you said you want a regular light bulb size, but I really recommend you get the ones that are a long tube instead. They're much stronger than any you can find in a bulb style and they're not that expensive, I've seen them at Wal-mart for under $20 for a 24" with all parts necessary.

But, If you really need a bulb just make sure you don't get the incandescent style, those are garbage. You literally have to place them right next to whatever you want to glow and they've always burnt out on me after a few days with minimal use. CFL (the twisty ones) bulbs are ok, but you'll need several and maybe some reflectors to really give them range. A blue CFL bulb will also cause fluorescent things to glow, and they're much brighter and have a longer range than the black light CFLs, but then everything will be blue. Personally, I think it looks pretty cool, but it might not serve your purposes. There's also LED blacklight bulbs now, I don't have much experience with those, though.

Mermaid and a merman? :) They make super cute fish scale leggings and tops with shells on the chest. I bought this mermaid headband for an underwater themed birthday party and it was super cute. Your husband could wear a fish scale tank and have a little trident, maybe put some aquatic stuff in his beard? Fish scale makeup is really easy too, just a fishnet stocking/wig cap over your face and then apply shimmery eyeshadow.

If your up for trying out something a little strange, you sound like you have the perfect body to pull off a dominatrix costume. Get yourself a pair of sexy tall boots, stockings, garter belt, and a riding crop. Something like this will do for cheap, and you can get a kit with riding crop, cat tails whip, and fuzzy handcuffs for $5.48 http://www.amazon.com/Genuine-Leather-Riding-Crop-Whip/dp/B000C09XX8, http://www.amazon.com/Cat-Nine-Tails-Whip-Leather/dp/B000C05Z9Y/ref=pd_bxgy_sg_text_b, http://www.amazon.com/Steel-Fuzzy-Black-Furry-Handcuffs/dp/B0010VTTTQ/ref=pd_bxgy_sg_text_b. Bonus points if you can find someone to be your "slave" or "pet" for the night! Good luck and have fun!

We play the card game Werewolf!
There are simplified versions you can even just make your own cards for or ones premade that tend to add in extra characters.
The basis of the game is finding who is the werewolf among the villagers. We play this game each year during our Halloween party and everyone loves it! It's simple, fun, fast and certainly perfect for a family party!

http://www.brenbarn.net/werewolf/rules.html

http://www.amazon.com/Asmodee-849418-Werewolves-Millers-Hollow/dp/B0009Z3M8S