Video Blogger Brigitte Dale has some helpful advice regarding social situations at a costume party. She also shows off her costume, which is incredibly simple but somehow she makes it work. Her video blogs are fun, enjoy!

Most Halloween stories are usually scary…and fictional. How about some amusing true Halloween stories for a change? These real accounts were sent in to Reader’s Digest. LOL!

Playing With Fire

Firefighters are required to wear their full bunker gear on all safety calls, even to advise homeowners of a county ordinance against burning leaves after dark. One Halloween, two fire workers waited on the porch of one such offending household, helmets in hand, until a woman finally opened the door. Promptly dropping a candy bar into each helmet, she remarked, “You boys are a little old for this sort of thing, aren’t you?” and closed the door.

Picture This

For Halloween, one child wanted to be the The Incredible Hulk. Using food coloring and a washcloth, his hands, face, neck and blond hair were dyed the same green shade of the TV monster. After his bath the next morning, a faint green tint still remained. As he was heading out the door for school, the child handed his mother a note he’d forgotten to give her the day before. The mother quickly opened the note to find, with dismay, that school pictures were going to be taken that day.

Right place, Wrong time

On Halloween night a driver called a road-service dispatch office complaining that he was locked out of his car. The dispatcher forwarded the information to a locksmith, along with one more detail: The car was parked at a nudist colony. Of course, the locksmith arrived in record time. But when he called the dispatch service later to report, he wasn’t amused. “Figures,” he said. “I finally get to go to a nudist colony, and they’re having a costume party!”

There’s no sense having a Halloween party if you’re not planning on creeping people out with horror films, monster mashes and eerie appetizers.

You can have your very own Fear Factor Food Fest with these yucky and yummy snacks:

Edible Arachnids

 

Eerie Eyeballs

 

Bleeding Heart

 

Decaying corpse flesh with entrails

Head on over to britta.com for the recipies to enjoy eerie eats this Halloween.

Need some last minute Halloween costume ideas? How about a Pun Costume?

ThatCostumeGirl has a fun list of pun costumes that are easy and affordable to make.

To name a few: Pink I, Black Eyed Peas, Dust Bunny, Cereal Killer, Bird Flu and Static Cling. Ha! Those are great.

Check ‘em out at ThatCostumeGirl.com!

If you’re a Star Wars fan AND a Barry Manilow Copacabana fan, then this video is too good to be true.

Not necessarily costume related, but we’ve blogged about Star Wars often enough and this is just weirdly awesome.

Did everyone have a good World Zombie Day?

Looks like the folks in Seattle sure did.

Awesome job, everyone!

I love watching all the free TV shows and clips on Hulu.com. I can spend hours on that site watching both old and new shows, and best of all, it’s 100% legal - Yay!

Today I browsed Hulu looking for Halloween related video clips. I found some great stuff by Howcast, perfect for this time of year.

 
This is a great instructional clip on how to get the most Halloween candy. Very funny and insightful!

Is your house haunted by a ghost? Here’s a handy tutorial to help you get rid of your unwanted guest.

Don’t get caught unprepared by a vampire. These helpful tips will keep you and your loved ones from being bitten.

Speaking of vampires, why not treat yourself to a full episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer? In this Halloween episode, people magically turn into whatever costume they are wearing. It’s frightfully hilarious.

Hulu has full episodes of Angel, too. Everyone loves this vampire with a soul. Here’s the pilot episode of the Buffy spin-off.

Ah, wonderful stuff. If you have the time, Hulu is a great place to discover old and new TV shows for free, plus loads of clips featuring the best of the web. Unfortunately, I don’t think Hulu.com works for folks outside of the U.S. Hope that changes soon.

If you know of any great Halloween-related clips, please share with us in the comments below.

With both Zombie Day and Halloween drawing closer, you’re going to need some gruesome wounds, stat! I hinted at my own wound-making recipes in a past post, but now all shall be revealed!

My favorite way to make nasty-looking wounds is with unflavored gelatin. It doesn’t necessarily have to be unflavored; if you want your wound to have different colors from flavored gelatin that’s up to you! (You should bear in mind though, that colored gelatin will probably stain your skin.) The great thing about this method is that you can use various additional media to create many different textures, and you don’t need any special glue to attach the wound to your skin. Just glob it onto you while it’s still wet and let it dry on you; it will stick by itself.

Take some cotton balls and get them wet with hot water. Stir it around to sort of break them up. Add the gelatin. How much you add isn’t that important, it will just make the texture a little different, so you can experiment. It’s better to add too much than too little, because without enough gelatin, the cosmetic won’t solidify or stick to you.

Once you have the gelatin stirred in and it’s cooled down enough to handle, glob it onto your skin and sculpt it with your fingers so that it looks how you want it to. The cotton balls give it kind of a fibrous, lumpy texture. Once the wound has dried and solidified, you can add makeup to it. Paint it to match your skin tone, then add blood, bruise colors, or whatever other colors you need. You can stick in things like pins, bolts, or other hardware, fake eyeballs like in the awesome droopy-eye wound shown above, fake knives or other costume props, or sew big uneven stitches into it.

When you’ve finished with your creepy shenanigans, the wound will peel off with a little effort, or you can try dissolving it off with water.

You don’t have to use just cotton balls, either. Try using corn flakes, tissues or toilet paper, shredded paper, or anything else you want to experiment with! All of these media will give you different textures, so think about how you want your wound to look before you make it. You can even try mixing different media together.

Similar types of wounds can be made with latex glue, or liquid latex that’s safe for use on skin, instead of gelatin. That might not be as cheap, but it depends on what’s available to you. Here’s an Instructable for using latex and toilet paper. It will also give you some good ideas about shaping wounds and creating additional, realistic textures.

You can also make great wounds using marshmallows. Just mash up some marshmallows with your fingers, and shape them to the size you want. These ones are cool because they remain soft and gushy while still maintaining basically the same shape. You should mostly paint them and decorate them before you put them on, and you have to glue them on with latex glue or spirit gum. Once they are glued on to your skin you can add some of the messier effects like blood.

Speaking of blood, I’ve given this recipe before, but it bears reiteration. It’s simple! Just mix together corn syrup with enough red food coloring to get the shade of red you desire. Common additional ingredients are cocoa powder to make it darker and to give it a realistic brownish color when it dries, peanut butter to make it thicker, or liquid soap to make it slimier.

What I have yet to figure out or find is a recipe for realistic-looking fake pus. On the other hand, maybe that’s just a bit too gross.

As a bonus, here’s some instructions from Indy Mogul on how to make a fake brain!

Here at MyDisguises, we are deadly excited for World Zombie Day on Oct. 26th. I thought it would fun to look back on a few of our posts regarding Zombies.

Costumes of the Dead
If you’re interested in learning how to make fake blood and wounds, Camilla wrote a great piece about DIY zombie makeup.

Who knew that corn syrup, cotton balls and marshmellows could be used so effectively? This is a great read for all wannabe zombies. [link]

Zombie Haiku
Everyone enjoys good Haiku poetry, and zombies are no different. Check out this post for some fun zombie Haiku examples, a link to a zombie Haiku website and a few submissions from our own commenters. [link]

moaning and groaning
walking dead are chasing me
but i run faster
 

Stevil and his Zombies
In an application to join the Evil Leage of Evil, Steve demonstrates his abilities to conjur zombies with a snap of his fingers.

Heh, I love the song he sings with the zombies. [link]
 
 

Zombie Kid Likes Turtles
This is one of the funniest Youtube videos I’ve ever seen. The poor kid is nervous about being on live TV, and when the reporter asks him about his zombie makeup, he blurts out, “I like turtles!”

The many parodies that cropped up in response are hilarious as well. [link]
 
 

Good times here at MyDiguises. I hope everyone gets an awesome facepaint job for World Zombie Day. We like zombies!

And so do turtles…

Waylou.com has a great collection of geeky Jack O Lanterns made by master pumpkin carvers. The talent and creativity of genre fans never cease to amaze me. These are fantastic!

Great stuff! Head on over to Waylou to view all 34 Geeky Pumpkins.

Get ready to play dead.

Ok, World Zombie day (coming up on October 26th) isn’t just about playing dead…it’s about feeding the hungry. Uh, perhaps I should clarify that. World Zombie Day is about having a deadly fun time, as pretend zombies, for a good cause.

Pennyslvania is proud of its Zombie heritage (think iconic films Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead, both filmed in Pennsylvania). In fact, Pittsburg has become the hub and official World Zombie Day organizer and every year they host the Zombie Fest.

This year on Friday, October 24th, there will be a Zombie Masquerade Ball. On Saturday, October 25th there’s a sort of “Zombie Com” with horror writers, vendors and activities. And Sunday, of course, is the world famous Zombie Walk in which participants bring cans of non-perishable food items for the Greater Pittsburg Food Bank.

Here’s a promotional trailer just for fun: