My Calico Crafts: You Might Want to Get That Looked At

Halloween has made its exit again this year and now I have a few minutes on my day off to reflect back on all of the fun and busy activities of the weekend.

Each year when considering my own costume, I like to explore different opportunities to expand a skill or technique that maybe I haven't played with much before.

This year, I decided to make it make up and special effects. So I scoured around the internet and came across a few really neat looking gore style looks and settled on a red ridinghood look for this year.

The costume was a pretty simple skirt and shirt look that I sewed from the collection of fabrics I had on hand. This year the focus was mainly on the makeup.

I started with a clean, moisturized face.

Using liquid latex, I ran an old brush down my face in four strips.

I let it dry between applications and coated the stripes on my face twice before applying a third coat of latex and then strips of tissue to my face. Let me say here that I have a textured tissue and think I may have had better luck with a thinner and less textured tissue that would have both soaked up the latex and left a thinner and more realistic layer to the face.

I then did my first coat of foundation onto the tissue and then the rest of my face. I did a second round after this layer dried so that it had a very full coverage.

I then took a fine scissors to the middle of each line of tissue and cut up the middle of each one. Don't worry about the tissue ripping a bit or not having a perfect cut to it. This just makes it look all the more traumatized.

I do want to note, that all mothers around the world should cringe a little bit right now, I am telling you that what I did was take a scissors to my face. BE VERY CAREFUL if you decide to try this... you don't want to slip when getting close to your yes. I made sure to move my other hand over my eyes to protect them in case I'd slip.

Once I had the slits in the tissue, I needed to do a little bit of reinforcement of the tissue where it slipped off my skin. I also pulled occasional sections off the skin a little more inside the cuts to help give the scratches a little bit more depth to the cuts.

Using my eye shadow, I slipped a little brown and purple shadow into the inside of the cuts, That way, when placing the "bloody scab" liquid into the cuts, my Caucasian skin wouldn't lighten the blood look sometimes making it look a little bit pink instead of red. Then, around some of the places under each of the connections of the latex to my skin, I also placed the shadow to both hide the seams a bit and to make the skin look more traumatized.

I then used a fine paint brush to layer in the "bloody scab" makeup I purchased at a hallowe'en costume shop.

Adding clip extensions to my hair, completing my "normal" makeup, and attaching eyelashes to my lids, I completed the makeup look before getting all dressed up for the night.