How-To Zombie Costumes



While making our Zombie Housewives of the ApocalypseZombie Housewives of the 1960s and Zombie Housewives of the 1970s books, Julie and got good at understanding zombie makeup, mannerisms and a helluva lot about their motivations as we devised creative plots for our stories. 


This pic (left, above) was for the book, so the colors were strong so we could make the effects we wanted which was to remove color from all but lips and hair.


Being a zombie is about attitude, looking past things with a blank stare

Anything can be a zombie - pajamas and zombie makeup, work uniform and zombie makeup, well, let me just show you some more from a zombie walk -

You can take a simple regular guy, give him a grizzly death, and turn him into a zombie.




Take something normally seen as cute and sweet and zombie it up - 


Consider doing a highly recognizable celebrity in zombie form -



Zombie makeup: Simplest way is to use Elmer's glue - put it on and let it dry and then put face makeup over it and you can peel it back, fill the inside with blood to be oozing, build up purple bruises around it, purple mottling areas in the skin where blood pooled during death.  You can make fake skin that is more substantial with paper pulp and Elmer's. Or, simply buy fake skin in the Halloween shop. Think about shadows under the eyes, sores and cuts, bruising and bleeding, graying skin.

**Don't have makeup? Mix Elmer's glue with charcoal ash from fireplace or firepit. You can spread it on, let it dry, peel some back for a flapping skin creepy look, and when done for the evening, peel the whole thing off.**

Even though you want to be generous with blood, you need to be careful. A lot of fake bloods stain clothing and skin. If you don't mind having a red face the rest of the week, then go for it. Otherwise, I suggest you test the fake blood on your skin. If it seems to stain, try putting a thin coating of Elmer's glue on your skin, let it dry, and then put the fake blood on it. Wear it a while and then peel off the glue and see if worked. Your other option is a layer of Vaseline on your skin before putting down blood.

Here's my 4 vids that show the steps I went through to do makeup for a virtual zombie walk online -









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