Happy Halloween & MoneySupermarket.com Home-Made Halloween Contest

Wednesday, October 31, 2012


I love Halloween and a lot of people have been asking about how I created my Freddy Krueger style outfit.

As I'm just back from my trip to Amsterdam I didn't have much spare cash for a costume this year but I managed to save a lot of money this year with my outfit as I borrowed the jumper, hat and glove from my 10 year old brother (don't know if its a bad thing or not that I fit 10 year old boys clothes haha) as he dressed up as Freddy last year.

These ready made costumes can be quite pricey and most of them are towards the £20.00 mark which can be quite steep for an outfit most will only wear once.
I'll let you into a little secret and money saving tip though, most Halloween and fancy dress ebay sellers reduce their prices by almost half from about the end of November until the late summer so if you are planning on buying a ready made outfit you are best to wait until then to pick up something.
My mum bought this costume for my brother the April before Halloween for about £8.00 and the price has since been raised a lot higher.

If you don't fancy buying a ready made outfit, you can easilly make a Freddy style costume really cheaply by raiding your wardrobes or local charity shops for some bits and pieces.

Start by finding an old striped jumper/tshirt or even painting green stripes on an old red tshirt or vice-versa and getting stuck in with the scissors to make some jagged tears in the material.


Charity shops can be your best friend at Halloween, and I'm sure if you have a rummage around I'm sure you could find an old beat up fedora style hat, if you have time ebay is also great for finds like these.

 For Freddy's glove, I'd suggest using some cardboard and tinfoil to make knife shapes and sticking these to a normal glove. I don't know about you but I have loads of single gloves in my house with lost partners so its a good use for them rather than going in the bin.
You can also buy these gloves on ebay for a few pounds, if you look around you will be able to find quite cheap ones. I've seen some sell for about £1-£2 before.




I wore a simple black skirt and pair of black tights to go with the outfit, Freddy normally wears plain black trousers and shoes so I saved a few pennies by using what I had at home, I ripped the tights up a little and painted some red facepaint in the holes to look a little creepier.

The most important part of a Freddy Krueger style costume is his face, Freddy is a character from cult horror movie A Nightmare on Elm Street and has a scary, disfigured face.

It is fairly easy and cheap to create this look at home without the use of a mask and some simple makeup products.


For the burns/scars on the face I used liquid latex which I used to draw shapes on a piece of plastic and then stick them to my face. Latex can be picked up from most art stores for between £5-£10 for a small bottle. Once I applied the latex I filled in the bits inbetween with red, brown and black facepaints to create a scary, bloody look.

You can use any type of facepaints but grease based ones are best for this look, you can pick these up for next to nothing in the pound shop around Halloween most supermarkets also sell these pretty cheap.
You can also add a little fake blood to this, an easy way of making some home-made fake blood is by mixing, golden syrup or honey, cornflour, red food colouring and a drop of coffee with a little water.

Another way of creating the scars without using latex is using ordinary white cooking flour (most people have this in their kitchens so zero spent on that) and mixing it into a thick paste using a small amount of water, this can then be applied directly to the face in lines and should dry quickly and create a 3D effect. This is also great for those who have an allergy to latex.

In total this outfit cost me less than £10.00, not including the £8.00 my mum spent on the costume the previous year, as its recycled I'd say it doesn't count.
Recycling costumes is a great way to save money so swap with your friends and family, I might use this Freddy shirt for some kind of pirate outfit next year and the hat would also suit an Indiana Jones character.
Also using the flour method instead of the latex will also make the outfit much cheaper, I had some latex at home already so it didn't cost me a penny to buy it especially.


MoneySupermarket.com are running a Home-Made Halloween contest at the moment where you can enter by showing off your Halloween costumes and sharing what tips you have for saving some pennies by creating costumes by yourself.
For more information visit the MoneySupermarket.com Home-Make Halloween website.
They also have some fun Halloween information such as How to zombie proof your house and Haunted House Insurance.

I'd love to see some of your Halloween costumes so please feel free to post some links or pictures below.

Have a spooky Halloween and stay safe if you are out and about...

xx


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