How to Make a DIY Zombie Costume
Okay, okay, so you know that I like making beautiful things, and this isn’t exactly pretty … A zombie costume is not my favorite DIY project, but this year my children asked me for a zombie costume for Halloween, and I can’t resist helping them out and making something cool to make them happy with their costume. However, I must admit that it has been a lot of fun to get my hands dirty making this costume! 🙂
The first thing I thought was to look through their closet to see what clothes I could take advantage of. Actually, zombies are always dirty, full of holes and blood on their clothes, so I’m not going to bother spending money on clothes that I’m going to destroy later. And since my boys are very adventurous, their sweatpants sometimes end up torn at the knees and with unfixable spots. So perfect! I found a pair of pants for each of them and then some white shirts that were already stained, so I decided to use those, too.
Actually this costume is not difficult at all, but it takes several days to do make, so it is better to leave enough time not to be in a hurry.
What you need:
- A pair of pants, best if they are not too dark
- A white shirt or t-shirt
- Fake blood
- Coffee
- Black tea
- Black paint or brown paint
- Red paint
- Scissors
Process:
The first thing we are going to do is take a basin with water and put all our clothes inside. Then we will take several black tea bags and let them infuse in our water. What I did was break the bags and undo them, so that the tea would get through all the slits of the garments. We will leave it like this all night and then hang the clothes and let them dry. This step will give our clothes that tint of dirt, and it will also leave a few irregular spots that will look great.
You can skip this step if you are in a hurry to finish the costume. It gives a background tone that looks great, but if you’re in a hurry, you can make the spots in the next step.
Once you dry the shirts, even if they are wrinkled it doesn’t matter, since they will look better for the costume. The next step will be to get a cup of prepared coffee and with it we will make more stains. I did it directly by wetting my fingers and splashing on the shirt, but you can also do it with a brush or paintbrush. You have to make spots with different shapes: splashes, fingerprints, etc …
Then we will make even more stains with black paint (yes, zombies are very dirty!!!). As with the coffee, I did it with my fingers, getting them a little wet with water and then smearing the paint on my fingers. This way we can “clean” our hands on the clothes, and it seems that someone has grabbed it. We can also make splashes.
Once dry, we take scissors and cut the clothes in some places, and tear the fabric open with our fingers. Be careful in this step, since the fabric opens very easily. Do it slowly and carefully.
Finally we paint with blood or red paint. We will do it with a brush and as follows. Put it on a plate, and wetting the brush with a small amount of paint, to see how it covers. The first thing we will do is paint around the tears in the fabric, so that they seem full of blood. This step looks spectacular on clothes. This is what will really make our costume look cool.
Lastly you have to paint your face white, with dark circles around your eyes and wounds with blood. It also looks great if you use white or gray spray on your hair. And you’ve got your zombie costume! A low-cost costume and I think the result looks pretty good.
Please leave me a comment and tell me how you did it, or better yet, upload a photo to social networks and tag me with @myberryown so I can see it! Happy Halloween!!
