Zombie Prom Party Decorations!

Yesterday we hosted a Zombie Prom themed Halloween party at our house. So today, while I start taking DOWN all the decorations, let me show you all that we did!

When you entered, we had a balloon arch! My husband made it, while I was being negative and telling him it wouldn't work. (he's a saint!)

We wanted zombies, lots of zombies, so I drew some on large sheets of white paper. Friends and family members painted them black like a silhouette and then hung them in just about EVERY window.

Here's PJ taping a zombie to the outside of the French doors in our sunroom.

More zombies, and this is still in our sunroom, but check out the gym floor! The whole idea of the party was that our house was a zombie high school. The prom was, of course, held in the gym! Since our sunroom floor is still unfinished subfloor, it wasn't a problem to paint the floor orange. This was all my husband's doing. He even laid down black duct tape lines to make it authentic! Way to commit to a theme, Honey!

Also in the Gym, we had a bar with a skeleton bar tender. The best part is that the bar is a COFFIN!!!! My sister MADE it for me!!!! Best early birthday present EVER!

Ok, next to PJ making a basketball court and my sister making a life sized coffin, this is LAME. I made some SIGNS! Ha! They seemed cute until everyone in my family started showing off! They are zombie themed and cute if that helps. One says there is a blood drive on Tuesday and another announces an all you can eat blood buffet on Wednesday! Cute, huh? (have I mentioned that I am sleep deprived from nursing a baby all night?)

The signs were taped to "bulletin boards" that I made. I covered every large mirror and framed painting with paper and then taped up the signs. The cafeteria bulletin board has a zombie food pyramid (all brains)!

Next to the gym, I created a wall of school sports team photos. I found a bunch of vintage team photos and then photoshopped dark eyes and stretched out parts. I even used the clone stamp to sever a few limbs!

Speaking of photos, we made our empty (about to be renovated) bedroom into the backdrop for prom pictures. Our ideas for the backdrop never really panned out so hubby bought a plastic wall decoration from the party store. It was pretty cool and way easy! My sister took the pictures and printed them during the party. She even created a Zombie Prom 2012 banner to superimpose on the pictures! She's awfully talented!

That's me and my date.... Till death (or the zombie horde) tear us apart! And that's all for the Zombie Prom decorations!

Eyeball Cupcakes

Our Halloween party with the Zombie Prom theme is happening tonight. I am spending the day decorating and cooking all sorts of human/ meat/ flesh themed foods.

I am SO happy with the things that I have finished so far that I wanted to share them. These are my eyeball cupcakes!

I got the idea when I found these gummy eye balls at the dollar store.

I made my cupcakes and started with some peach colored frosting. Then I unwrapped and placed a gummy eye on each cupcake.

Then I used a frosting tip with a long thin slash. I am pretty sure it's the one you use to make roses. I used it to make a long thin strip of frosting where the top and bottom eyelids go.

Finally, I used melted chocolate in a piping bag to add eye lashed and eyebrows.

This did take a pretty good understanding of the anatomy of the eye AND of frosting techniques. They also took some time to get the details right, but thats OK. Who needs sleep? My eyes are wide awake!

An Awesome Alteration

A friend of mine bought this AMAZING vintage dress at the Goodwill fashion show a few weeks ago. She is planning on wearing it to my Zombie Prom Halloween party. The dress ended up being WAY smaller than the size listed, so I offered to alter it for her.

Luckily, being the vintage beauty that it is, this dress had tons of extra fabric in the skirt.

I cut a wedge from the side seam of the skirt to get the fabric to make the bodice larger. I sewed the seam back together and the volume of the skirt hid the new seam. The fabric will match but it is not going to have the black lace overlay. No worries, I have an idea for how to handle that later.

I decided to add the extra fabric to the back of the bodice right next to the zipper. Otherwise I would have been cutting through, and probably messing up, all those sequins. It means that the zipper wont be in the center of the back, but that isn't all that noticeable.

Here is the new panel sewn in place. The zipper is way over on the left side. It should fit, but that panel looks really noticeable.

So, I pulled out my sharpie marker and matched the lace pattern. I started by making small loops to replicate the netting pattern that is the background of the lace.

After the whole surface was covered in the net pattern, I made a larger flowery lace pattern.

Up close you can tell its not exactly the same.

But from arms length, and especially at night at a party, it's hard to tell that there is anything different. I showed it to my husband and he couldn't figure out that anything was different even up close.

I even drew some lines to match the gathered part of the skirt, but I didn't like how weird the seem looked.

So, I took a nod from the front of the dress and added a big bow. Now the dress should fit AND hopefully the changes won't be noticeable. Awesome!

Watermelon Witch

At this moment, this picture is getting a HUGE number of re-pins on Pinterest and driving a lot of visitors to my blog.

Unfortunately, at the time I posted that picture it was as a footnote to a blog post about carving a watermelon to look like a brain.

If you want the details on the watermelon brain, click here. If you want the details on the fruit salad vomiting watermelon witch, I now have a DIY on the Fly video where myself and Margot Potter demonstrate how to make one.

Looking at them side by side, my witch (on the left) doesn't look nearly as nice as my husband's (on the right). Mostly, I was simplifying to fit everything into a three minute video. (Although I must pay respect to the fact that PJ is a master melon carver!)

Here are the details that were left out of the video. Carve the face just like you would carve a pumpkin. I just made triangles. PJ left slits in the center like cats eyes. He also carved eyebrows and used a toothpick to attach a grape as a wart!
After the face is carved turn the melon upside down and scoop most of the fruit out through the cut at the bottom. In the video I just scooped a little from the mouth. Mix the watermelon with some grapes and strawberries for a red fruit salad and full a bowl with it. That way when you elevate the witch head, the bowl goes right below the mouth. We didn't have a bowl for the video and I realize what a difference that makes in both the illusion that she is vomiting and in the ability of your guests to spoon the fruit onto their plates.

Designing a Tattooed Lady Costume

Last time I shared how some thrift store shirts and sharpie markers were used to create a strong man costume. Today, I'm showing how a thrift store shirt, sharpie markers, and an old pair of knee high stockings became Lydia's Tattooed Lady costume.

This costume is also constructed from several thrift store pieces. You can read all about the dress by clicking here. Again, the bulk of the outfit was one really good find, in this case a blue and yellow adult size long fancy shirt.

Last year, the dress was intended for an event where I was supposed to be a ring leader. Lydia was going to be a mini-me match of my outfit. That event never happened. At the time, this dress was a little big for Lydia so I thought it could wait a year.

At some point I decided that Lydia could still just be a pint sized ring leader for Halloween this year, OR we could change it up and she could be Lydia the Tattooed Lady from the old Groucho Marx song.

And so began the hunt for tattoo lady inspiration. Once again, I found the tattooed dolls of Mimi Kirchner, and once again I am in love with what she creates.

Thankfully the dress making and idea finding was finished long ago, so all I had to do this year was make the tattoo stuff. I did have a set of store bought tattoo sleeves as a back up plan but I really wanted something a little more tailored to Lydia's size and look.

I actually used an old pair of knee high nylons for her sleeves! I just cut off the toe part and it was the perfect length for her arm! In the first picture she has the nylons on her arm, but the color was such a good match it is hard to see. Then I inserted a piece of paper under the nylons to protect her skin and drew my tattoo designs with a sharpie marker. Remove the paper and the tattoo is on the nylon sleeve and not on Lydia's skin!

I used this image of a tattooed lady for specific ideas and clear line drawings of tattoos. I borrowed the idea of her snake twisting around one arm, a bird and some flowers. I also discovered that I could stretch the nylon sleeve over a paper towel tube to draw the designs without making the four year old sit still for hours.

Here is one of the only pictures I have of the chest tattoos. The original dress was a little low in front, so I added a panel of flesh colored knit from a thrift store shirt ( it was actually scraps from Joshua's strong man skin). On the chest panel, I drew her name, a flower, and I even put a bird on it!

For the back, I cut out a large part of the original dress and added another flesh colored panel. This was the last part that I decorated and I am really proud of my tattoo skills here!

Here is a close up of the back of the dress details, which were still drawn with sharpie markers.

We will go and have some professional pictures taken next week, but I posed Lydia in our yard to get a few pictures with natural light. Here are a few of my favorites!

And finally we got a few pictures of Lydia with her daddy, the crazy mentalist from the side show.

I even got in front of the camera for a picture with Lydia and the ring leader. So now we just have to figure out which circus character Lydia's Aunt wants to be and the whole crew will be ready to go.... And I will be ready to rest.... Or start planning next year's pirate theme!

Sewing a Strong Man Costume!

When I made Joshua a mustache pacifier a month or so ago, I got the idea of making it part of his Halloween costume.

I searched the Internet for inspiration and quickly found the beautiful tattooed strong men dolls by Mimi Kirchner. I love SO much about her work!

A lucky break came in the form of that striped romper. I found it at a thrift store and it was exactly as you see it in the costume, sleeveless with long pants. I didn't have to change anything! I just added parts from a flesh colored knit shirt that was also found at a thrift store to be the outer skin of the strong man's muscles.

I was able to use sharpie markers to add chest hairs and tattoos to the skin fabric.

I thought for a while about different ways to sculpt the actual muscles. In the end it was a simple solution. I cut the sleeves off of a long sleeve shirt that was getting a little small.

So with one sleeve inside the other, I just inserted a little blob of stuffing between the two layers. I could shape it however I needed and it stayed in place without any sewing!

The belt hardware came off an old belt that didn't fit anymore. The red fabric was a wool sweater that accidentally got washed and shrunk.

And here is the outfit all put together on our little strongman! That's the tattooed lady holding him. More on that costume later.