Halloween – Homemade Face Paints, Food and Ideas
Frighteningly Frugal Fun!
The average American family spends over $100 per year on Halloween goodies. As your kids drag you through aisles full of ghosts and goblins, the scariest thing about Halloween is threatening to leave bite marks in your pocketbook. No wonder so many moms flee screaming from the store… It can be much less expensive and a lot more fun to devise your own chilling creations. Here are a few tips that you can use to stave off the greenback gremlins and exercise your creative muscle. It won’t hurt a bit!
Face Paint
1 tsp. corn starch
1/2 tsp. water
1/2 tsp. cold cream
food coloring
Mix all ingredients together in an old muffin pan and you are ready to paint. This amount makes one color.
Fake Wound
1 Tbsp Vaseline
tissue
cocoa powder
2-3 drops red food coloring
Place Vaseline in a bowl. Add food coloring. Blend with a toothpick. Stir in a pinch of cocoa to make a darker blood color. Separate tissue. Using 1 layer, tear a 2×3 inch piece and place at wound site. Cover with petroleum jelly and mold into the shape of a wound. The center should be lower than the sides. Fill the center with the red petroleum jelly mixture. Sprinkle center with some cocoa. Sprinkle a little around the edges of the wound to make darker.
Wormy Apples
6 apples
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup walnuts, chopped
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter or margarine
1/2 tsp. each ground cinnamon and nutmeg
6 gummy worms
1 cup whipping cream,(optional)
Core apples from blossom ends, leaving stem ends intact. Mix raisins and walnuts and stuff into cavities of cored apples. Set apples, stems up in a 9×13 pan. In a saucepan, mix brown sugar, water, butter, cinnamon, and nutmeg; stir over high heat until mixture boils. Pour hot syrup around apples. Bake, uncovered, at 350°, basting occasionally with syrup, until apples are tender when pierced and skin begins to crack, 30 to 35 minutes. Remove apples from oven; cool in pan at least 10 minutes.
Set each apple in a small bowl and spoon syrup around fruit. In the top of each apple, cut a hole large enough for one of the candy worms and tuck one end into each apple, leaving most of the worm dangling. Offer cream to pour over apples. Makes 6 servings.
From: Suz
You can add this to your Halloween hints—I make excellent monsters–I use a women’s mud mask for the base skin, let it dry & crack and shade with dark eyeshadow, rim the eyes with red and chew those dental tablets that show where you need to brush —looks like a bloody mouth… and twigs and baby powder in your ratted up hair. Make a shroud out of a sheet and tear the edges off and stomp it in the dirt.
- Fake Blood– Mix 2/3 cup white corn syrup, 1 tsp. red food coloring, 2-3 drops blue food coloring to darken and 1 squirt dish soap (helps blood to run well).
- Abrasions -Dab brown, red and black eye shadow on area. Apply blood over area with cotton balls. Use comb to gently scratch area in one direction. Apply cocoa or dirt over wound with cotton balls.
- Black Eye -Apply red and blue eye shadow to depressions around eyes.
- Bruises-Rub red and blue shadow over bony area to simulate recent bruises.
Blue and yellow eye shadow to create older bruises. - Look Old – Cover face with baby powder. Draw dark lines on your skin for wrinkles. Smooth edges to blend. Cover again with baby powder. Add baby powder to your hair to create gray hair.
- Deviled Eyeballs – Make deviled eggs. Add a green olive with pimento in the center for an “eyeball”.
- Radioactive Juice – Mix equal parts Mountain Dew and blue Kool-Aid
- Toxic Juice – Add some green food coloring to lemonade for a spooky color!
- Brains – Scramble eggs with some green, yellow and blue food coloring
- Bloody Eyeballs – Boil cherry tomatoes 30 seconds. Allow to cool; then peel skin.
- Goblin Hand – Freeze green Kool-Aid in a rubber or latex glove, float in punch.
- Use the tape from old cassettes or black yarn to make spider webs.
- Use cotton balls stretched out for small spider webs.
- Glass Jack-o-Lantern – Outline a pumpkin face on a spaghetti or pickle jar with black paint. The paint around the outside of it with orange paint. Place a candle inside for a jack-o-lantern.
- Halloween Guess It Game
In this game, you challenge the participants to reach into mystery boxes filled with creepy things and try to guess what each item is. The person with the most correct answers wins the game. An example is if you want them to guess “grapes”, you might try to confuse them by saying, “I think it’s eyeballs…”
Cut a hole in the top of a shoe box or laundry box for each item to be used. Cover the box with black spray paint. Decorate each box with pumpkins or spiders for a more festive flavor. Place the following items inside, one per box. Be sure to place enough of each item so the guests can adequately “feel” the guts.- Eyeballs – grapes or peeled cherry tomatoes
- Intestines– Cooked Spaghetti
- Skin– oil a piece of plastic bag
- Brains– scrambled eggs
- Hair- an old clown wig
- Bones- thoroughly washed chicken bones placed in some sand
- Vomit-chunky salsa
- Fingers-hot dogs cut into finger sized pieces
- Teeth– corn nuts, pine nuts or popcorn
- Have a Pumpkin Hunt – Hide mini pumpkins like you would Easter Eggs. Let the kids find and decorate them. For small children use glue sticks with construction paper cut-outs for decorations.
- Edible Slime – Pour lime gelatin into a glass bowl. After it is partially set, add gummy worms. Chill until lightly set. Then serve slopped all over the plate.
- Bloody Popcorn – Add red food color to melted butter and pour over popcorn.
- Freeze gummy worms in ice cubes and add them to drinks. Cut gummy worms in half if needed.
jennifer
Love the makeup idea, just wondering about staining. My oldest child does full face makeup, hate the thought of her going to Church/school with huge stains on her face. Have you had any problems with cleanup?
Tawra
I just scrub mine with a face soap that has the little “beads” in it. I can’t say it won’t stain for sure but I haven’t had many problems with it. The worst of course is red. I did have some slight staining on one kid from the red but it wasn’t too noticeable.
Kathy
I love these game ideas and the items to use…soooo cute!! Thanks!
Deborah Sawyer
Congrats on finding the great deal on those chairs! My daughters & I are large and we have tile floors. The chair legs always catch in the grooves between tiles and weaken the base. Modern furniture is cheaply made and we go through a set of chairs about every six months, so I’m always looking for deals on used, sturdy chairs.
Grizzly Bear Mom
I’ve heard of using SHORTENING to remove makeup. Never tried it. I you have some, do so. It works on the same principle as cold cream, the grease slides the color of your face.
charmla carpenter
Thank you for the wonderful Halloween ideas! I have a 5 year old son and operate a daycare. These children “think” they like scary things, but sometimes Halloween gets to be too much. Thanks to your ideas, we have been able to make fake blood, “owies” and scary faces together and that has helped to ease the fear. I hope it stays with them when they go out on Halloween night! Thanks a bunch!
Jennifer Hylton
The first idea is for what I call Spider web balls and the second is Marble ice.I found these great ideas for Halloween and Christmas on this site.http://jennyandthemagicfeather.blogspot.com/2012/08/friday-finds_17.html
I also found another good idea. Take empty toilet paper rolls and paper towels rolls and cut eyes in them and then put a glow stick inside and hide them in bushes, trees, wherever you can to create spooky eyes :)
R
How about coloring facial hair (for my hubs)? We only need to color his mustache black, so I hate to purchase something unless something homemade would stain too badly.
Jill
For something like a mustache you could use some mascara or an eyebrow pencil if you have one.
R
Ah! I didn’t even think of that. Great idea. Thank you! :)