Classic zombies are always fun, right? You know not so gory, very little blood, not too scary, lots of ghoulish fun!
A few weeks ago my darling Royce and I went to see the James Brown biopic – Get up on It! Of course he instantly started quoting and reciting verbatim lots James Brown shouts and lyrics. Eventually, he found a video of a CNN interview on YouTube of the performer whacked out of his mind, and somewhat hilarious!
Royce played this video over and over (still does) for weeks. So, I decided why not make our costumes as such- James Brown and his backup singer. With Halloween being the theme we went into zombie mode, and because this was the first Halloween he has dressed up (as an adult) we kept it as simple with makeup as possible.
Zombie James –
We bought a suit jacket and pants from a thrift store in town.
- I ironed and glittered the suit, then bought a stencil and started outlining on the back of the jacket with white acrylic paint. I went over the outline with craft glue and put glitter on that.
- Then painted the legs of the pants and added round mirror tiles. After that, I cut an old gold shirt into two triangles and sewed them into the lower pant leg- to make a bell bottom shape.
- I added more glitter and embellishment, and made a cape out of an old maxi skirt.
- I took an old human hair wig (of mine) put styling foam and gel in it then let it dry. After that I curled it in large one inch curls then brushed it toward the back. I couldn’t find my holding spray so we ended up putting more gel.
- We put green on the entire face and upper chest then filled in the other spaces with black.
- Finally we added some rings for bling, and black shoes.
Vegas Backup Singer –
The dress and shoes were purchased over the summer. The shawl was an old maxi dress cut in half with slits for arm holes.
- I made the headpiece out of foam flower blocks, a black head band from goodwill, cardboard, foam glitter paper, black felt, a feather boa and feathers, party bead necklaces, and fabric scraps.
- I cut out a shape with the black felt and began gluing down the beaded necklaces to make the front of the headpiece.
- Then cut cardboard and hot-glued the feather boa onto the front, and started gluing individual feathers on top of that.
- I cut a hanger and put glitter foam paper on the ends and glued it down as well.
- Then added the flower foam and head band to mount the feather piece onto. After that dried I glued on two straps to tie in the back of my head once I have the entire piece on. It was very heavy!
- With the remaining boa I glued the ends together to form cuffs for the wrist.
- I completed the look with a (rushed) look from the absolutely stunning Vancouver, Canada makeup artist Samantha Ravndahl of Batalash Beauty. Her tutorial found on YouTube is as amazing as she is, and I hoped to do something not exactly like it but similar. I looked super dead.
I wish we could have given more time to the makeup, however, for 15 minutes its not bad at all! We rushed out and had the time of our past lives as Zombie James Brown and his Vegas backup singer.
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