Coolest Homemade Jack Skellington Halloween Costume

I decided to do a Homemade Jack Skellington Halloween Costume from Tim Burtons The Nightmare before Christmas. The entire costume cost roughly $30.

The suit: the suit started with a black suit/white button up shirt from a thrift store. The strips are white acrylic paint just run down the front in strips. A little splatter to me didn’t effect the look. I mean he’s dead. He’s gonna be a bit grundgy. The shoes were luckily previously owned but any black shoes would have worked. The gloves were bought at a costume store. The neck piece was a large plastic FOR RENT sign, the kind you see stuck in the yard with some sort of advertisement. I used our rental house’s. It was sprayed black several times.

Then covered in strips of the white acrylic paint to match the suit. On the front of the necktie is a clay molded bats head painted black with white eyes then hot glued to the necktie. That pretty much completed the suit and accessories.

The head: This was the hardest part. I started off with a 2 foot wide balloon. Hung it upside down from the roof of our garage. Purchased 2 bottles of wood glue and mixed it with water. Then tore strips of newspaper out in 1″ x 12″ strips laying them layer by layer (this was horribly annoying to me). It’s very humid in Florida and it was not drying fast enough.

I continued on until I had 5 layers of paper mache. That’s when I decided this wasn’t working quite how I planned. I called my brother in the US Navy. He brought me aircraft grade fiberglass and mixture. Unsure of the proper mixing strength I decided to just wing it. It was the stickiest stuff imaginable. Kept peeling off and bunching up, driving me mad. I finally got one good solid coat on it and left it alone out of anger.

The next morning I checked on it. Hard as a rock and with an awesome texture. Felt great to the touch! I sanded it down a bit and was really pleased. I cut 2 triangle holes for eyes and didn’t like it. I then saw my roommate making clay fire blown figurines, he said the stuff hardens really well so I used some to create the eye brows, and nose.

Then took a blowtorch to it lightly to harden it up. Spray painted the entire head white then drilled 36 holes through the mouth to stitch his grin in. Then I stuffed his head with cotton and put it all on. This Homemade Jack Skellington Halloween Costume was the result.

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