I decided after reading yesterdays post about the haunters ball that I needed to get to work on maintance repair on my costume.....I went out to the hearse and grabbed my duffel bag took it upstairs to my room and prepared to get to work.....OMG I did not expect the funk that came out of that bag..the smell was RANCID!!! I remember the suit smelling abit after a rainy night at the haunt but I just chalked the smell up to AMBIANCE...HEH.....soooo anyway down to the basement for a lil one on one hand washing and air drying....hope it cleans up and quits smelling....I then decided to mutilate my skull shoulder pads and make them look less rubbery and more realistic...Started off by cutting all the rubber spikes off of it....I then cut up a old leather jacket into strips and applied the strips in random order over the front chest piece....applying different shades of grey tone paints to each layer...I then put a latex appliance of a broken rib bone protruding thru the chest leather piece.......I then inserted real spikes to add to the realism of it........
then it was off to the zombie jacket......I have a arm bone protruding thru the upper sleeve and decided to gore it up a little...
I am thankful that I seem to get better each and every year at this stuff and things that I thought were great the previous year only improve the next year....The jacket looks totally real now and I plan on wearing it on the 31st for our haunt meeting....
It felt reallly good to work on Halloween stuff in January ..my 6 year old Neice just walked in and asked wht I was working on and I told her Halloween stuff and she relied ...Yeah thats what I figured...NICE even the innocents know I am a freak ....287 days left....how what a busy bee I need to be

I'm the best at what I do, What I do isn't very nice

Before I had my haunted house, when I was a husband, Father working long hours at a nasty low-paying job, I would sit on the floor as my kids watched Tv and sew together a costume.
I was sewing inner tube rubber pieces that I had salvaged from beside the road, along with sticks found in the same location.I was painting thin layers of latex over clay molds, building up the thickness at incredibly slow rates of accomplishment(didn't know any better way)
All in preperation for the $300 first-place prize given in October at a mall 30 miles away.
I had told my wife that if the judges actually follwed their own stated guidelines for judging, that I would win first place prize.
("Originality,creativity, scariness, were the guidelines, I think?)
I came home after the contest all enthused telling her all about the neat costumes that were in the contest that night, I described them all to her. She finally asked, "Well, who won first place? Who won the $300?"
"Well, I did, of course!"
I gave her over half of the money, I used some of the money to then buy fake furr with for my next year's costume.
Some young man , not even competing, had a sour-grapes attitude and made some remarks when I was handed the money to the effect that he could have made such a costume!
But would he have invested the amount of time that I did toward this final end? I kind of doubt it, just going by his punkiness demeanor.
Doing the bookkepping, I might have "made" 50 cents and hour making this costume. It has to be something that you want to do and like doing, forget any money-part of it.
My costume was "Grobsteinfeinsmukker"(sp?) which is German for "Graveyard Gourmet"(Somebody had to have feasted upon those Russian-German WW2 battlegrounds!)
Some people later said he resembled a certain movie-monster, the only thing is, I made this costume at least a whole year before that movie went public!

"My Insanity is well-respected, until they wiggle free and become a stringer for a tabloid"

GRRRRRRRRRR soour grapes on costume contests...I have entered quite afew over the past years ..... I have won lots of money and prizes but for the longest time I was always getting hosed out by the regulars...it is a real pain in the butt knowing that you have the scariest most original costume in the place only to be beat out by the likes of ...austin powers batman and crew or whatever may be the latest supercraze.....My costume has come together over the past six or seven years and today is one of the scariest looking outfits to be seen in person...this last season I began wearing foam latex instead of a mask for further realism and it makes the costume more bearable as to I can wear it for long periods of time without over heating...me thinks that next year I will eat very bad smelling garlic cloves to get the offending odor to complete my suit.....oops almost forgot about the bar hussies that pop their tops and beat me from time to time....aint nothing scarier than a old bar fly popping her top

I'm the best at what I do, What I do isn't very nice

The last time I was competing in a costume contest was about 18 years ago and I couldn't believe how the judges would totally ignore these incredible facial appliances people were wearing! As if they didn't "count" or something?
Getting beat in the contest by a "Babe" in a skimpy outfit is common, but to get beat by the bar's best customer who has his entire normal face sticking out for the world to see(so they know it's him and vote for him) is pure crap, in my opinion. I guess the bar needs to get most of the prize money back as soon as possible!
"Drinks on me, buddys, pals, thanks for voting for me and my fantastic costume!"
It was a normal bluejean jacket with some straw sticking out of the cuffs, he was a "Scarecrow!"
"Scared" me away from wasting my time doing this sort of thing.

"My Insanity is well-respected, until they wiggle free and become a stringer for a tabloid"

That's why my friends and I stopped going to the public parties and started doing our own haunt instead. We used to go to the yearly party at a local bar that was hosted by a popular radio station, but after a few years of watching the "cavewoman" or "french maid" win, we decided to just invest our time and money into our own thing. The beers are cheaper, the food is better, and it's a heckofa lot more fun. And of course, the search for great ideas led me here. So I'd say i was the real winner after all.

***Trick or treat. Smell my feet. Give me something good to eat.***

i was the ONLY female at the bar party without wings and tights. they all looked cute as hell i was a dead mess. sigh.....halloween should be SCARY!!.

all things considerd, i'll take the zero.

WHYNOTGIRL.......Lol at the dead mess costume....Last year I was talked into going to a local bar for a costume party..it was one of those ..DUDE YOU ARE SURE TO WIN...kinda deals...anyways as you said every girl in the place had wings and tights on showing off their lil or not so lil butts...but there was one woman that was a swampbeast..had she not been with someone I would have proposed right there on the spot without knowing what she looked like under the makeup...she was soooooo scary......I won best costume and scariest costume as well that night but had she been my date we would have taken home best couple as well........That would have made all the locals unhappy ..all the money going home with us....heh...instaed I had to opt for taking home 2 thirds of the money and this cute lil blue M&M ......now that was a contrasting couple......wonder what ever happpend to her...dang halloween groupies!!!!!1

I'm the best at what I do, What I do isn't very nice

One year at the big costume contest held at a mall, I made a sheet-metal car with the roof, fins, working headlights and bouncing wheels on axles,my legs stuck down underneath, all in black(ignore this) the window was heavilly tinted so nobody could see in, when they really tried to look in, I would shine a small flashlight on my own painted face and I actually scared some people. I also had a small tape player inside with sound effects from the movie, yet nobody in this part of the world had seen the movie, yet! "Do you work in a body shop? You're a 57 Chevy, right?
The movie "Christine" had been out for quite awhile, I thought.
This might have been the time "Grandma" wearing two pieces of round cardboard wrapped in tinfoil was awarded the first place money.
As the MC was handing her the dough, he asked , "By the way, what exactly are you supposed to be?"
"A frying pan!?"
Happy Halloween!
Maybe if I personally knew this woman's cooking , it would have been a terrifying concept for her costume?

"My Insanity is well-respected, until they wiggle free and become a stringer for a tabloid"

would love to see some pics of the Costume GYM......loved that book and it is one of the few movies based on a book that was any good.......two boo hisses for the frying pan costume..at her age it should have been a DYING pan......

I'm the best at what I do, What I do isn't very nice

I know what it is like to get beat out by the cute girl. My wife and I went as the white tiger and Roy this year. We had a very original costume idea and very timely as well, but we lost to a girl in a cat outfit that displayed all of her wares!

Personally, aside from our idea, they could have at least voted for a woman that came as a scarecrow and was really decked out! She looked great but lo and behold they voted for the sassy little kitty! They were giving out horror movies and stuff and the girl that was there was only a girlfriend of one of the presenters. Seems a little unfair if you ask me. We came in second but there were no prizes. We did freak a few people out though! That was worth it!