Trashy Halloween

It’s the day before Halloween and costume inspiration still hasn’t materialized. Or payday comes the week after Halloween and buying a costume is out of the question.

Whatever the situation, a quick inventory of the household cabinets can save the day.
Many whole costumes or parts of costumes can be made from things that can be found easily and thrown away afterwards, like toilet paper, cardboard or even a few spare pennies.

Toilet-paper zombie

Cornflakes, toilet paper and gelatin are all staples of a cheap and easy zombie costume, senior Nicholas Peters said.

Peters perfected his ensemble during last year’s Zombie Parade, an annual pre-Halloween gathering where students put on their best impersonation of the undead and take to the streets. The march is happening Thursday, Oct. 30 this year.

First, slather yourself in something clear and sticky (and skin friendly), so the materials will stick to your skin. Peters said normally you would use liquid latex to adhere the toilet paper and cornflakes to your skin, but people who are allergic to latex or who don’t feel like purchasing it can use clear gelatin to achieve the same effect. The cornflakes should go on first and will create the crumbling-skin texture zombies are famous for, and toilet paper serves as a good substitute for the stretched, leathery look of necrotized flesh.

“It was effective – people were scared,” he said, remembering last year’s Zombie March. “And it stayed on perfectly all night. I’m definitely planning to do it again.”
Peters also recommends layering the toilet paper on top of wet cotton or red liquid to create pussy, bloody blisters. He also recommended making sure each layer of gelatin or liquid latex is dry before applying the next.

Pocket-change metal man

For his first Halloween as a college student, senior Jamal Miller was lost when it came to creating a costume.

“Seven of us decided to go as a bowl game, and I got to be the Copper Bowl,” he said. “A few hours before we went out, I still had no idea what to do, and then someone suggested pennies.”

The first idea was to glue some pennies onto a shirt, but Miller figured that would take too long. So he grabbed a gluestick, emptied out his change jar and started gluing the pennies to his face – but not before carefully washing the grimy bits of copper. He estimated that by the time he was done, about 30 pennies were stuck to his face.

Miller said at first, no one knew what he was dressed as, but as soon as he got together with the rest of his friends people started to get the drift. The group was out for nearly four hours, and Miller said by the end of the night, half the pennies had melted off his face.

“Surprisingly, there was no skin damage, no breakouts,” he said. “Elmer’s is nontoxic, so my face made it back alive.”

Boxes of love

Nicole Zausmer, a sophomore in the theater and drama department, is currently working as a costume designer on Starrynight Productions’ version of “The Rocky Horror Show,” which is currently on stage at the John Waldron Arts Center. She said as far as building a costume out of trash is concerned, mattress foam, tin foil and cardboard boxes make the best costume materials.

“Mattress padding is really easy to work with, especially if you spray paint it,” she said. “We used it for the alien costumes (in The Rocky Horror Show).”

Making yourself into the Tin Man with foil and a plastic funnel is a classic, she said, but the most versatile and commonly used trash item is the cardboard box.

“I saw a romantic dinner for two, one time,” she said. “This guy cut holes for his head, his arms, and then he decorated it like a table, with a cloth and flowers and everything.”

Zausmer said she couldn’t think of a Halloween costume she had worn that didn’t involve cardboard. Once she went as a CD case, taking a slender cardboard box, cutting out holes for her arms and legs and plastering a blown-up photo of the Backstreet Boys on the front. Another time, she went as a mailbox. A small box placed over her head served as the box, and her body was the post. She made the mailbox’s door hinges out of binder rings and stuck flowers in her shoes in imitation of the ground.

She said it’s easiest to just go to a grocery store and ask a manager if they have any spare cardboard.

“It’s perfect for a broke college kid.”