The Hot Halloween Costume Ideas Blog

The Moon!

2011-07-28T10:19:00.000-07:00

A little bit about me before we begin: I love Halloween. Every year I start looking all over the internet for ideas and inspiration several months before Halloween arrives so I will have plenty of time to make my costumes. I usually try to make two to three for myself every year to get the most out of the holiday!

Over the years I've started helping my friends with their costumes too, and that’s what I’m writing about today!

Last year, my friend Emily requested to be the moon. After searching everywhere, we couldn’t find any ideas online for what we figured would be a fairly common idea. So we built our own, here’s how:

I started by getting a workout yoga ball to create the circle shape. Over the next week, I coated the ball over and over in paper maché until it had a hard shell. We cut a hole in the back to deflate and remove the ball and leave space for her to be inside. I used black and white paint to cover the ball with shadows and added rope to make craters. Then we used black rope to rap around her back and through the sides of the moon to keep it held up.

She wore all-black clothes and we used silver face paint around her eyes to complete the look!

Introductions

2011-07-14T10:52:00.000-07:00

Just thought I'd take a moment to introduce the authors of this blog here:

Chris Kaufhold

This is me with my youngest daughter, Lainey. My wife and I had her in March of 2010. We have a total of three kids who we love to hang out and play with. I'm a big nerd, if you couldn't tell from my first costume idea post (Dr. Franken Stein / Mad Scientist - http://thehothalloweencostumeideasblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/dr-franken-stein-mad-scientist.html). I love video games, Pokémon, and anything with a ninja or robot.

Brian Smith

This is Brian. He's a hip, young dude and aspiring artist. He's the genius who wanted to start this blog and has a lot of awesome ideas to share. He also does a lot of graphic and tattoo design work.

Rachael Jones

Rachael is the Halloween Queen. Every Halloween (and Half-o-ween) she has the best costumes. She loves dressing up and creating costumes. Rachael's also an avid photographer and fashion designer. I can't wait to see what she posts.

Dr. Franken Stein / Mad Scientist

2011-07-14T09:05:00.000-07:00

I recently got into the anime Soul Eater with the help of Netflix's instant streaming. The show's awesome and the characters are all cool and colorful. Many of them would provide great Halloween costumes since the show takes place at the grim reaper's school located in the middle of Death City. Since I've started watching the show, I've always wanted to make a costume of Dr. Franken Stein:

Dr. Stein is a professor at the academy and an expert of martial arts. He also wields a crucifix-shaped scythe on occasion.

I think this would be incredibly fun to make and wear as a costume, especially for fellow Hot Halloween Costume Blog author Brian Smith. Stein is a witty, intelligent character who chain smokes while teaching his students and tracking down witches.

The basic costume would be fairly simple:

Start with a plain white lab coat, form-fitting dark-green pants, and a turtleneck sweater. You'd also need a pair of glasses and maybe some candy cigarettes (unless you're a smoker). He wears tan and white boots, although any white or tan boot or sneaker would look just fine.

To make it more detailed, you'd want to face paint the stitches coming under and up the left eye. You could then either stitch (if you have the time, patience, and equipment) the lab coat around the sleeves, lapels, pockets, and sides (or draw it in with a fine-point permanent marker). With the sweater you could go several ways. You could find a multi-color sweater at a thrift store or find several and patch them together. Both would look great, but again, it comes down to time, patience, and personal preference. The boots wouldn't be difficult, either. Take a pair of hiking or construction boots and cover with white fabric with tan stitching (like socks for your shoes!).

The tough part would be the screw in his head. I guess you could go a few way with this: either make it as part of a head band or tape it on to your head. Head band would probably be the way to go. When Stein is preparing for a fight or thinking hard about something, he often turns this screw, so if you wanted to do the same, you'd have to make at least the head of the screw can pivot.

My personal recommendation for the screw would be to cut some foam into the screw shape (flat-style), spray paint it a metallic silver and attach this to a brad. Then I'm thinking a thicker construction paper head band should be enough to hold this in place, keep the screw in place but turn-able, and, if kept narrow enough, should be minimally visible (at least from the front or back). Maybe cover this with a white, straight-hair wig?

I found a few pictures fellow nerds put up online of their costumes on Google:

Awesome.

And apparently they sell the costume online (http://www.hellocosplay.com/soul-eater-cosplay-dr-franken-stein-costume-p-1609.html) for $105.00. But I think you'll have much more fun (and feel more rewarded) putting it together yourself.

The Hot Halloween Costume Ideas Blog

2011-07-12T07:32:00.000-07:00

Welcome! The Hot Halloween Costume Ideas Blog is a resource for men, women, and children to explore great new costume ideas this holiday season.

Background
The Hot Halloween Costume Ideas Blog came about from a group of friends who love Halloween and wanted to share our great ideas with anyone who enjoys the holiday as much as we do.

Unfortunately, there's just no way for us to get around to making every costume we think of (even though we celebrate Halloween twice per year: Halloween and Half-o-ween) so we're passing our other ideas on to anyone who can appreciate and enjoy our ideas.

The Plan
We'll be constantly updating this with not only ideas, but also possible solutions for putting together crazy costumes. We'll be running this year round so you'll be prepared for Halloween, Half-o-ween, and any costume party in between! We'll keep you in on what we're doing and how we're doing it. Your comments and feedback are appreciated and we can't wait to see what you do with our ideas. Soon we'll open a Facebook and Twitter account so you can follow us through your favorite social media form.

Thanks for visiting the Hot Halloween Costume Ideas Blog!

-Chris