How To :: Turn Your Husband Into A Zombie

I have a slight obsession with zombies. I love zombie movies, I have a whole theory of zombie lore. I’ve seen tons of zombie movies. I’ve read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (great book by the way). I have a small dream to be an extra (zombie) in a zombie movie. So when a few friends of ours told us about Houston’s Annual Zombie Walk I said yes.

The walk just so happened to be on Bill’s birthday so we turned it into a Zombie Birthday Party. The best Zombies always have a clear back story…ie. its clear where and when they were turned. Our back story was that we were at Bill’s birthday party and we were turned there, thus the party hats.

Without an actual zombie hanging around I had to use some makeup and inexpensive tricks to get us zombie-fied. I watched a ton of youtube videos on how to and here’s how I did it.

1. Start with a white base coat. For the most realistic look cover every part of your skin that will show, including ears, arms, hands and the back of your neck. Make sure you get into the hair line as well.

2. Darken the area around the eyes. Use eyeliner and black make up. You can get costume makeup pretty much anywhere during halloween. It works well, but I also brought in some of my every day makeup: black pencil and liquid eyeliner and a smokey eye black. It brought in a lot more depth and was able to blend it out through the cheeks.

3. Squish your face up and notice where the lines in your skin are. Blend some black into those spaces: smile lines, forehead lines, down the neck, cheek bones, and jaw line. If you mess up you can always go over it with more white.

4. Now for the neck bite, made of tin foil, paper towel, and liquid latex. Take a paper towel and cover it with glue with water, create your bite mark by tearing the paper towel until you get the desired look (this also works for cuts in the skin).

5. If you’re going to do a bite mark cut a piece of tin foil the size of the hole. Crinkle it up a bit and put it under the paper towel. Attach both the tin foil and paper towel to the skin using spirit gum.

6. Once it’s dry paint over the paper towel with some liquid latex, use it to tack down any pieces that are not connected to the skin. I did about two coats.

7. Once the liquid latex is dry and you’re happy with how it looks it’s time to add in some color. You want it to look mangled and bruised so add in some black and red. I used red lipstick and painted in some fake blood where the tin foil was. If you’re not happy with it keep working it.

8. Blood. No zombie is complete without blood. Before you go splattering blood everywhere think about how it would look if you were actually attacked/feasting on brains. I made sure Bill’s blood splatter was all over where his “wound” was, as well as on the front of his shirt and around his mouth. There was also a sweet bloody handprint on his back.

9. Blood splatter. At the every end we went outside and dipped a paintbrush on the fake blood and just splattered it on his face and shirt. It made it all come together.

10. Hair and other areas…make your hair crazy, add some baby powder to make it look dirty. Add black makeup and red to your arms, neck, legs, etc to make them look dirty and realistically zombie-ish.

Then you go join a hoard of other people dressed like zombies and walk a mile and a half through the streets of Houston.

And that’s how you turn your husband into a zombie. Has anyone else ever done a zombie walk? What was your back story?