A step by step guide to looking freaky this Halloween

Whether your idea of good is terrifying a lá Cady Heron or hot a lá Regina George, we all want the “Oh my god, I never thought of that” wow factor with our outfits.

This gets a bit tricky when you look at you bank balance, but all these outfit ideas can be recreated for under £10.

Do some character specific make-up

You don’t have to get an outfit for people to tell who you are. A few slaps of face paint and you can convey the character you’re after. Easy.

Step 1: Scrunch your hair like Heath Ledger or slick it like Jared Leto, but dampen it a little before adding your colour. It’s important to do the hair colour first so it dries before you get it all over your outfit. Don’t worry about permanently damaging your hair with dye: I used face paint here and it dried out fairly quickly – no stains, no split ends (yet).

Step 2: With this character and almost any other Halloween persona, start your face off with a few layers of white paint.

Step 3: Next, start off lining the rim of your eyes with Kohl and then fill in your lids (up to your eyebrows if you wish) with black face paint, but not too much at once as it won’t dry. Using red face paint or lipstick, blotch under your eyes and where you’re going to draw on the stitches of the smile. Then with the black either draw on clown-like cuts over the eyebrow, triangles or hearts on your cheeks, fake tear-stains.

Step 4: Dip anything with a fine tip into your black face paint. Draw on stitches, adding black to the middle of your wound for depth. If you want realism, use eyelash glue and tissue paper like a papier mache, colour it red/black and put it in your fake wounds.

Get literal with it 

Think between the lines – get creative and you’ll save yourself money. Where’s Batman’s skintight expensive suit or Robin’s green tights? Nowhere, thank God. The more creative you get, the less it will cost you.

Step 1: Find yourself a usual black outfit, the simpler the better.

Step 2: In order to be literal you need to think literally (obviously). So our fine examples here have pinned photos of a robin and bat to themselves with a simple mask and bin-bag cape.

Step 3: Get your creative juices flowing. Instead of dressing up as Will.I.Am, Fergie and co. don a black outfit, draw or print a giant “P”, stick it to the front and paint a black eye on your face: Black Eyed P’s. Write Peter on your shirt and carry about a pan: Peter Pan. If you’re a confident ginger, attach some bread to a string necklace for the night, write Gingerbread man on your shirt or a sign: Gingerbread man. No guaranteeing you will be let into the Guild with this one, but it’s worth a shot.

Don some creepy contacts

Coloured contacts can be relatively inexpensive and very effective on a Halloween night out.

Step 1: There’s actually no such thing as a one-size-fits-all, so firstly keep them clean, check them before applying, do not re-use anything that hasn’t been kept in its solution, and if it starts scratching or feeling like a vacuum on your peepers TAKE THEM OFF.

Step 2: It’s up to you if you want to make your contacts the centrepiece of your outfit or wear a costume, adding them for a zombie effect. Either way, add them to your outfit and you’ll be looking like the walking dead in no time.

Step 3: Remember taking photos on flash will make them dazzle more than without.

Buy yourself some fake blood and bandages for under five quid

Minimal effort, minimal impact on your account.

Step 1: Grab a t-shirt, plain white is best for impact, from whatever cheapo shop local to you. Bandages too.

Step 2: You can buy one tube of fake blood for your whole house and just trickle it over the shirts (as shown above) and add bandages (as shown below). Bear in mind it can stain badly, so don’t use your hands to directly apply – and definitely don’t put any on your face unless you want to look this way for a good week.

Step 3: Use red and purple lipsticks in blotches to look like bruising. Draw on a stray vain or two. You aren’t really going for a character here, just a creepy version of yourself.

Paint your face as a skull 

Probably for the more confident face painter, but still not as hard as it looks.

Step 1: All you need is a white tube of paint and a black tube of paint.

Step 2: The biggest tip here is to not just slather the white base on, each layer need use no more than the blob shown on my hand below. Do about three layers of white and let each one dry for a minute or two or you’ll mixing the black into it and blurring your lines.

Step 3: With the black, start with the eyes. Remember you want eye sockets, so you need to paint up to your eyebrow and then add some expressive flicks, like below.

Step 4: When lining the mouth start with the line of your parting lips just carry on beyond your mouth. Add the teeth lines and add the jaw if you’re feeling confident, or have enough paint.

Improvise

This is for the last minute, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kids among you. You’ve no costume, no fake blood, zilch.

Step 1: Root out all your old lipsticks and powders. If you can muster together a white base that’s fab, but being as it’s unlikely anyone will have a product that makes them paler by choice, it’s no biggie if you don’t have a friend paler than you to help you out here.

Step 2: Blot red lipstick about the socket of the eye, the location of a bruise you intend on faking, the curve of the cheekbone – everywhere. The closer you get to the eye use dark purple and red eyeshadows in more blotches before drawing on any stitches.

Step 3: With your eyeliner draw on slits around the bruises you’ve created and stitching of the mouth if you want. Here we tried using the stitching as an extension of the mouth. The more eyeshadows you can use to give your fake wounds depth the better they’ll look.

The classic cat ear

Some call it basic but the cat always has and always will be the go-to halloween get up. It’s just the way it is, simple as pumpkin pie.

Step 1: Black clothes are always necessary in terms of an actual costume. And let’s be frank, most of our wardrobes consist of black clothing anyway.

Step 2: Liquid eyeliner is best for whiskers (and a nose, if you please). You’re good to go. It’s really easy not to spend a penny on this look and it’s still classic. If you do it right you’ll look cute too.

Step 3: Borrow or buy yourself some cat ears. Someone you know will have a pair lurking at the back of their wardrobe. If you don’t think that’s enough, cut off one leg from an old pair of tights, stuff it with tissue and attach to your arse stuff with a safety clip.