Halloween fancy dress for £3: The half skull

Shun scary costume prices and use some DIY


With Halloween coming up everyone’s panicking about what to wear, while also dealing with the fact that it’s the end of the month so your balance is steadily dropping lower and lower.

With this dead easy step by step guide, you can achieve a simple yet effective costume on the cheap, saving more money for decorations and pumpkins.

And alcohol of course. Always alcohol.

You will need:

  • Makeup free face
  • White facepaint
  • Black facepaint (or a black eyeliner)
  • Yellow facepaint (or eyeshadow)
  • Sponge (or fingers could suffice)
  • Small makeup brush

(All items can be bought for £1 or less on the highstreet)

only 3 colours needed

Step one:

Draw a white line down the centre of your face, filling in half the face with white facepaint.

Step two:

Draw a line down the centre of your face with black facepaint, then draw a circle(ish) shape around your eye and fill it in.

Next, take the black facepaint and draw a triangle on one side of your nose and fill it in.

Then to draw the mouth:

  • Draw a black line from the corner of your mouth to just below your ear.
  • Add two slightly curved lines, one above and one below this line, leaving roughly 1-2cm between lines (these do not have to be neat as they will be blended with the sponge later).
  • Then draw on small lines for the edges of the teeth along the centre line.

Step three:

Join up the lines you have drawn for the teeth with curved arches, and then fill in the space between the arches and the upper line with black facepaint.

Step four:

Blend out the lines around the eye and the mouth.

Step five:
Apply yellow facepaint or eyeshadow over the drawn on teeth (this will also stop your real teeth looking yellow in comparison to the white paint).

Step six:
Apply your makeup to the other side of your face and put your costume on. Non-permanent hair colour can be created using hair chalk or coloured hair spray.

Additionally, you can carry the facepaint down your neck for a spooky spine. This works best by drawing a line down the throat using white facepaint and outlining it with a line of black on each side, and then blending the black facepaint.