#PicMonkeyBOO Halloween Contest!

PicMonkey is holding a Halloween contest!!!

The prize is a years worth of their advanced photo editing tools. It's a free Royal membership for a year if you win!

Here are some of my entries. 

I'm having a ball with these tools.

Myself as a ghoul....

Latex Scar Prosthesis Lesson

Here is a very basic tutorial on building stitched scars. 

Materials List:

Castin Craft's Mold Builder Liquid Latex

Plexiglas Sheet, ceramic tile or ultra smooth, portable work surface

Plasticine

Inexpensive soft paintbrushes (you'll probably ruin them and throw them out)

Corn starch

Opaque foundation that matches whoever is going to wear the finished scar

Heavy black thread and a sewing needle

Fake blood

I made a worm of plasticine and smoothed the sides of the worm into the work surface with my fingertips. I dragged a sculpting knife all the way down the high point of the worm to create a gully. I made a "Y" shaped scar, but you can make any shape you'd like. I used a soft paintbrush to coat the scar with the Mold Builder. I gave the scar a one inch border of latex that will taper onto my skin when I apply the scar later. I gave the scar another five coats of Mold Builder and let each coat dry completely before applying the next. Make sure to wash the paintbrush out immediately with warm soapy water. If you leave it too long the latex will set in the brush and you'll never get it out. I bought six inexpensive brushes so I wouldn't be bothered if I ruined them.

After all six coats have been applied and are dry, I dusted the whole scar with some corn starch to seal the piece and prevent the piece from sticking to itself when I peel it off the work surface. The corn starch also helps the makeup to stick.

I added a wee bit of opaque foundation and dusted it with cornstarch again to set it. This is just a base coat and it will be scratched up when I apply the piece, but it will help with building depth in the finished look.

I sewed through the two edges of the scar with the black thread. I tugged gently to create a bit of puckering. Dip the sewing needle into the cornstarch before each stitch to help the needle go through the latex more smoothly.

I added some fake blood to see if the piece looks convincing, but I would leave this step out until I have applied the piece. I just wanted to see if the design needed any tweaking. I think it'll do! I'll post a tutorial on how to apply the scars closer the Halloween. I'll be using spirit gum to apply the piece and I'll show how to blend the edges of the piece into your skin.

Maggs is at it again! Look Away Those of Faint Heart

Seriously......

This is some great special effects makeup.

Really really good!

Not just saying that because my daughter did it!!!

Maggs' Grandma Judi got her a heap of special effects essentials for her birthday and we wanted to share what she's done with it. 

I've inserted (or attempted to insert) a jump break so those of you with weak stomachs don't need to see all the gory detail of Maggie's incredibly believable Zombie attack effects......

Here's a beautiful picture of our gorgeous and gentle Maggie for you folks to look at instead!

Hi ya Maggs!

Maggs of the Macabre

Look away those prone to swooning at the sight of blood. 

Maggs is at it again. 

Another school project in the works and she's robbed my STAEDTLER fimo stash once again. (I never mind her robbing my stash, but don't tell her that I won't have anything left at all!) 

She's creating a work inspired by the paintings of Francis Bacon.

This time she's decided to make a mobile with sculpted body parts.

I almost can't look at some of them. They look painful to say the least.

Her Uncle Alan asked if they were candy..... 

so I guess she'll be using my Easy Mold to make candy molds too.

Time to beef up the stash again I see!

BRAINZ!

Maggs turned 18 this weekend...........

18!

I can't believe it. Time sure has flown by.

We honored her by making her some brain cake!

Looks pretty good there thinking bout stuff on the birthday table.

It's cherry flavored brain. 

Love you my Maggs!

ZOMBIE SHOES!!! & new gel nails..........

Maggs and I were bored today so we decided to make these!!!

Maggie's are the top pair and mine are the bottom.


These are the inspiration! They are
Iron Fist ZOMBIE STOMPERS!!!!
We have wanted these shoes forever but couldn't afford to get both of us a pair and getting just one pair seemed unfair.

Our colours may be a little bright but we love them. These are mine.

These are Maggie's. Hers started out as black flats from Pay Less shoes for 20 bucks.

We still have to add some bows but aren't they cute?

Here are the new Gel Nails!!!!
first time using the gels. I've been using acrylic powder and liquid for two decades. I like the gels loads. No smell, not as much filing. I'll miss the 3D roses though have to figure that out. Maybe I'll use both.

I did every nail different. Wanted to experiment as much as I could.


HA! I still have green on me from the Zombie shoe painting, and it looks like Sebastien is interested in something across the road. Do you prefer gels or L&P?
Let me know what you think.

Zombie Prosthetic Appliance.

This is the prosthetic we built for Mr. Jimmy (My other half) two Halloweens ago.

We kind of overdo the Halloween thing around here. It's our holiday. I'm going to try to find as many pictures of the build as I can and load them up with explanations as I find them.

The first thing you need to do is make a cast of the future Zombie's face. We used plaster bandages, warm water and loads of Vaseline. Didn't want to rip out those thick and luscious eyebrows, and that's exactly what will happen if you put plaster over unprotected hair. Mr. Jimmy shaves his head so we didn't have to worry about protecting his hairline, but if you have hair protect it! You have been warned.
We put three good layers of plaster bandage on his face and left the nose and eyes open so he could breathe and so he could see what I was doing to him. (He doesn't trust me.... Weird huh?)
Make sure to reasure your model constantly that they are safe. Make them comfortable.
Let the plaster set for 15 or twenty minutes then when it starts to harden up get them to wiggle their face a bit to loosen the mold. It should pull off fairly easily if you have applied sufficient vaseline. Let them remove it slowly as they see fit. No pulling the band aid off quickly here. It's just not the nice thing to do.

We used masking tape to seal up the eye and nose holes on the (Lets call it the face negative.... 'cause that's what it is) face negative after it had cured completely. Then we used plasticine to seal it and smooth out any joint lines around the tape. We used a big soft brush to smear a thin layer of Vaseline into the face negative to act as a release agent. Make sure the layer is thin enough for any detail to show. you don't want to distort it now it will throw off the fit of the prosthetic.

We mixed up a bunch of plaster of paris and filled the face negative up and let it set overnight. The next morning we pulled off the negative and revealed (Lets call this the face positive....... 'cause it's a positive representation of his face.) the face positive.

This is the plasticine sculpt we did. We sculpted it on the positive cast of his face.
Only sculpt out the parts you want to alter. Full face prosthetics are cool but we weren't going for that look here. We just wanted to alter him a bit. Add wounds and rotting. General purification.

We set the sculpted on face into a bag lined box that is a little bit bigger than the face.
We made sure to seal around the bottom of the face with plasticine so it was air tight and no plaster would seep underneath when we poured the next step.
Cover the whole thing in a thin layer of Vaseline using a nice big soft brush. Really important here not to wreck the detail. It's pretty easy to fill it all in with Vaseline. pay attention and use a q-tip or toothpick to clean any built up areas out.
Mix up more plaster and fill the box up with it. Bang the box on the table a few times to get rid of any air bubbles that may be clinging to the plasticine. You can also brush the first layer of plaster over the sculpt pushing it into the recesses to eliminate any air bubbles, then pour in the rest to fill the box. Let it set up overnight.

This is what you get when you take the sculpt out of the new mold. (We'll call it the prosthetic mold I guess.)
You want to spread some thin layers of liquid latex into the spots you sculpted. No need for any release agents, it should come out fine without it. Make several thin layers of latex letting it dry completely in between layers. After five or six layers we added some single layers of torn up toilet paper to give the prosthetic some strength. We did about twenty layers of latex and two layers of toilet paper. It took about two days to layer and dry. Oh yeah.... make sure to keep the edges thin, move the edges of each layer in so the prosthetic won't be thick and noticeable.

After the prosthetic has dried, peel it gently out of the mold. Lay it onto the face positive (all the plasticine has been removed from the sculpting process, so it's Mr. Jimmy again.) so it will keep it's shape. We used acrylic paint and regular dollar store makeup to colour this prosthetic.

We tried to make the wounds look wet but we didn't want them to smudge. We used a varnish on top of the red. Next time I'll use glaze, I think it will be more flexible. The varnish cracked a bit after wearing it.

This is the final piece on Mr. Jimmy. It turned out pretty well we think. Well worth the time and effort to produce it. We learned allot throughout the process. Can't wait for the next prosthetic appliance build.

Mr. Jimmy again from the other side.

What? Zombies totally wear nerd glasses. How else would they be able to see the delicious BRAINZ!!!!
This is my beautiful Mom wearing the same appliance. It fit her a bit big, Mr. Jimmy has a HUGE head, but she still managed to scare the crap out of a bunch of folks.
Mom being really scary. It was weird to see her wearing James' face.