A Year in the Making, day 305

Today, I made zombies! Seattle attempted to regain the Guinness' World Record for largest zombie gathering, and we went to participate in Red, White, and Dead.

We each had some clothes that were slightly the worse for wear that I spent the morning distressing. For a zombie wardrobe, a cheese grater is your best friend! I had a white button-down shirt, one of my favorites, that had an unfortunate incident involving a tube of burgundy lipstick and the clothes dryer, as well as a pair of pants that I'd worn to death with both knees and the bottom ripped out. The husband had a slightly too-small Mariners shirt, and we sacrificed an Ichiro ball cap. The munchkin had a blue dress-up dress. My father had an old pair of black pants and shirt.

I hacked at them with dull scissors and ripped and scrubbed them against the grater. I ripped the hem off the munchkin's dress and shredded the chiffon overlayer. They all went into the drier to fray the edges more, and then I started making them look dirty.

The lighter colored pieces I took outside and kicked around and ground into our dirt front lawn (landscapers won't be installing the sod till next week sometime.) I mopped up a spill of wet coffee grounds with my shirt. The darker pieces go thrown into the fireplace and poked around in the ashes.

For our makeup, I started with a pale grease paint, dabbed in and blended some green, then finished with grey at eyes and to accent the neck, cheeks, and temples, then dabbed a bit of blue on the lips and outlined the bottom lid in red.



We were a family of zombies, with the three of us plus my father, in for a visit for the holiday. I warned him ahead of time what he was getting into. He made a great zombie tourist!



Special touch - an "I survived Jurassic Park!" baseball cap.

My husband made fake blood out of water, flour, red food coloring, and chocolate sauce (That gives it a darker appearance, more "old blood" looking. And it's tasty!) After it sat for a bit, it got nice and gloopy. I spilled some fake blood on our stuff, and we packed it all together in a plastic bag and stuffed it in the trunk. Got to Fremont, changed in the car, and then glooped ourselves up with the hubby's concoction.



I didn't get good pictures taken of our makeup until we got home, so we were a little humanized around the edges by then, but still looking a bit on the frightening side:





Best part? How easily it washed out, important since we all caked our hair with it.

The full set of pictures is here, and includes some shots my father took while we were waiting to begin our stumble and shuffle for the record.