6 Steps to Making the Coolest Undead Zombie Costume | HALLOWEEN DIY

6 STEPS TO MAKE THE COOLEST & EASIEST UNDEAD ZOMBIE COSTUME FOR HALLOWEEN

Become The Walking Dead!

Halloween will be here in no time which means it's time to start organising your Halloween Costume. If you are anything like me and loves a quick but effective costume, then this is the look for you.

This Undead Zombie Dress-up DIY is family-friendly and suitable for individuals, family costumes or groups. Because this has no blood or gore, even little kids can wear and be the cutest Undead Zombie you have ever seen.

I have previously shared with you how to achieve the make-up with this costume HERE and thought it's time to do a post bringing the whole concept together and share with you the 5 Steps to become the ultimate Undead Zombie with not much work and cheap as chips! 

The pictures of the costumes do not show how old looking and effective they were in real life due to it being a really bright sunny day 

BACKSTORY
This Easy Undead Zombie costume I created for my daughter's dance group who were performing in their annual towns parade. The theme was Horror and due to having a lot of young children, we decided to create an impactful group of Walking Dead Zombies with no blood or guts. All the kids wore similar costumes and the same hair and make-up and danced their way down the long street to Thriller (video of dance at the bottom of the post)

How to Become a Family-Friendly Dead Zombie Instructions

STEP 1

Find your Clothing!
Your clothing is the most important part of your Undead Zombie Costume. You need to find suitable clothing & accessories that are comfortable to wear and still look great.

The clothing to use needs to be white or cream in colour, with no colours printed on the white etc You can find lots of suitable clothing at your local charity secondhand shops and can usually buy it for as little as $2. You may even have clothing in your wardrobe that you can use and upcycle.

When looking for your clothes, try to find textured fabric like lace, chiffon, embroidered, net etc as once you start DIYing the clothing your results will come out amazing. Find soft-flowing fabrics that move nicely and are not too stiff like a long denim skirt.

You can even make your look to match a certain era, so if you choose the Roaring 20's, you could find a white lace Cha Cha dress, add some dirty pearls and a headband, DIY it all and you then have created a Zombie Flapper 1920's dancer. The looks you create are endless with this Undead Zombie clothing Tutorial.

TIP - Choose clothing that is age-appropriate and clothing that you want to wear. If you don't feel comfortable in the clothing and would normally not wear it, then you will not be happy with the end result.

White & Cream clothing to look for

• Dresses
• Skirts
• Cardigans
• Soft fabric Pants
• Blouses
• Canvas shoes

STEP 2

Cut your Clothing!
The next step after buying your clothes is to cut it! And I mean to hack the crap out of it. You will need sharp scissors for this step and to focus as you do not want to cut yourself.

Cutting the fabric is more like hacking away creating holes and tears. You hack at the fabric by pulling it tight and with the V part of your scissors push forward onto the fabric creating a messy ripped tear.

On the bottom part of skirts or dresses, create torn lines going upwards. Do not tear too far up in case you show too much leg, no one needs their undies flashing every time you walk, unless you want that look 😊 If your skirt is long or tight, make 2 torn splits at least to your knee for movement.

With ladies' tops and blouses, hack at the bottom and lightly on the sleeve edges. Do not cut across the chest area unless you want a boob or 2 pooping out lol For men's shirts, hack away 😉 

STEP 3

Dye your Clothing!
Once you have cut up your clothing, it is time to get it to look old and dirty the easy way, with Tea Bag Dyeing. This natural dyeing method is cheap and everyone can do it at home with little effort.

Gather your clothes into a laundry tub or old bucket of warm water ready for soaking. Place 5 - 20 teabags into some boiled water, mix and pour into your laundry tub, mix the water around and leave to soak. Stir around the water every 30 mins, checking the colour of the fabric and seeing if the clothing is ready and tea-stained looking. If the colour is not changing to a brown colour, add more tea bags and soak longer. For some clothing pieces I only had to soak for 20 mins, others a whole day.

Once you have soaked the fabric in tea, hang it directly on the line. Do not wash in the washing machine as some fabrics that are not a natural fabric like cotton and have a polyester etc base will wash away the colour.

You can create different looks with the soaking process. To make the clothing piece an ombre effect, soak the whole item and then halfway through the soak pull half the clothing out and hang it over the edge of the tub leaving half in. I had done this with the blouse in the pictures. 

Once the clothing is dry, you can wear it.

STEP 4

Make your hair big!
Your Hair is what will give your Zombie costume some impact. The bigger and wilder hair the better.

To achieve this look you will need 

• Stronghold volumising hairspray
• Fine tooth comb
• White coloured hairspray 
• Bobby Pins
• Dirty Hair (not freshly washed)
• Hair Accessories in dull tones

With your fine-tooth comb or brush, start to tease the hair in small sections from the roots to the ends, starting at the forehead and working backwards. Tease all the top of your head before moving on to the rest. Spray hairspray on every section of the hair you tease.

If the hair is long and heavy and will not stay standing up high, tease the front section of your hair and place bobby pins in the hair at the top of your crown creating a huge puff of hair. Pull the rest into a ponytail. Tease your pony as full as you can.

Now spray white coloured hairspray lightly over the hair creating a ghostly white shade. This is not a necessity for the undead Zombie costume but it really does make the hair pop. Add a huge flower, a bow or whatever you think matches the Undead look you want to achieve.

 

STEP 5

Put on your ghosty dead face!
Your make-up will complete the Undead Zombie look and the more dramatic the better. You will not often hear me say go white, dark and heavy but trust me on this one.

To achieve this look you will need basic make-up and some super white powder or liquid make-up. You can find these in alternative shops and normally called Goth White. If you can not find this, then Halloween White face makeup with work, just seal it with some light face powder so it doesn't crack.

For the full Make-up tutorial of two Undead Zombie looks READ HERE

  

STEP 6

Act like your The Walking Dead!

Tips to become a walking Zombie

• Walk slowly
  
• Slouch slightly and relax your body
• Do not smile
• Stare and blink slowly 
• Limp while walking or do not use a limb correctly
• Talk slowly & slightly dumb

You can see this Undead Zombie Dress-up technique in this video of my daughter's dance group performing to Thriller

What Era would you like to be a Zombie from? 

Let me know below in the comments

Keep creative & smiling

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