Thursday, October 30, 2008

My powers for evil [TUTORIAL]

Leave it to me to, once again, dream up (with Bubba's help, I can't take the credit entirely even though I want to) a Halloween costume that's *so easy* only to find that the crucial accessory I know totally exists is impossible to find.

Even though I KNOW it totally exists somewhere. IT MUST.

But still, I couldn't find it. And I searched the Internets to the bone. Plus also the Spirit store and all the stupid "Halloween Headquarters" party stores that say they have every Halloween thing, when in fact, they do not. Clearly. Because this THING exists. And yet, they don't have it. Jerks.

Let me explain.

Nearly every year since all my friends started getting married (this preceded the onslaught of All My Friends Are Having Babies that you read about now), I've tried to come up with Halloween costumes that allowed me to use one of my *not free* bridesmaid dresses as the featured item.

Because, really, when in all of my days am I going to have the occasion to wear a full length red satin gown with a wrapped and bejeweled bodice? Or a two piece green taffeta number with awkward and mean boning? Or a tea length (what does this even mean?) pink dress with sheer overlay? When I ask you? Only on Halloween, my friends. Despite what I was lured into believing before I actually saw all of these dresses in person.

You know what I mean here, too - the ol', "Oh! You'll love it! You can totally wear it again!" speech you get before you go into the barfy bridal shop to try on your hideously overpriced bridesmaid dress that you SO will not EVER be able to wear again because you don't go to prom anymore or, like, any other events that call for rhinestones BUT WHATEVER.

And then this happens to you five whole times in a row and you decide that you are going to get an extra wearing out of each one of these babies by gently wearing them for Halloween before donating them all to The Princess Project.

Oh! And it's so fun and easy, too because you already have the piece de resistance in the form of a perfectly fitting formal gown so WOW won't it be easy to just pull together a few accessories and VOILA be, say, The Tooth Fairy!

Scratch that, The Evil Tooth Fairy.

Yes, we like some evil to balance out our Fairy around here.

All I'll need, in addition to my fabulous pink tea length (!) dress is a pair of pink wings, a crown, some Jolly Roger accessories, a menacing operator's apron, a bloodied pair of pliers and some loose teeth.

So, yeah, loose teeth don't exist in the free world. Not even on the www's. And not even in the "Halloween Headquarters'" of the larger SF Bay Area during my lunch hour.

Thankfully, I lurked around town for these teeth (just try asking for loose teeth at a store and see the kind of reactions you get) with a good friend of mine who has greater gory vision than I, so when I was just about to strangle myself with a plastic replica Indiana Jones bullwhip, she offered up the perfect suggestion: mini marshmallows.

Crack the bag, let them stiffen up a little and then mold them and bloody them to look like freshly extracted molars.

WHY YES I WILL DO THIS.

And this is where my evil tutorial comes in. Because if this tutorial had existed one week ago today, I could have saved myself a lunch hour(s) of skanky looks as I asked clerks at HALLOWEEN STORES where they had the display of loose and bloody teeth. Because they weren't standing right next to a disemboweled torso with flashing intestine accessory or anything so obviously *I* am the ridiculous one.

People - BE AWARE OF YOUR SURROUNDINGS. I'm just saying.

Tutorial: How to make bloody teeth in a pinch


Materials & Equipment
1 mug of hot water
1 bottle of gel blood
1 bag of mini marshmallows (stiff)
1 toothpick or kebab skewer or other pokey device of your choosing
Newspaper or some other cover for your work surface


To make

Float your bottle of gel blood (with the cap on for godssake) in the mug of hot water for a few minutes until the gel is no longer gel, but liquid goo.


Take your poking device (I used a wooden skewer) and, with the flat end, press a nice dent into each end of the marshmallow.


Now, take your gel blood from its warm and cozy bath and drop a glob of your liquid goo into one of the dents.


Then turn the tooth (I don't want to have to type "marshmallow" anymore, it's got a lot of letters) on its side and, with the pointy end of your skewer press a dent from end to end of your tooth while pressing one of the ends together with your fingers.



Turn it over and do this to the other side, too.

Let the gel dry and then do a hundred more because they're fun and, really, who doesn't need a hundred bloody little teeth? No one, that's who.


Now you can string them on a necklace (I find that stretchy gold cord you get from boxes of candy works nice) or rig them up to dangle from earrings or just let them roll around loose in your clear vinyl operator's apron for effect. Or whatever you see fit to do with a hundred loose and still sorta squshy bloody teeth. I won't ask.

Happy evil, y'all.

17 comments:

  1. HAHAHA! Love it !! Very creative :)

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  2. That's pretty fuckin' gross, Finn. And yet . . . GENIUS.

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  3. That is Friggn' Awesome! I think you should paten it! Can't wait to see the costume!

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  4. Pure genius! We need to see pictures.

    PS- I've got a contest going over at my site to guess the characters on our carved jack-o-lanterns.

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  5. oh my goodness. We need to see photos of you in this tea length dress with bloody teeth. how awesome is that?

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  6. That is awesome!

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  7. Only you. (And I mean that as a compliment.) I join the chorus of "pictures! pictures!"

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  8. Awesome idea!

    I vote for a picture also.

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  9. Not in 100 years would I have thought of that. The genius lives.

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  10. lovely teeth. they look yummy!

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  11. Hi
    I am here in Australia and we don't do halloween here, but reading everyones great blogs and even better costume ideas i wish we did.
    Have a great time trick or treating and I would just LOVE to see a pic of the evil tooth fairy...
    Lea-Anne

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  12. LOL You said "stiff"!

    Both your costume idea AND your bloody teeth are GREAT!!! Wish you could've come to our party - I bet you would've won the Tortured Barbie Trophy!! Seriously - those are GREAT fake bloody teeth - you can even given them out as snacks (well, maybe you would've wanted to use red gel food dye instead of gel blood?)

    You ARE going to post pictures, riiiight?

    VERY creative!

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  13. PS If I'd known far enough in advance you needed a tiara (and perhaps a wand?), I could've hooked you up. People are often leaving us their spare Halloween costume props, and I know I've got a tiara and wand in the tubs down in the basement. I don't suppose Evil Tooth Fairies wear ninja suits or horned Viking helmets?

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  14. I love it - what a great use of old bridesmaids dress.

    Thanks for the tutorial on creating fake teeth. I'll have to keep this for future reference.

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  15. Hilarious post! Great idea. Awesome costume, again.

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  16. Obviously I haven't been reading you for 5 years or I would have been able to hook you up with the real thing. MY husband has a dental lab. and we have the ability to duplicate teeth with rubber molds. Also a dear friend who was an oral surgeon left us a coffee table with real gross teeth and other dental objects under glass. A real curiosity table you might say.Nice job!!

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  17. I am a dental hygienist and would you believe that I have put my purse under a sink (for three yrs)that I recently found housed an overflowing plastic cup of extracted bloody teeth. My tea cup was sitting in the near vacinity. omg I told the doctor he had to throw them away and I didn't know why he was keeping them. Crazy tooth bone collector. I've seen the movie and I have an imagination. Finny, I would have sent them to you had I known you were looking.

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[2013 update: You can't comment as an anonymous person anymore. Too many douchebags were leaving bullshit SPAM comments and my inbox was getting flooded, but if you're here to comment in a real way like a real person, go to it.]

Look at you commenting, that's fun.

So, here's the thing with commenting, unless you have an email address associated with your own profile, your comment will still post, but I won't have an email address with which to reply to you personally.

Sucks, right?

Anyway, to remedy this, I usually come back to my posts and post replies in the comment field with you.

But, if you ever want to email me directly to talk about pumpkins or shoes or what it's like to spend a good part of your day Swiffering - shoot me an email to finnyknitsATgmailDOTcom.

Cheers.