During Halloween weekend, residents of Athens will be treated to blood and guts galore.
Students of Ohio University will celebrate by showing off their cosmetic talents with bloody makeup to fit their costumes.
Students looking for makeup supplies can purchase them at stores like CVS or find special effects makeup at Spirit Halloween on East State Street. The special effects can be created with anything from paper towels and liquid eyeliner to liquid latex and fake blood.
Lessons on how to apply different features as well as techniques to use household products can be found on YouTube, as many students around Athens have discovered.
“I don’t really have a specific name for the costume, but it’s supposed to be a variation of a girl gouging her eyes out,” Riley Norman, a freshman studying pre-athletic training, said.
This year, Norman chose to do her own Halloween makeup.
“I don’t usually do makeup like this. I’m usually just a very simple mascara and a little bit of eyeshadow kind of girl, but I found this on YouTube and I just wanted to try it and it actually turned out really well,” said Norman. “I was surprised at how easy it was to do.”
Her makeup took about 45 minutes to an hour to complete, and she followed a YouTube tutorial from a YouTuber named BeeisforBeauty. To complete her look, Norman used paper towels, concealer, black liquid eyeliner, liquid fake blood and gel fake blood. She found most of the supplies at the local Halloween store.
Garret Blamey, an undecided freshman, will be getting his makeup done by Devan Murphy, a freshman studying pre-pharmacy, this weekend. The look Murphy will be creating on Blamey is Evan Peter’s character on American Horror Story: Tate Langdon.
“It was kind of a last-minute decision,” Blamey said, as he described his costume. Murphy will be using eyeliner and paint from the local Halloween store to decorate his face.
Murphy has some experience with this kind of makeup, and Blamey said he's “pretty trustworthy” of her skills to make him look great.
“I did a little bit of it in high school, but it was more like sugar skull not like actual skeleton makeup,” Murphy said.
Another student has plans to transform herself into a classic fairy tale character with a twist. Brook Lynn Easterday, a freshman studying biochemistry, is using makeup to make herself into Little Red Riding Hood with a scar on her face.
The supplies she chose to use are Elmer’s glue and tissue paper alongside regular makeup. Easterday explained she usually uses a glue stick and tissue paper when creating special effects makeup, as well as eyeshadow and liquid lipstick for shaping the features.
Easterday started playing with special effects makeup years ago as she discovered videos on YouTube in middle school.
“I was actually really interested in it when I was younger and just practiced on myself and I used to be really bad at it, but I eventually got better and people started asking me (to help them) and I got paid to do it,” Easterday said.
One of Easterday’s favorite past looks she did was a Nightmare on Elm Street-esque Freddy Krueger.
“I actually went to a band practice in high school because we used to have these Halloween practices and I went there like that and people were really impressed with it,” Easterday said. “That was my proudest work.”
