Zombie Party

According to several sources, zombies are hot right now. Maybe not as much as vampires, but still - big. So I decided to do a zombie party as part of my month of Halloween festivities. I had done the gory makeup workshop earlier in the week, to give the kids an idea of some of the things they could do for the party. I advertised for weeks, and had a lot of teens interested (though unfortunately, I had to do it the same day as FBA, and consequently probably lost a few kids).

In the weeks leading up to the party, I made a Pin the Entrails on the Corpse game. It’s like Pin the Tail on the Donkey, but instead of a tail, I had every body part imaginable – including internal organs. We started out with just a torso, and everyone was given a part to stick up. None of them were the same, and placement counted, so as the game went on and more parts were up, the harder and more confusing the game got.

We played Zombie Tag. You have everyone gather around and close their eyes. You tap 3 or so people (depending on the size of the group) to be “the infected”. Have everyone open their eyes and mill around a bit, and when you shout out the trigger word (whichever one you choose), the infected can start the attack. Zombies can only walk (well, shamble), and they only have to tag someone to infect them. The person tagged waits a moment, and then can begin their own attack. The game ends when only one person is left. Make sure you clear any tables and chairs out of the way before this starts, and make sure the kids don’t run.

We had a craft table, where the kids could make door hangers. Michael’s had foam letters made up of bones, and glow-in-the-dark skeletons you could assemble and stick. I just left them out on the table and let the kids wander up and do it when they had time. We had zombie trivia as well, though since most zombie movies are rated “R”, they had a tough time of it. Still, most had seen enough to answer the questions. My coworker Sybil also worked on breaking down the choreography to “Thriller”, and she taught us a small bit of the dance. When it was sped up to real time, it was almost impossible to keep up, but still fun.

For refreshments, we had chunks of sod (brownies with green frosting and worms on top), body part gummies, flayed flesh and pus cubes (cheese cubes and salami), and crunchy eyeballs (rice krispie treats formed into a ball, dunked in white chocolate, with an M&M on top).

To end the party, we had the kids take pictures with a few select books to make some of those READ posters. The full set of pictures is available here.

Gory Makeup Workshop

Well since it was October and Halloween was coming up, I though it was the perfect time to do a gory makeup workshop! Originally I was going to get a couple of my friends who are makeup artists to come up, but as time drew closer, I didn’t think I could pull them away from their busy schedules. Thankfully, I ended up going to the Spooky Empire horror convention in Orlando, and got to attend a zombie makeup workshop by makeup artist Bloody Mary. She’s a super cool lady. I bought some of her makeup while I was there and asked her afterwards about donations to non-profit organizations. She said all I had to do was send her a letter on our company letterhead. Done! She was great and rushed the order to because out workshop was just a week or so away. (The makeup kits didn’t arrive in time for the workshop, but I did have them in time for our zombie party, and they made great prizes) You can check out her website here.

At the time we also had a theater/makeup store in Gainesville called Center Stage, and I bought some makeup there to bolster what I already had.

The following items were used:
liquid latex
bruise makeup kit
white cream makeup
blue cream makeup
red cream makeup
ice makeup kit
fake blood
zombie makeup kit (from Bloody Mary)

Ideally, I would’ve had enough that I could make small kits for the kids to use on each other, but as it was, I did all the work and the teens got to sit back and watch. I tried to do several tutorials. One was a freshly dead zombie - grey skin, a bit of blood. The other was one that had scabs and rotting flesh. Another was a person who had been frozen, and the fourth someone who had been beaten up. You can do all sorts of variations, so play around with what makeup you can find, and see what you can do the best. Two videos I found particularly helpful can be found on youtube here and here.