I shot the sheriff

Being the hermits in training my husband and I are (give it a few more years and I'll have a nice guttural growl behind my cry of "unclean!") we devote most of our brain power to things that people can look at without ever having to see us.

This means that most of Halloween brain power is typically devoted to props, decorations and things that go bump in the night. If a costume is contemplated it's in a last minute throw something together maybe add a bit of eye liner kind of deal.

But this year I have an excuse to play, I mean I need to learn some new techniques for the Costume Charity Ball we're working like crazy towards.

Part of my husband's costume involves a gunshot wound to the forehead but I've never done any latex appliances (those are the scars and wounds and random office supplies jammed into your head you can buy and not say a wobbly toaster).

Over the weekend our Halloween club met together and we did a makeup play and make a mess. We learned a few skills, some pretty easy stuff anyone can do, and then I went home and tried to make a bullet hole.

First thing I did was use spirit gum to glue the bullet hole to my husbands head (and you really don't need to buy the spirit gum remover, it's just isopropyl alcohol). Then I added a few layer of liquid latex around the outside to try and help it blend better. It didn't really work and took forever to dry. I have a different plan for next time.

Now all you really need is an Injury stack, which is not some kind of Rube Goldberg device that involves piles of rusty chainsaws.

It's this:

You can make bruised, scabbed, inflamed or just plain not nice flesh with this bad boy. I like to start with the purple using finger tip dabs here and there. Then add yellow to make it look a bit older and red for a fresher wound. Just keep alternating back and forth for a while and eventually you'll get something like this:

Now to just add a bit of blood. You'll see a lot of things talk about stippling, this is a small sponge with lots of holes in it that looks like steel wool and feels a bit like steel wool but is not a duck.

It gives that broken capillaries look with light random drops of red here and there.

And that was how I shot my husband. Next time I'm going to use one of the thinner appliances we got in the kit (start with the worst, save the best for the night of) and try blending the latex better. I get impatient, I can't help it.

But with just a few pieces of makeup you can do just about anything you can think of ouchie wise.

For those like me that tend to go so subtle there's a good chance no one can see it unless they are on top of you I wanted to show off this Collodion.

It smells like an old lab and is unnaturally cool to the touch and it does something rather interesting when placed upon skin. As it dries it will pucker the skin in giving a cut or scar look without having to mess with latex or trying to draw it on which never really works right.

Here you can see the puckering. I went in with a Q-tip and some of my purple injury stack to give it a bit of dept then lightly rubbed red on the outside for shading but for the most part it just looks like an old scar.

Since it really does pull the skin in any angle looks slightly disturbing.

All you do is keep adding layers of the collodion and waiting for it to dry. More layers more puckering deeper scar, soon you can sit in a large chair petting a white cat and cackling about Bond dying.

And that's my sort of make up tutorial that's so easy even a cave hermit could do it.