Quoth the Raven "Nevermore" Halloween Costume

I've been dying to dress up as this for years. But I couldn't find a big black bird. Until one unproductive day in Spring this year. I was browsing the shelves of one supermarket when suddenly something caught my eye in one of those seasonal aisles.
Yup, things for gardening. It was sitting there as if it belonged there all along and as if I was supposed to be aware of its presence. The black bird. As it turns out people who (unlike me) can keep green things growing need a scarecrow to defend their produce.Which means cheap plastic crows and ravens are somewhere out there in big numbers.

And so it was settled. My costume would become reality. You must understand. I was planning this for years and even though my skills with make-up are doubtful, I still believe this is the best costume ever because a) it depicts my favourite poem, hence it's clever b) I came up with it - I didn't see it on the Internet or anywhere else, it's just my imagination in it  c) it turned out to be pretty bad ass. Even I was afraid of the raven. I had it in my bedroom and since I applied shiny red nail foil to its eyes, the little sucker would glow in the most unexpected moments and spook the heck out of me.

But back to how to do the costume. It's quite simple, actually. If you try it at least once in advance. This was the first time I used contact lenses (White Screen) so I had to try it beforehand. As it turned out, they were quite comfortable but applying make-up through a layer of mist sucks. See, most people get tunnel vision with colored eye lenses but the ones I bought cover the whole eye, especially the pupil. Trying before doing it for real helps because all the colors become hazy and you'll find out you applied too much contour once you remove them. So bear that in mind and have light hand when applying anything since it looks harsher for the real world.

You need a lot of white make-up. As a base I used the cheapest white cream make-up I found in a costume store. Forget all the spong-y applicators and dense brushes, the fastest way is to smear it with your hands (sure it doesn't look the best but we are trying to be efficient since we have to go to work in one hour). Once that was on my face and limbs I used Catrice's 660 Ice White Open to set it. Once that was done I contoured my face (temples, cheeks, sides of my nose and above the lids) and my neck and collar bones with the light grey/brown in NYX's I dream of St. John. I originally used the silver color in it but the result wasn't as natural as the brownish color. Then I lined my water lines with a white eye pencil to get rid of as much redness as possible (the white really drew it out and I looked like a rabid statue). The following step was to use a white lipstick and a black lipstick (the black went only to the inner rim of my lips to create depth). 

I styled my hair into two buns at the back of my head and sprayed all over with a white hair spray. Since there was a lot of it in the bottle I tried to spray it over my face and arms to settle the white make-up even more and it really held! Even my oily eyelids didn't crease! Yay! More than twelve hours in the costume and it held!

All that was left was to put everything together. I put on a gold leafy head band, wrapped myself in my bed sheet toga-style (which came convenient for trapping the raven on my shoulder since its legs were made of one single piece so I could get the end of the sheet through it to keep it in place) and secured it with a gold belt. I had white stockings on and a lot of invisible layers under the toga because ... well, October!

The reactions to my costume were priceless. Most of my colleagues couldn't recognise me and then they couldn't look me in the eye. The kids were afraid of me and some still couldn't believe it really was their teacher underneath (time to time I'd just stand somewhere not moving and they'd be so afraid!). One kid told me after the class that she was not afraid of me anymore but that The Raven was staring at her and she was afraid of it still. I spooked the hell out of pretty much everyone this year, so the mission was accomplished! :-)=
Spooky Halloween to you all!