DIY de Los Muertos

Here are our Halloween costumes for this year. Saori wanted to reprise her Frida Khalo costume with an skeletal twist to this year, and missing Arizona and encouraged by my Calavera pumpkin last year, I decided to be one of those dia de los muertos hombres. This was a pretty cheap costume, actually.
Hat- $8 pressed felt hat from costume store. You could get more elaborate with a fancy mariachi sombrero.
Skeleton gloves- $10 splurge. I figure I can use them in the wintertime too since I don't really have any gloves yet. It's a nice touch that reads well.
Jacket- $4 Goodwill. Has to be a lean cut to emphasize skeletal nature. Black or dark navy with pinstripes is great.
Flowers- $4 Goodwill. You can find all kinds of ugly fake stuff at Goodwill.
Bowtie- $2 at costume store.
Mask- $5 for a blank mask that we painted with acrylics. A lot of fun, actually. Really made the costume. I was going for the handcrafted figurine look.

Throw that on over some jeans and boots and you've got a pretty good ensemble outfit. We walked around central west end last night and got a lot of attention.

How to make a Dia de Los Muertos Costume

Today was a reasonably productive day. I got some readings done, started noting up some research ideas on Google documents that my partner commented on, and I got my halloween costume mostly worked out. I won't spoil what Saori is going as, but I chose a costume in the similar vein, one of the dia de los Muertos hombres, which is essentially a stylized skeleton in fancy dress and a sombrero.

The easiest way to do this is to combine a 1920's gangster costume with pin-stripe suit, lose the gun, replace the hat with a big black mexican Sombrero and throw on a skull mask. Actually they sell calavara masks like this one.

But all these together would probably add up to around $50-70, so not quite my price range. So I picked up a cheap sombero and a blank male face mask at the costume store, and found a tight pin-striped blazer and a bunch of fake flowers at Goodwill. At home, I painted the mask to be more like a Meixcan calavera using Saori's acrylic paint. A lot of fun actually. Pictures to follow on Halloween!