Being broke is something I do well. I mean really well. It’s like I have a strange compulsion to spend every penny as soon as I’ve got it which means I’m el skinto for approximately 3 and a half weeks of each and every bloody month. This tends to make costume shopping almost impossible. Enter Halloween.
Normally I avoid Halloween like the plague. Girls dressed up as sexy cats/nurses/angels (what is with that?) just doesn’t do anything for me and I can think of nothing worse than watching guys leer and dribble at the mere sight of them. And then there’s the cost of actually buying/making a costume. That shit is expensive. So, after raiding the bottom of my bag for any loose pound coins that may have slipped in, I set my self a task:
Can I make a semi decent costume for a tenner?
Stage one: pester folk at work for empty cereal boxes. Easy.
Cost – free.
Stage two: rampage around Edinburgh on the day of the event in the hope of finding stuff. Not so easy.
Who’da thunk that finding a cheapish jump suit and a bundle of other stuff would be hard in a decent sized city? Also didn’t help that all the costume shops were both rammed with overprice shite and morons buying it all.
Protective suit – £5
Retractable and highly entertaining knives – £3.75
Squishy cleaver – £2.99 (if you’re doing the sums right now, you’ll see that I’m not doing too well…)
Tiny people cereal – £1
The worst fake blood known to man – £1
Plastic knives – free. It’s amazing what you find in the cupboards of rental flats.
Stage three: make the crap below into something wearable.
Turns out that they don’t make protective suits for 5’2 girls. This thing was ginormous. I reckon that even an average guy would find this thing to be huge (that’s what she said) so I delved into the pits on my wardrobe and fumbled around for the giant white box at the back.
Hello sewing machine. It’s been quite a while and let’s face it, you’ve been abandoned. Time to sew that bad boy up.
Overalls done. Now to murder some boxes.
Boxes successfully murdered. Now to sort my mug. Red lipstick, glitter and fake blood. That’s all you need… right?
Next step: attach boxes to said overalls and try to figure out how I can wear a coat over it. Turns out it’s tricky and it involves tying the bloody arms around my waist.
And how does this weird costume look when it’s actually on properly? The answer is simple. I looked fucking demented.
So, in answer to my question – no you can’t. It cost me £13.74 to create this monstrosity. £13.74 well spent though. Although very few folk actually understood what I was supposed to be. And they all suck.
