How to Make a Head for Halloween

On Halloween, a severed head prop makes a creepy accessory

Plenty of spooky Halloween stories involve somebody literally "losing their head" -- which is why a severed head is a very popular prop in a variety of Halloween costumes, and a deliciously creepy decoration to have when hosting a Halloween party. You can buy severed head props from Halloween stores or online, but it's also fairly easy to make a ghoulishly realistic one yourself.

Things You'll Need

• Styrofoam wig head
• PVA glue
• Paper towels
• Costume wig
• Thick twine
• Serrated bread knife
• Sponge or foam
• Water-based paint

Instructions

1. Decide who your severed head belonged to. This will affect the overall style of your project. The head of Marie Antoinette, for example, would call for a long, female wig, and white and red paint for her skin and lips. A rotting zombie head, however, might be bald, or have patchy hair, and the skin might be green or gray and disfigured.

2. Cut your Styrofoam wig head to suit your design. For a zombie head, you might want to cut a large wedge out for an exaggerated mouth, hungry for human brains. A soulless ghoul might require large, empty eye sockets to paint black. For a more realistic human head, however, you can leave it pretty much unaltered. Use a serrated bread knife to trim the Styrofoam. Use gentle sawing motions so as not to snap or break off more Styrofoam than you intend to.

3. Use PVA glue and twine to add any features you need to. For Mary Antoinette, for example, small lengths of twine can be glued above the eyes and around the mouth for exaggerated eyebrows and lips. They might look strange now, but in Step 4 you will cover them with a layer of paper towel and blend them into the surface of the head. A good trick for a zombie head is to use the twine to create a network of veins stretching around the head. This looks very creepy.

4. Pour PVA glue onto a plate and soak individual pieces of paper towel in it. You may want to dilute the glue with water to make it stretch farther. Layer the saturated paper towel across your Styrofoam head to build up a layer of "skin." This will blend in any details you added in Step 3, and can add additional texture and character. The severed head of a beautiful French aristocrat like Marie Antoinette, for example, requires smooth skin -- but wrinkle up the paper to create withered, disfigured skin when building an emaciated corpse head or zombie.

5. Leave the head to dry once you have added sufficient PVA-soaked paper toweling to it. This could take a number of hours. When the head is dry, the paper towels should be rigid to the touch and ready for decoration.

6. Paint your head using water-based paint. Paint the entire head in the skin color you intend to use -- pink or white for a freshly severed head, or gray or green for a rotting corpse. Leave that to dry and then start painting in the details, like the vein pattern you added in Step 3, or the eyes, lips and eyebrows. For a mottled appearance -- especially dramatic on a zombie head -- lightly brush sponge or foam with a slightly darker tone of your skin color and press it lightly around the eye sockets and cheekbones.

7. Leave the painted head to dry. As a final touch, use PVA glue to attach the costume wig and any other details you want to add to your prop.

References

• Halloween Haunted House: Realistic Zombie Head