How to Make Fake Stitches for Halloween Makeup

A great costume, whether for Halloween or a play or movie, involves both clothing and makeup. Convincing fake stitches can go a long way toward making your spooky aesthetic look realistic. With the right products and a bit of practice, you can easily create fake stitches at home for your next costume.

Are you wondering how to make fake stitches for Halloween? If you want to look like a Frankenmonster, escaped patient or a zombie, knowing how to create a realistic stitch design is key. You will need some foundation, red face paint or red eye shadow, black eye shadow, brown eye shadow or similar powder, white eye shadow and black liquid eyeliner. You can also use some makeup-blending brushes.

First, apply foundation in your natural skin color or the base color of your look. Then, draw a red dashed line where you'd like the stitches to be. You may wish to deepen the red with some black eye shadow. Draw a parenthesis around each dash using your brown eye shadow to help achieve a three-dimensional effect.

Then, use white eye shadow to fill in the gaps between the red and the brown. Use your black liquid liner to create the illusion of stitches. These can run perpendicular to the dashed lines you've been making. You can also make the stitch lines be a bit askew.

When you are finished with your costuming, you can remove the stitches you've made using regular makeup remover. A remover wipe or eye makeup remover on a cotton ball should be adequate.

Depending on how much makeup you have applied, you may need to use several wipes or additional washcloths to wipe it off. When you've finished, you can wash your face normally or take a shower to remove additional dredges and leave your skin clear.

You might also wish to moisturize so that your skin can recover from the harshness of the makeup you have applied, particularly if you have sensitive skin. Since you'll be potentially using makeup on parts of your body where you don't usually use it, you may want to watch out for dryness or allergic reactions.

To complete your look, you might wish to add fake blood or fake skin. Fake blood can be purchased at most costume supply shops. You can apply it to drop down from the stitches, or you can create a fake wound elsewhere on your body.

Fake skin can be achieved with gelatin, and it may make you look even spookier. Use hot water in the amount specified on the package of gelatin and mix it with the powder. Add a drop of vegetable oil to help the mixture stay a liquid and then apply it to your skin once it has cooled enough to be safe to touch. You won't want to wait too long, however, or it won't apply smoothly.

Start with a base layer of gelatin. As it cools and becomes clumpier, you can add more by dabbing it on. This will make your skin look lumpy or even crusty, which might go a long way toward your Halloween look.