Quick and Easy Costume 'Skin'

 So you want to be a zombie for Halloween, and you've watched every episode of FaceOff but still have no idea how to pull it off.  Let me show you how I faked it.

You will need:
Rubber Cement
Tissues
Acrylic Craft Paint - red, black, white, green, and the closest color you can find to your own skin tone.
A paintbrush is helpful, but you can use the corner of a paper towel or even your finger.
Baby oil (to remove the rubber cement)
Dish washing liquid (to remove the baby oil)
Corn starch, flour, or talc

First and foremost, if you have sensitive skin, I don't advise trying this.  It takes a lot of effort and scrubbing to get the rubber cement back off your skin, so if you think any of the above ingredients may break you out in hives, don't risk it.  (Unless it adds to your costume, ya know, your choice)  Also, if you have a lot of hair where you plan on applying this, shave it off now.  Trust me, you'll thank me later.

Yes, it looks like snot covered tissues.  Yum.

Decide where you want your 'wound' to be placed, then slap some rubber cement on it. As you smear it on, keep in mind that a thin coat is best because even thick globs will flatten out as it dries, so you won't get more texture just a longer drying time.  Let the first layer dry, this takes about 3 or 4 minutes.  Then rip your tissue into strips and lay them down to create the 'edges' of the wound.  Brush over the tissue strips with rubber cement, making sure you get the outside edges laid down flat, you want the inner edges to stick up a little.  If it's not perfect, don't worry, you're going to paint over it anyway, and well, chances are, wherever you're going will be dark so no one will notice.

Then paint.  I painted the tissue the color I found closest to my skin color, then using the same brush (no need to clean it) mixed some red and black together and laid that down the middle as 'gore'.   When I was satisfied with that, I mixed some more of the flesh tone with the red and dabbed it on with my fingers to make a 'bruised' area around the wound, like it's been festering; some black vein marks would be very acceptable.  Since I was going as a zombie, I mixed some green and white with my fingers and kind of smeared it around on the other areas of my arms, to give my skin a greenish tint.  This whole process took about 15 minutes from start to finish.  You could get much more involved with it, but if you're looking for something quick, this works really well.

The hardest part of this whole process - getting it back off.  The paint is acrylic, it will wash right off with water (not rain proof, I'll warn you now!) but the rubber cement, not so much.  Baby oil will dissolve the cement and it makes a lovely rubbery/oily goo.  I recommend using some dish soap to remove most of the oil, then throw a handful of corn starch on it.  Flour or talcum powder would work too, you just need something that will soak up the rest of the oil.  Then, rub thoroughly.  It should peel off pretty easily after that. 

Almost as good as waxing, you didn't need all those useless hairs anyway.