My dear creative friend, Chad, made this for the Halloween party …  and was kind enough to give us a tutorial, so we can all make our own!

Published on: Oct 3, 2009

It’s a little simpler too, if you’re just starting with your photoshop skills, it’s a great one to start with.  The principle is the same, take old vintage photos and in this case, combine two to make one creepy photo which contains a ghost!

Head over to Fed Ex Office blog to see all the details on how to make them yourself, or if you don’t have time or inclination to make them yourself, you can download the sample printable photos!

Update: Related technique and more downloads: Ghost Portraits!

Did you know Great Aunt Gertrude was a zombie?  Or Ancient Uncle Elrod was a tad undead?  Unfortunately for my Halloween décor, I don’t really have ghouls in the family.  But we can fake it with a little photo manipulation.

These creepy portraits will look great hung on a wall, or in small frames on your serving table, at any scary Halloween party.  You can either design your own, using the instructions provided here, or you can download the set provided here.  Then just have them printed in whatever size to fit your frames, at your local print shop on on your home computer.

How to make your own creepy vintage photos

Supplies:

• Photo-editing program.  These instructions assume you are working in Photoshop.
• Vintage photo image files.  Portraits work best, and the larger the better if you want to print big versions for your walls.  You can scan photos of your own relatives, or you can find public domain photos online. [You can find photos from public archives like the Library of Congress with no copyright restrictions here.]
• Skulls:  You’ll need a transparent photographed skull image. The simplest way to get the skull you need is to use a skull themed Photoshop brush set, of which several can be found online for free.

Method:

This is how to add a creepy skull effect to your photo.  There are of course many other possible spooky details you can add.  More detailed instructions can be found below the photos.

1. Open your photo file.
2. Create a new layer, and determine what skull size and shape will best fit your portrait’s head.  Place skull in new layer.  It should have enough transparency to see through it to the portrait layer.  If not, you may need to increase the transparency of the skull layer.
3. Line up the skull with the portrait head as well as you can.  Resize and move as necessary to get the mouth and eyes of the skull lined up with your portrait.
4. Next, fit the skull to the face.  Select the skull.  Under the Transform menu, use Warp.  Drag the dots around to fit the skull to the angle of the face.  In this example, I dragged the right jawline of the skull out to better match the portrait jawline, and pulled in the left side of the skull.  I also moved the nose to match up with the portrait nose.  It doesn’t have to be perfect, but you need the eyes, mouth, nose and jaw to match up as well as possible for best effect.  Don’t worry about the outline of the skull, we’ll be erasing that in the next step.
5. Finally, erase the outside of the skull.  Use your eraser (a soft feathered brush) to erase anywhere the skull exceeds the face (like on the left side in this example) and pretty much all the edges of the skull image, leaving the features intact.  You can also erase any shading that doesn’t fit with the photo.

Once you have your final files, just take them to your local FedEx Office and have them color printed in whatever size you need to fit your décor.

Download the Files

Want the look, without the work?  Click here to download a zip file of the images featured in this post, plus a few extras.

The curse of Halloween food blogging is that many of my Halloween delicacies, made up for the Halloween party, are done at the last minute.  So I can’t write them up very well before Halloween, and it seems silly to post the recipes AFTER Halloween.  So I was noticing that some of my really cool Halloween treats are relegated to quick photo posts, rather than giving them the treatment they deserve.  To fix that, here is the ‘how-to’ on my world famous Mozzarella Eyeballs, classy enough for the fanciest Halloween dinner party!

Recipe/Technique: How to make Marinated Mozzarella Eyeballs

Supplies:

• Big firm olives (black & green).  Try the olive bar at your local grocery, or you can go for the canned stuff.  The olives need to be firm, not squishy.  Jarred black olives work perfected fine for the pupil.
• A large diameter drinking straw (I find McDonalds straws to be the perfect size) .
• Marinated mini mozzarella balls.  I get mine at Trader Joe’s.
• Optional: jarred red pepper slices.

My original version of this just used sliced pimento stuffed green olives, but then I saw the Evil Mad Scientists and their Eyeball Caprese, and adapted that technique to my appetizer.  You basically use the olives to make your nice rounded iris and pupil.  For the most rounded, slice of the end of a green olive, then use your straw to punch a hole in the center.  Then slide of a piece of black olive, and use the straw to punch out a plug of black.  Then place the black piece in the hole of your green olive.  If it does stay level with the green, you can use a little cream cheese stuffed in the open end of the olive to hold the black in place.  You can also do slices off the side of the green olive, but be aware they will be slightly oblong.  you can see I did a little of both for mine in the photo.

So, the how-to and the recipe:

The recipe is super simple, and surprising healthy, as far as dips go.  It’s popular with both kids (my 7 year old loves it) and adults!

Ingredients:

• 1 package Cream or Neufchâtel cheese – leave a room temperature to soften.
• 1 6-8oz piece of salmon, cooked (Just sprinkle with salt & pepper, and cook in whatever manner you want.  You could grill it, or put in under the broiler, or cook it stove top)
• 2 Tablespoons Sour Cream
• Optional:  Sriracha sauce, or Tobasco, to taste.
• Lemon juice

Remove skin from the salmon, and break up your salmon into small pieces.  The finer your salmon is, the more it will look like brains, but honestly, I prefer to keep the chunks a little larger.

Stir up your cheese and sour cream, and add your salmon and sraracha, and a few squirts of fresh lemon juice to brighten the flavor.

The next step is to mold it into a brain shape.

Form two balls, one for each half of brain, and press together. Use wet hands to smooth the surface. Use a chopstick to etch out the lines of the brain using a picture for reference. Use wet hands to smooth.

Place in the middle of your favorite silver platter, add slices of french bread or crackers, and serve to your favorite Zombie!

Don’t Blink!!  

It’s never too early to start planning for Halloween, especially if your ambitions are this big.

Check out this incredible build by HalloweenForum poster MacabreRob.

He built not one, but TWO weeping angels (of Doctor Who fame), and describes the entire process – from building the body, to molding the face.   LOVE it… I was thinking what a cool project building an angel would be, but I don’t think I’m up for anything quite this intense for our halloween decor.

Maybe we could figure out some way to fake this?  Any ideas ? :)

[More Halloween]

This was actually supposed to go up last year (!) but you know how the time around halloween gets around here!

My friend Cecily made this costume for her daughter…  She writes:

For my daughter, I didn’t like the Daphne costumes available for sale from the costume stores.  They are kind of skanky and not the cool retro Daphne from 1970!  She wanted to be the original Daphne for sure.

I used Simplicity: It’s So Easy, pattern #2825 (Dress and Backpack (didn’t make the backpack).  I used purple Kona cotton and lavendar bias tape for the trim.  Honestly I have no idea as to the “right way” to do something like this- I just followed the pattern and when I didn’t understand it, I improvised.  I’m just excited that I was able to make a garment!

Basically, if I can do this anyone can-as long as you have a basic knowledge of using a sewing machine and following a pattern.

Cecily added that “Funny thing is that I made myself a Daphne costume for Halloween in 2000 (maybe the Daphne-intrigue is partly due to the fact that I like her too?). I didn’t use a machine, just cut and hand-sewed thrift store pieces together to make that dress (a two piece).”

Here’s a scan of the mom version of the costume!

The Cutest Little Conehead Zombie:

I promised you guys a second costume for The Boy’s halloween (you’ll remember he’s also doing Draco Malfoy, Death Eater), and here it is!

He’s a big fan of the Plants Vs. Zombies video game, and insisted on being a Conehead Zombie. We also considered buckethead, but we had the cone, so that sealed the deal.

This is easy to put together, and tons of fun. I think this would be a great group costume idea – everyone picking different zombies to play

Tutorial:
I’ve written an Instructable up, if you want to go make your own.

This has also been posted at Moms Rising! http://www.momsrising.org/blog/no-sew-halloween-costume-cone-head-zombie/

You can also create a card for your congressman:
Let Congress know that it takes more than a fancy Halloween costume for children to thrive.

This is part 3, we’ve already covered how to make a death eater mask, and how to make a hogwarts robe out of a t-shirt!

For the boy’s Death Eater costume, he really didn’t want any Slytherin gear, as he said (and rightly) that Draco Malfoy skulking around as a Death Eater would not be wearing his Slytherin scarf.  But since a death eater doesn’t really look like anything other than a creepy guy in a mask without something to indicate Harry Potter-ness, I talked him into the scarf, so Draco could go incognito.

So here’s the quick tutorial on making the Slytherin scarf.  As with any of my sewing projects, I’m not a seamstress, and I don’t measure.

Supplies:  1 green sweatshirt and 1 grey sweatshirt.  We’re basically just using the sweatshirts as a comfy and cheap source of material here.

Step 1:Assess your fabric potential: If your sweatshirts have design on them, that will limit the amount of fabric you can get off of them, so take that into account.  Minimally you should have a large piece from the back, a large piece from the front, plus you can split your sleeves along the bottom seam for 2 more large pieces.

(see more steps under the photos)

Step 2:  Cut your rectangles.  Figure out the width you want your scarf to be.  You’ll need to cut out rectangles of fabric for your stripes at double that width, and at least 5 or 6 inches tall (the taller, the less you need – use the size of your workable fabric to determine how tall).   If you have more fabric available from one of your shirts, plan on that one being the one on the ends of the scarf, so you’ll need 1 more square of that color.

The rectangles of each color should be approximately the same size (i.e. all the greens 7 in and all the greys 5 in) .

Step 3: Layout.  Starting with your end color (Green in my case), lay out your rectangles in order to get an idea of length.  Remember, you’ll be sewing these together, so you’ll lose some length to seams.  Remember to start and end with the same color (in my case, I also made the green end pieces a little bit taller)

Step 4: Sew together the rectangles. Start with one end piece.  Place “good” sides together with the good side of the opposing color, and machine stitch.  Continue until you have one long piece of stripes.  Remember to place the sides you want to show together each time you add a new color.

Step 5: You now have a long piece of striped fabric.   But both of your ends are still unfinished, so run a quick hem on either end (see photo)

Step 6:  Fold your long piece of striped fabric.  in half lengthwise, so that the bad side is showing.  Pin all the way down, making sure each stripe matches up.

Step 7.  Sew the seam you just pinned to make a really long tube.  Turn tube right side out to see your finished scarf!

To tide you over, here are some clever Harry Potter halloween ideas, for those who like to mix their All Hallows with the Deathly Hallows!

A few photos below, then links to those ideas and more under the photos.

Harry Potter Halloween Idea Links:

• Deathly Hallows Dinner Party
• Draco Malfoy Death Eater (More on this with Tutorials to come!)
• Harry Potter Dog Costume
• Edible Harry Potter Wands

• Zombie Harry Potter and Crew
• Butterbeer Recipe
• Hogwarts School Robe tutorial
• Bellatrix LaStrange costume

• Harry Potter Glasses from 3D glasses
• Harry Potter Recipes
• Harry Potter Themed cocktails
• Mad Eye Moody Eye
• Butterbeer Cookies