I'm so proud of my zombie husband with his fancy corporate career, so I decided to dress him up to formally celebrate it.

In reality - we didn't have the moola this year to dispense on Halloween *cry*, so I had to go the easy route. All we did was buy a suit at the thrift store and killed it! Added some makeup and we had an extremely cohesive zombification. Apparently, his co-workers were so scared of him that they made a rule of "announce yourself before you approach me." Hahah.

Proud points: New shredding technique and he was grey and bloody from head to toe. Love it!
Downers: He didn't want to wear contacts to work, nor have gross hands because...he had to work. haha.

Step 1: Tools of the Trade

Suit from thrift store. Mine was $7, but recently, since Halloween, I've picked up thrift store SALES & got some for 50 CENTS EACH!
A serrated kitchen knife/steak knife.
Fearlessness to wield that knife in scary and destructive ways.
Dark eyeshadow, liquid latex, toilet paper, fake blood.
Optional: Airbrush (I actually used cake decorating supplies LOL) to dirty the suit.

Step 2: Becoming a Zombie

Check out my instructable on the makeup side of this costume, it will walk you through the steps!

Before you get into makeup, though, you need to dirty up that suit!!

Here is the link! <----- Makeup

Step 3: In Ruins

At first, I had a whole bunch of tools ready to mar up this suit. It was a great Calvin Klein suit that he could have used, but no...we had to kill the poor thing. :(

So, back to what I was saying...it turned out - no I didn't need the sand paper, no I didn't need a pair of scissors...I just needed that awesome knife. It really simplified everything!

My number one technique for this is the following::::::::

Take a pucker of fabric and shave the serrated knife down the pucker as if you were .. skinning a potato. By doing this, you are making lots of speckles of ruined fabric. In order to even out the distribution, just pucker the fabric in other directions. The more you shave it with the knife, the deeper the texture. THIS IS A GREAT technique and I will never forget it. It's my own implementation and I'm proud to share this destruction with you.

In other ways, just take the knife to the suit and make rips and tears and shreds, you're telling the story of how your zombie became a zombie. This is shown through the physical struggle that you are illustrating here. :)

Tip: Just keep it clean, not overdone, give it some balance, and don't cut up the butt or crotch, or too high up the legs because the zombie still has to be professional...duh. ;)

Step 4: Finishing Touches

Yeah, I got weird and I loaded my cake airbrush with black and brown...food coloring? lol. Then I sprayed his pants, shirt and coat with it to highlight the edges of what has been torn up. By doing this, it gives the destruction some depth. And I guess it dried pretty quickly because he didn't mention it making a mess on the way to work. I made sure to only get crazy with the front of him so that he didn't ruin any furniture.

For the blood, I took him into the backyard and flicked it onto him. Close range and long distance make different patterns, and you can read more about that on my blood spatter instructable! :) Just make sure to have your zombie close their eyes before you splash blood on their face.

To dirty the shirt, the front-facing area, I used some dollar-store makeup - foundation. I put it on my hands and smeared it onto him. You can do the same with some blood to make it look like his fresh victims tried to escape him.

Once he is perfectly disgusting, your colors are cohesive and you can take a step back and say..."DAMN, YOU LOOK DISGUSTING"...then you know your work is done! :D