A friend made a head like this a couple years ago and everyone loved it, so I wanted to try my hand at making one.

Step 1: Supplies Needed to Make a Severed Head:

Supplies and tools:

Foam craft head
Cheese cloth
1/2 Instant coffee
Mod podge
Wood glue
Black paint
Red paint
Foam brush
Twine or yarn
Cookie sheet
Rubber gloves
Scissors
Small bowl
3/4 Cup water

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Pictured but not needed

Liquid starch (I'll explain in step 4)

Step 2: Time to Dye

The first thing you will do for this project is dye your cheesecloth

Take your cheese cloth and drape it over your foam head so you know how much to use, you want the material to pool around the base of the head, cut it to size if you need to.

Put the glove on at this point.

Take the small bowl and put about 1/2 cup of instant coffee in the bottom and add enough warm water to make an extra strong dye, dip the cheese cloth into the coffee mixture, make sure it's fully saturated, squeeze out all the excess coffee. (the dryer the better)

Hang the cheese cloth up to dry (being in AZ I put mine in the garage for 20 minutes) Or you can preheat your oven to 200 degrees and shut it off, then put the cloth on a cookie sheet and put it in the oven for a few minutes.

Step 3: Time for a Little Paint

Use the foam brush to apply the black paint to define the shadow areas, lightly use the red on the lips and cheek.

You want the head looking like it was underground covered with damp soil. I rubbed the whole head with a paper towel moistened with very diluted mixture of paint and water.

Play around with different colors if you want, your only limited by your imagination.

Step 4: The Trouble I Ran Into...

Don't do this part.

Here's what went wrong.

So I mixed liquid starch with wood glue, and I found out that when you mix starch with glue it makes slime... That's definitely not what I waned.

But now I know how to make homemade slime, and it was fun to play with for a couple minutes.

Step 5: Applying the Veil

By this time the cheese cloth should be dry, if not let it dry out completely. Pour about 3/4 cup of mod podge into a small bowl, dip the dried cheese cloth into the mod podge, squeeze any excess mod podge out you don't want a drippy mess.

(I do apologize I didn't get a picture of this step only because my hands were covered in mod podge)

Place the head on a cookie sheet drape the cheese cloth over the head evenly, so the cheese cloth pools at the bottom on all sides and tie it into place with the twine.

Using a clean foam brush dipped in mod podge adhere the cheese cloth to the foam craft head.

Use the foam brush to squish the cheese cloth onto the facial features, the more wrinkles in the veil the better.

You can even cut little bits of the cheese cloth from the bottom edge to drape across the face to conceal the features a bit more, when all the cheese cloth is adhered to the head- arrange the excess cheese cloth around the bottom however you like.

Step 6: All Finished Up

I waited till the next day for the mod podge to fully dry before I removed the twine, I also used a spatula to remove the cheese cloth from the cookie sheet.

Now place a couple of LED tealights around and your severed head is ready to great your guests.

Thanks for looking, have a great day.