Lets say you wanted to be something for Halloween that you could put a little creativity and thought into, and lets assume that this thing could make an even more amazing impact if you had six friends with you. Are you thinking what I’m thinking? No, not the seven dwarves; I’m talking about the Seven Deadly Sins. Whether you’re particularly religious or not, the impact of personifying them (with or without friends to accompany you) would be pretty interesting. There’s no denying it.

The Seven Deadly Sins

Each sin could be interpreted differently, and the way that the costume looks could be left completely up to yourself and your own whims. You could easily buy a costume that was meant to be something different, or just something ‘cute’ and either alter it, or add props to make it representative of one of the sins instead. Or, if you were able to get access to a sewing machine you could design and construct your own outfit.

No matter what you do though, there are certain things that seem to stick with each of the sins no matter how they are seen by people as times change. For example, envy is often associated with the color green; most often in the phrase that “she was green with envy”. So using a lot of green in your envy costume would be a good move towards making it more recognizable to other people. Gluttony is generally portrayed as constantly eating due to it’s inability to curb it’s intake of the finer things in life; so having some plastic food with you, or a pattern reminiscent of food or drink as part of your outfit would be appropriate. For wrath you might want to include the color red, or a weapon of some kind. For greed you could incorporate money somehow, for pride the more elaborate and attention-catching the outfit the better, for sloth, grey colors, cobwebs or pjs, and for lust, the more sex appeal the better.

If you could manage to get friends to go with you dressed as the other sins, this sort of ‘group costume’ effect would definitely draw more attention and bring a lot less confusion from other people. Make sure that it’s clear what you’re trying to achieve, but if you’re worried that people might not get it; feel free to bring “hello my name is…” stickers with you just in case. There’s no shame in it, especially if you’re the type that gets annoyed when people ask “what are you supposed to be?”

Walking alone down the street at night, with nothing but the dim lights of the closed shops to guide you. It is a street that you know well, and you’ve done this same thing many times before. You usually feel safe and unafraid, as familiar territory tends to grant peace of mind. Tonight however, you feel as if someone is watching you. You pick up the pace without trying to seem to obvious. Truth is, you’re kind of embarrassed by this uneasy feeling. It’s a fairly good neighborhood after all, and the odds of something happening are slim to none. Regardless, the hair on the back of your neck is standing up and you decide you would feel  a lot better if you got home quickly.

vampire

You hear a noise, like the fluttering of wigs and glance away from the street you’ve been following. It was only a moment, but when you look back there is a man leaning against a building up ahead. Strange, you think, there wasn’t anyone on this street before. You avert your eyes to the ground and prepare yourself to pass him when suddenly he is in front of you. The corner of his mouth turns up into a little smile and you notice that he’s very good looking close up. You mutter an ‘excuse me’ and attempt to step to the side, but without seeming to move he is directly in front of you once again. His eyes lock with yours and your breath quickens. Something is wrong about this person, very very wrong. You can feel in him qualities that you’d expect to find in a wild animal, and his skin is too pale; a tone you would only expect of someone in the hospital on their death bed. His eyes are downright terrifying. You realize all of a sudden that you should be running, the fear takes hold of you and every fiber of your being is screaming at you to get away from him as quickly as possible…. but you haven’t moved an inch.

He moves fluidly and takes you by the arm. Your body moves without your consent and you find yourself being led into an alley way. When you reach this more secluded area, his smirk turns slowly to a full grin, and reveals glistening sharp fangs. When they sink into your neck, you feel the most pain and the most pleasure you’ve ever felt in your life; sifted together like a sick chemical cocktail in your veins. You look up at the vampire one last time, then everything goes black.

May we reconvene under the blood red moon,
-Black Widow

Halloween is always a fun time of year for people of all ages, but in this economy who can really afford to go all out on a costume anymore? We tend to find ourselves always looking for deals or ways to save money, but what if you’re really not doing well financially? That doesn’t mean that you can’t go to that Halloween party your friend is throwing, there are plenty of ways to put together a clever Halloween costume straight from your own closet.

Cardboard has many uses!

The best way to go about doing this is to pick a movie, or pop culture reference that is familiar to your and your friends, and go about constructing a costume to resemble one of these people. For example, do you own a fairly decently looking suit? With the addition of sunglasses, a toy plastic gun, and gel to slick back your hair; you could easily be James Bond or any equally amazing international spy.

Or perhaps your friends are into movie culture? You could put on pajamas, a bathrobe, and drape a towel over your shoulder to be from the book/movie The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

Say you have a bunch of different colored bright clothing? Put together an outfit, add some glow sticks, and you could easily show up as a ‘rave girl/guy’.

Own a lot of green clothing? Put as much green on as you can get away with without looking like a crazy person, and go to the party dressed as ‘envy’, one of the seven deadly sins.

Maybe you don’t have a lot of different types of clothing, but you do have a lot of cardboard handy to you. You could get some spray-paint, and construct a suit for yourself out of the boxes. You could show up at the party as a Tetris piece, or a robot of some kind. You would likely be applauded for the idea no matter how bad the actual construction of the outfit turned out to be. But then again, maybe you’re a wiz with cardboard, duct tape, and spray-paint and you could wow them with your amazing skill.

No matter what you do, don’t forget that nearly anything in your home can be used to accentuate a costume, you just have to think creatively and work with what you’ve got.