It may be too early for some of you (amateurs), but the folks at BuyCostumes are offering a whopping 50% off all their clearance items until December 31, 2006. That’s 50% off adult costumes, kid costumes, pet costumes, costume accessories, party decor, party supplies and anything else that is marked as clearance. We’re using this opportunity to snag a couple costumes that we had our eye on this year, but were out of our price range. Assuming the holidays haven’t bankrupted you yet, this is a great chance to stock up on Halloween supplies at killer prices.
Coupon Code: use code OUTTAHERE06 to receive 50% off any clearance items, while supplies last.
The next 3 days or so is the final rush for online Halloween shopping, so retailers are offering some good deals. Costumes are flying off the shelves too, so if you don’t have your costume yet then you need to either buy RIGHT NOW or plan to wear a DIY get-up. I did some online shopping this morning and had an eerily perfect experience, but I’ll save the details for after the deals and coupons below. Some of them expire this weekend, so don’t wait!
Extremely Time-Sensitive Deals
- Fright Catalog: Same day shipping on most orders placed by Noon EST. Variable shipping costs. Place an order of $50 or more TODAY (October 21st, 2006) and receive 2 R.I.P. Rewards cards worth $10 each for future purchases of $40 or more (details here).
- Buy Costumes: $0.99 FedEx Ground shipping and $5.99 FedEx Express shipping for orders over $60. Expires Sunday October 22, at 11:00 P.M. CST. Not sure which shipping method you will need? Check their handy “order by” chart.
- Hot Topic: 50% off all pre-packaged costumes. Orders must be received by Monday, October 23rd to arrive by Halloween.
More Great Deals
So this is the first year that Sean and I are buying our costumes (here are some of our past homemade costumes). Buy Costumes is always our first choice for online Halloween shopping, but the costume I wanted had been out of stock during the critical time of Oct 12th until this morning. When I woke up and saw an e-mail alert that was a mere 15 minutes old, I scrambled to place my order before my costume sold out again. The product page noted that every other size was sold out for the season and only my size was available. No pressure or anything. I placed my order as fast as I could, and afterwards the costume page was noted as being “sold out for the season”. Wow, I got the last one! Fast forward 4.5 hours and I just received my shipment confirmation e-mail, ensuring that I’ll have my outfit in time for the costume party I will be attending on the 28th. Now that’s Halloween magic.
It’s difficult to watch an 80’s movie and stay silent. Between the plot holes, 30-something “teenage” actors, unsubtle dialogue and “creative” outfits, there’s a lot of fun opportunities to yell at your TV (or use air quotes in its general direction). I doubt anyone was listening all those times I said “someone needs to recreate that outfit”, but Found Item Clothing answered my plea anyway. They make recreations of shirts from “your favorite movies, TV shows and more”, including classics from Teen Wolf (my fave) and UHF. For a Halloweenie, this means that dressing like your favorite obscure 80’s movie character just got a lot easier. But wait, there’s more! Not only does FIC make the shirts, they offer 12 detailed tutorials on how to dress like characters from Real Genius, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, The Big Lebowski, Beverly Hills Cop, and Wet Hot American Summer. Nerds, rejoice!
Thankfully, there are other online resources that save you the trouble of playing the “pause, rewind, pause, screencap” game. If you’ve ever wanted to dress as Bill and Ted for Halloween, you’re in luck. BillandTed.org provides 3 very detailed tutorials on how to make Bill and Tedd costumes from both movies, as well as a fan costume gallery. The Wyld Stallyns shirt is also finally available!
Instructables has a thorough Ghostbusters tutorial and 80s Tees also has some interesting costume ideas. Notable among them are Screech, Al Bundy, and Beavis without a mask. About a jillion general 80’s costume ideas are available at In the 80s and Mable’s. If you just don’t have the time or inclination to go DIY this year, several readymade 80s costumes are available from Buy Costumes.
As always, you’ll probably find the most unique & genuinely vintage 80’s costumes on eBay.
If you have made an 80’s movie character costume or know of a good tutorial online, please let us know in the comments.
And because 80’s Tees has so many funny designs, it would pretty much be criminal if we didn’t show a few more of them. The “costume” shirts remind me of those plastic smock costumes from the 70s/80s… in the best way. Enjoy the flashback!
Karate Kid Cobra Kai Costume
Costumes with “crazy” in their name are perfect for Halloween. The outfit is often an eye-catching hodgepodge of items, and you have a perfect excuse to act ig’nant all night long. The Crazy Cat Lady is no exception. The outfit is totally open to interpretation so you can wear any wonky old clothing of your choosing. Layers, anything extremely retro, brightly colored, mismatched, or a bit tattered and/or stained is perfect. Accessories like big hats, big purses (for toting more cats), long scarves, garish and smeared makeup, and hair curlers will show everyone that you are indeed more concerned with herding all your pretty kitties than with looking in a mirror or knowing what month it is. Because of the anything-goes nature of this outfit, it’s fast and easy to create, and makes a creative last minute costume idea.
The Crazy Cat Lady costume offers some extra flexibility, too. Maybe you don’t exactly want to focus on the crazy part, and want to instead just show your greater-than-average love of cats. Here’s a garden variety Crazy Cat Lady that’s just crazy for cats, not loco crazy. Just find any item of clothing with a cat print or a picture of a cat on it and build from there. No matter which version you opt for, be sure to attach several stuffed cats to your outfit, in your hair, and in your purse. If you’ve got kids or are a Crazy Cat Lady in real life, you should have these lying around.
Did you find this Halloween tutorial useful? If you’ve made your own version of this costume, we would love to see pictures! If your pics are already online, post a link in the comments below, or send us an e-mail so others can be inspired as well.
We just got word of an excellent shipping promotion going on over at BuyCostumes. Starting today and only lasting 6 days, Oct 7-12, they are offering $0.99 shipping on all orders over $30. If you don’t know already, BuyCostumes has more costumes than your local costume shop without all the crowds. So avoid the traffic and have your costume delivered for under a dollar before it’s too late.
Target.com is also offering a great shipping deal on Halloween costumes. You get free shipping on all costumes purchased online from now until October 14th. We went to a few local Target stores on the first of October and they were already sold out of a bunch of Halloween items. They have some nice decor items that look like they will sell out real quick as well. So hurry and buy online while the shipping is free and the best stuff is in stock.
Buy.com is also pushing their Halloween section with up to 50% off their selection of costumes, toys, scary movies, and more. There are some scary movie box sets that look pretty appetising with this added discount. These deals die on October 31st. In addition to this up to 50% off deal Buy.com is offering $10 off any purchase of $30 if you use Google Checkout to buy the item(s).
Check back later for some more Halloween steals and deals as it becomes closer and closer to the night we’re all dying for.
Being a zombie, whether for Halloween or your local Zombie Walk, calls for some blood stained clothes and makeup to get that rotting corpse look. Having been a zombie myself I wish I would of had some good looking prosthetics in addition to my makeup and dried blood. Just a little something like an exposed broken bone, part of my brain showing, or even have the whole side of my face peeling off would have been an excellent addition. So in an effort to help others get their full enjoyment out of their next zombie costume I’d like to suggest some prosthetics that would look great on any zombie.
The most popular place to put a prosthetic is on your face/head region as that’s where every one is staring to see if they should be ready for the Zompocalypse or if it’s just a costume.
My personal picks would be; 
A simple prosthetic add-on that can make a big difference without altering you face and perhaps creating usability problems while snacking on food at your Halloween party is this Broken Bone. Another simple add-on that doesn’t involve the face would be to slap on some bullet wounds. We all know zombies don’t care about bullets so I’m envisioning these placed upon your chest or arms with holes in clothes so you can see them. Only put them on your head below the eyes, because you wouldn’t be shambling anywhere if you sustained a shot to the brain.
If you’d rather get the personal touch and go the DIY route there are some places online where you can get some good tips and suggestions. So you wanna be a Zombie? has good explanations and pictures to help with ideas and techniques. There are also some decent tips and a few pictures for zombie makeup here.
