REWitched: How to make fake blood make-up

Phoebe Monsour in gory make-up. Photo by Phoebe Monsour.

With Halloween just around the corner, a simple (albeit messy) blood-surrounded mouth is a good way to liven up whatever costume you happen to wear.

How can you create this look without buying fake blood from the store? It is actually rather easy! All you will need is

Red lipstick
Blue and yellow food coloring
Old lip balm
A small dish
Cotton swabs

The ingredients you need to create fake blood. Photo by Phoebe Monsour.

If your lipstick is not the right color red or not bright enough, the yellow and blue food coloring can help with that.

First, you will need to spread some of the lipstick onto the small dish.

Lipstick mashes on the small dish. Photo by Phoebe Monsour.

After that, you will need to pour in some blue dye and start mixing it if the lipstick is too bright. If the lipstick is too purple, grab the yellow dye and do the same thing. What this does is make the red either more purple and darker (with the blue on bright red) or more blood brown (with the yellow on purple).

Dye drops into lipstick. Photo by Phoebe Monsour.

Cotton swab helps mix blue dye and bright red lipstick. Photo by Phoebe Monsour.

To keep track of the color progress and see how the blood will look against your skin, stripe each new rendition of the fake blood on your forearm.

Phoebe Monsour tests lipstick shades on her forearm. Photo by Phoebe Monsour.

Keep adding the dye until you get the right shade. If the color becomes too purple, add yellow. If it becomes too yellowish-brown or bright red, add blue.

A some point the result might have too much dye in it.

Blue dye dominates the small dish. Photo by Phoebe Monsour.

If this is the case, add more lipstick and continue. To give the dye more weight or change the texture of the fake blood, feel free to add lip balm to the mixture. I like to kneed the dye into the balm with my finger, but with a bit of trial and error you can figure out what works for you.

Phoebe Monsour re-purposes lip balm to change fake blood’s texture. Photo by Phoebe Monsour.

Lip balm makes the make-up thicker. Photo by Phoebe Monsour.

After multiple trials, I finally got the color and consistency I wanted.

Multiple lipstick tests appear on forearm. Photo by Phoebe Monsour.

Now you can apply the fake blood with the cotton swab, your fingers, or even a mix of the two.

If you want to add some three-dimensional make-up to make the blood look a little more realistic, you can take some of the lip balm in your fingers and shape them into boil-like blobs on the edge of your lips.