The Shining Movie Family Costume

This costume has been over a year in the making. Last August my 13 year old niece showed my 8 year old identical twins a meme that had the Grady twins on it. None of them had seen The Shining, but they all thought that the twins were super creepy and my niece told my girls what a great Halloween costume it would make. I’m a huge fan of The Shining, so when my daughters liked the idea, I was thrilled. I went on an online hunt for a replica dress and found the “creepy twin sister” costume on HalloweenCostumes.com. I ordered 4 costumes in size medium, which was consistent with my daughters’ measurements. I ordered 4 because I wanted to make the costumes bloody, but my daughters aren’t allowed to wear blood on their costumes in school. So, my plan was to make 2 costumes bloody for all of their Halloween events (Girl Scout Party, Trunk or Treat event, and Halloween trick or treating) and keep 2 costumes clean that they could wear to school and for their school parade. This plan was foiled when the costumes arrived and they were slightly too small in the chest area. The length was perfect, but the velcro in the back was coming apart every time they moved their arms. So, I needed to order the larger size, but they were sold out at HalloweenCostumes.com. After a long internet search, I could only find a reasonably priced large dress that looked the same on eBay. I ordered 2 this time. When they arrived, they were way too big. The length was down to the floor and they were swimming in the costume from head to toe. At this point, it was too late to figure anything else out. I returned the large costumes to the seller on eBay but I decided to keep the 4 medium costumes and figured I would try to sew something together for next year. When this year rolled around, I pulled the 4 medium costumes out of my attic in September and I brought them to a friend of mine who is really good at sewing. I asked her if she could tear up the 2 extra costumes and use them to add material to the back of the other 2 costumes. That’s exactly what she did. She used one of the extra dresses to add 6 inches of material on the back of each dress and re-attached the velcro accordingly. The dresses now fit the girls perfectly. One year later, they were ready to be the Grady twins. I then went on the hunt for the perfect shade of blood to bloody up the dresses while still having a real blood effect. My friend only used one of the extra dresses to work her sewing magic, so I used the other extra dress as my test dress to test different kinds of fake blood. Some of them dried pink on the blue dress. Some of them dried and looked like grape jelly. I thought maybe fake blood wouldn’t work, so I tried different shades of paint. Nothing was drying with the real blood look. Finally I found the perfect drying blood that not only dried on the dress with the perfect shade, but also was the perfect fake blood to use on their skin with a wet look and wouldn’t stain their skin (Tinsley’s Premium Hollywood Blood FX, fresh drying blood). Jackpot! I went ahead and laid the dresses and socks on my driveway and splattered them with blood. When it was time for their first Halloween event (their Girl Scout Halloween party) we put it all together. They put their costumes on and I added some 3D makeup transfers (Tinsley’s Hollywood Film Quality FX Transfer) along with some wound tattoos that I found at the dollar store to create open wounds on their faces and neck. I added the fresh drying blood around the transfers and tattoos to drip down for an added fresh wound effect. I finished off the look with some basic white powder (Woochie by Cinema Secrets light touch odorless powder) to make their faces look just slightly pale and added some dark grey eyeshadow around their eyes to make them look sunken in for the added creepy effect in the eyes. Everything came together exactly as I’d been envisioning it for the last year, just waiting to make this Halloween costume come to life! This was the first time that the girls had been something creepy for Halloween. As 9 year old little girls, they’d been princesses and superheroes, but never something that required blood effects or had such a chilling creep factor. The girls went to their Halloween party and really got into character. Everyone was raving about their costumes and they made it into the final round of the best costume contest. They were disappointed to lose to a scarecrow, but hey, maybe the Girl Scouts weren’t ready to let something so horrifying win a contest. 😊 When it was time for Halloween, I had my husband join in the festivities as Jack Torrance in the classic “Here’s Johnny!” scene. I bought a decorative wooden board from Walmart and put a face-sized hold in it using the claw side of a hammer. Once the sizing was right, I used a staple gun to attach felt on the other side so that my husband wouldn’t get splinters and would have some padding while wearing the board on his face. I also used the staple gun to attach elastic straps so that the board would stay anchored around his face. I used black paint to write the words “Here’s Johnny!” at the top of the board and splattered just a touch of fake blood on the board as well. With the addition of a fake axe, my husband’s costume was complete. Once again, the girls stayed true to character. All throughout trick or treating on Halloween they held hands and said trick or treat in creepy unison. My husband stayed close behind so that everyone could see the full costume theme. The Halloween vision that started back in August of 2017 was now complete.