- October 29, 2026
- By Karen Shih ’09
From a weathered and weary Odysseus to the glam leads of “The Devil Wears Prada,” there’s plenty of Hollywood inspiration for Halloween costumes this year. Or maybe you’re a fan of old-school monsters, from fanged vampires to cauldron-stirring crones.
Whatever you pick, getting your makeup and hair just right will complete your look — and a University of Maryland graduate student from the School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies is here to help.
First-year MFA in costume design candidate MJ Kelly has loved stage productions since they saw the chandelier crash in “The Phantom of the Opera” as a child. When they’re not working behind the scenes on shows like the recent “Mr. Burns, A Post-Electric Play” or dance showcases at The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, they’re experimenting with hair and makeup. Oct. 31 is the perfect time to showcase those skills.
“Halloween is the one day a year when you can put on crazy makeup and costumes and go out and no one looks at you weird,” they said. In recent years, Kelly’s covered themself in blood for Carrie, donned sleek black hair and dress for Morticia, and created a cozy, bespectacled Velma for a group costume of the Scooby-Doo gang.
Whether you’re chaperoning trick-or-treaters or heading out to parties this weekend, check out these tips:
To get started:
Invest in some face paint. Kelly likes Ucanbe’s Athena Painting Palette, which not only has the full rainbow of colors, but also triple portions of white and black. For those who want to splurge on higher-quality, longer-lasting makeup, theater products by Mehron and Ben Nye are good options, they said. To ensure the makeup stays on point all night, use primer like Nyx’s The Face Glue to create a smooth base. After you’ve finished your look, follow with pressed powder and setting spray, like L’Oreal Infallible.
To become undead:
Create the pale, translucent skin of a vampire or zombie by mixing white face paint with your existing foundation on a palette or paper plate, with a tinge of gray or black (Kelly’s inspiration is the goth-looking lead vocalist for My Chemical Romance, Gerard Way). “You want a bit of, ‘I’m not fully alive and still gray and ghostly,’” said Kelly.
Use a brown eyeshadow or contour powder with cool tones to bring the shadows back to your face, creating hollow cheeks and sunken eyes. For prominent veins, draw “little lightning bolts” with thin purple face paint.
To add a bite mark, dab a bit of red paint on your finger and draw two little circles, about the size of your finger. In the middle, add a little yellow, then a small, black dot where the fang sunk in. Dab some fake blood (pros use the brand Kryolan, but a party store option could do) to complete the realistic puncture wound. You can also add a drip of blood from the corner of your mouth, but check the packaging to make sure it’s safe to ingest (the right kind sometimes tastes minty, said Kelly).
To go glam:
Whether you want to be Jessica Rabbit or a Disney princess, amp up your regular makeup routine, such as trying more contour. Then, go for a dramatic eye: Blend the bright color of your choice, like purple, with a shade closer to your skin tone , before you apply it to your eyelid. Swipe a little shimmer eyeshadow with your finger (yes, Kelly owns a “Twilight” palette (Color Pop branded), still popular decades after the movies came out) in the middle and corners of your eyelid — brushes don’t hold shimmer as well. Add a bold lipstick, and for extra shine, stick on some loose glitter with eyelash glue or baby oil.
To age yourself up:
“The best tip I can give is to move your face around,” said Kelly, scrunching up their nose and raising their brows. “Anywhere you see a wrinkle, trace it.”
To become a warty witch or a cranky Carl Fredricksen from “Up,” map everything from the crow’s feet around your eyes to the jowls that form beneath your cheeks with thin brown lines of face paint, then blend them so they’re less stark. You can even create eye bags by adding concealer right under your eye, then drawing a darker half-circle under it.
Since most Halloween activities are at night, go for more pronounced lines than you would under bright lights in your bathroom. “It’s almost like theater makeup,” said Kelly. “You want to go darker so the audience can see it from all the way back.”
To get silvery locks without a wig, Kelly recommends hair white, a liquid product that can be applied to your hair with a small brush.
To fully disappear:
For a skeleton or other dramatic look that requires fully covering your face in makeup, like Beetlejuice or the Joker, Kelly recommends finding a reference photo and testing it before Halloween. YouTube tutorials are a great reference, they said. “If you get stuck, someone has probably tried this before!”
They suggest lightly tracing outlines first, and for symmetry, make sure to do both sides before filling things in.
Pro tip: “If you want a look where you’re like, ‘Dang, I need no eyebrows, but I really don’t want to shave my eyebrows off,’ you can block them with glue,” said Kelly. That’s running an Elmer’s glue stick over your eyebrows a few times, to fully smooth them down.
Hair care:
While your party store wig won’t be as high-quality as the ones used in stage productions, you can rinse it with fabric softener to make it less stiff.
But if you splurge on a lace-front wig from a beauty supply store, make sure to trim the lace down to about half an inch. Most wigs will come with a cap, but the net kind can allow hair to stick through. For the best effect, get a solid one (the texture of thick pantyhose) – and bust out the glue stick again to get any sideburns out of the way.