Halloween: A Grown-Up's Guide to Creative Costumes, Devilish Decor & Fabulous Festivities

After reading some of the less-than-great reviews, I was a bit leery about reading this book, but I'm that I glad I did. The costumes and accessories were quite clever, and on the whole, everything seemed to have an almost elegant tone. If you like the Martha Stewart style of decorating, you'll probably like this. I really liked the garden tool and vine scarecrow - spare and eerie.

Every knows Halloween has become big business over the past 20 years or so and second only to Christmas in terms of dollars spent decorating. Much like Christmas Halloween has become an entire season with stores dedicated to selling Halloween items popping up every year around the beginning of September and people decorating their homes at the beginning of October. If anything, Halloween may be even more elaborate and more expensive with complex animated items and realistic tombstones and other such displays. And the costumes...one can spend upwards of a hundred dollars or more on a good costume. That's where this wonderful book by Joanne O'Sullivan comes in handy. The book concentrates mainly on costumes and accessories, showing you step-by-step how you can make some fantastic costumes at home, often with materials you may already have or that can be purchased inexpensively at fabric or hardware stores. Each costume comes with a full color photograph and each has a well done materials list and directions which clearly illustrate how to make the costume. Now if you're slant is to the ghoulish and gory, this won't be the book for you. The costumes here slant towards the traditional such as a gladiator, Knight, and Witch, to the rather sublime such as dressing as a Jackson Pollock abstract painting. The designs all show marvelous creativity and shows what you can do with a little imagination. How about making an English Judge's wig out of rolls of bathroom tissue, or a Geisha Girl costume made with old bed sheets. The costumes are all aimed at adults and the materials list reflects making these for an adult wearer, as opposed to children. There's a nice section on creating medieval weaponry on stuff cheaply found at a hardware or home improvement store. One of my favorite items in the book was a Medusa's wig that looks just spectacular. Get yourself some cheap rubber snakes from the local dollar store, a swim cap, and a few other ingredients and you've got a very unique and terrifying accessory to a costume or outdoor display. There are also a variety of other wigs, capes, hands, and feet that can be made. The decorating section is a bit sparse but contains some nice information on pumpkin carving, decorating alternatives, and making such items as voodoo and hex dolls. Finally, there is some great tips on throwing themed Halloween parties such as a New Orleans Voodoo Cocktail party or a Day of the Dead dinner party, both with invitations, décor, libations and food, all matching the theme. While it may be a tame for some peoples tastes, "Halloween: A Grown-Up's Guide to Creative Costumes, Devilish Decor & Fabulous Festivities" is still a great book with many interesting and imaginative ideas. The wonderful color photography is among the best I have ever seen in a book of this type.

My opinions are divided about this book. I give it five stars for the assortment highly original, great-looking, easy costumes. The styrofoam hooves and horns were great ideas, the bug costumes actually looked pretty good, and so on. I especially loved the Monet costume, which was of watery blue cloth and bedecked in water-lilies, with a garden bridge on the hat. Many of the costumes and decorations are very artistic. Even some of the no-sew costumes made me say "Oooh, cool!" I give it one star for the several infuriatingly innaccurate Asian-inspired costumes and decor. The "samurai" armor was just a joke and perhaps could be said to have its own peculiar charm, and the Yuki Ona costume (which is supposed to be spelled Yuki Onna, it's pronounced differently) was quirky and didn't look even remotely Japanese or even Asian (actually, it looked like the Snow Queen) and the bedsheet kimono was actually pretty good and began to look authentic in comparison to the other things, but when it had flat paper masks from the "Kabuki, or CHINESE opera"...! Ooh, that makes me SO MAD! Aargh! If they'd just stopped at one horribly innaccurate Japanese costume, I would have shrugged and skipped over it, but when they kept doing it, one after another... grr. It's not racist, just not researched enough. Something similar happens when it talks about using a voodoo-doll motif for a Halloween party. It then tells you a bit about the religions of Vodoun and Santeria, from which the "voodoo dolls" come. This raises the question of why it's using very serious religious symbols as fun party decor. The book has historical information about Halloween, monsters, and other cultural things. For example, after the instructions for the Green Man costume, it has two pages telling what is known (and not known) about the Green Man's history. With the fairy costume, it tells about different kinds of fairies, and how some kinds of fairies are more dangerous than cute. However, after having seen how innaccurate this book was when it came to Japan, I'm highly suspicious of its educational value and authenticity in other areas of history and culture. It's clear the book *tried,* since it does at least include historical information for everything it can, but I'm not going to use it as history reference. Enjoy, but take with a grain of salt. The section about the Mexican Day of the Dead seems considerably more accurate than the others, and fairly true to the spirit of that holiday and culture, but I still feel a bit suspicious about its authenticity. Sorry if I seem grouchy about the book- I really did enjoy its originality of design. It's a relieving change of pace from the "country charm" Halloween craft books where you've seen everything before. None of those hokey books had scarecrows like the one in this book, which is a terrifying art statue with broken garden implements for claws, a faceless pumpkin head,and a metal wire body wrapped in dead vines! That's probably the

Maybe it's because I'm not a seamstress, or even a casual sewer, but I don't understand the objections of an earlier review. It's hard to believe we're talking about the same book! Yes, there is a costume using duct tape, but throughout the book I found many new, very original and creative ideas that I will be able to use for my annual Halloween extravaganza. I have read dozens and dozens of books on Halloween costumes, crafts, and decorating, and never been quite so inspired. As a Halloween afficionado, I recommend it highly!

So many times you see these books on line and wonder if they have enough good ideas to make it worth the purchase price. In my humble opinion this book at 172 pages, is worth the purchase price. Great costume ideas including making wonderful fairy wings using a laminator machine. Horns, hooves, and other accessories you don't often see are described with nice pictures. One section is devoted to hats, wigs, and make-up and includes a Medusa Wig! Pet costumes are also included in this book! The decor section has some truly original ideas along with the traditional hex dolls, corn dolly's, and a giant spider. The table top Victorian graveyard was my favorite! The last section is devoted to theme parties with a Day of the Dead dinner party and Voodoo cocktail party. Handy copyright free images are also provided to make decorations.