Well there’s officially less than one week to go before the 2011 Brisbane Zombie Walk! We have some links for you all to perfect your costumes and to help us raise more money for the Brain Foundation:

¤ If you’re looking for an alternative to our t-shirts, why not get one from talented Brisbane artist Lauren Carney. Her “I LikeYour Brains” shirt is very cute and half of the proceeds will be donated to us. They’re only $40 and this design is strictly limited!

¤ We’ve always said that you can turn a good costume into a GREAT one by wearing cool contacts. Crazy Contacts are one of our major sponsors and have a HUGE range of contacts that will add that extra element to your costume. You can get two pairs for $50 of a crazy SIX pairs for just $100! And if you use the code BRISZOMB to get free, express shipping. If you lave it too late to get them in time for the walk though, you can buy them on the day at the Crazy Contacts stall.

¤ Need ideas for your zombie costume? We suggest going for something simple, especially if it’s your first zombie walk. Rip and dirty up some old clothes (or check out your local op shop for some cheap clothes you won’t feel guilty about destroying) and concentrate more on your makeup. Don’t just resort to the tired old white-face and too-much-blood look. Get creative and look up zombie makeup tutorials on Youtube and start practicing now. In many cases, all you need is some liquid latex, tissues, red/black eyeshadow and some fake blood to make some gorey wounds. Check out HUB Makeup in the City for lots of cool makeup supplies such as latex, tooth colouring and fake blood/wounds and heaps more.

¤ We get a lot of people asking us for good fake blood recipes. There are so many out there but this is the one we have used for 4 years now and still think it’s the best. All you need is glucose syrup, cocoa powder, red food dye, cornflour and some warm water.

Step 1: Heat up the glucose syrup on the stove but don’t let it boil, just get it nice and warm and runny.
Step 2: Mix a tablespoon of cocoa powder with  bit of warm water to make a thick slurry and slowly add it to the glucose, stirring constantly.
Step 3: Add some red food dye, a few drops at a time until it turns into the desired red.

This makes nice runny blood that splatters and drips really well. We suggest making lots of this, but saving some of the mixture and completing this extra step:

Step 4: Make a slurry out of cornflour and warm water and add this to the blood mixture slowly until it thickens up. Keep adding more cornflour slurry until it reaches the desired thickness, bearing in mind it will thicken even further as it cools.

We suggest making this a day or so in advance as it looks better when it’s been allowed to set in the fridge.This recipe creates a super realistic blood that is edible (tastes like pudding!), dries like real blood, scabs up nicely AND washes out of most fabrics really easily. But it doesn’t keep very long even in the fridge, so don’t make it any more than three days before the walk and once the day is over, throw away any left overs as it gets nasty after a while.