This year Halloween fell on a Wednesday and like many other people I spent the day, and the night, at work. This certainly was no bad thing, well aside from the exhaustion of working until almost 2am (!), but other than that it was an absolute blast!
Since I work in a science centre I had the option to spend the day dressed up. This was an opportunity I took to with gusto - I published earlier about some of
my favourite science themed costumes and decided to go with one of these for my costume.
I chose to mix a little vintage, a little spooky and a lot of bad taste and dress as a deceased Marie Curie. Marie Curie is one of the most well known scientists of all time, in fact, a survey by
Science Grrl confirmed that 61% of people knew Curie over all other female scientists. She is most famous for her ground breaking work on radioactivity.
A lot of her work was carried out in the 1890s-1910s (she was awarded a Nobel prize in 1903 AND 1911!) and as such I spent a lot of time hunting down the perfect Victorian/Edwardian black dress with puff sleeves and a good length skirt. The dress ended up being vintage Laura Ashley and unfortunately had short sleeves, so I added a long sleeve top underneath to give it a more Edwardian feel.
My hair was done with a headpiece from that looked like a large knotted hair bun. I liked this immensely but I felt it was a shame I hadn't manage to get hold of some coloured hair spray to cover my blonde but never mind. Sometimes things end up a little rushed.
Finally my 'turn of the century' style boots completed the look.
I don't often do scary make up so this is still a grey area for me. I didn't want to be a zombie so I was stuck somewhere between ghost and ghoul (whatever the difference is there?). I used some white face paint to create a white base and some eyeshadow to create the hollow eyes and cheeks. I used the black lipstick l bought to be a
flapper to complete the look. I did try to use the paint around my neck but the lanyard made it difficult to get coverage.
Since I couldn't use anything radioactive in my costume, thank goodness, I mimicked the glowing radiation effect using glow sticks. I felt that during the evening these could have been better placed, but never mind, I then added a beauty queen sash displaying the radioactivity hazmat symbol just to secure the joke although I'm not sure this was in the best taste... but I'll leave that up to you.
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| Madame Curie in the lab, of course... |
Finally I added some ghostly cobwebs.
All photos are taken at least 6 hours after applying the make up so I have to say I think it lasted pretty well. Luckily I did have time to give it a top up on the night for the
Late Event.
During the late event I was manning the
Foley Studio where guests were able to record their own soundtrack to clips from classic hammer horror flicks. It was really great fun but it meant I didn't get to see a lot of the other events - luckily for me Life's head of public engagement, and regular event photographer,
Elin Roberts was on hand to capture the spooky science (you can see more photos
here)!
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| Costumes, Cocktails and Glowing Brains - Image by Elin Roberts |
Next door to the Foley Studio was the
Peppers Ghost photo booth. This was based on a classic theatre illusion that makes it appear as if a ghost is in the room with you. Luckily for me - I got to try this out before any of the guests arrived!
All in all I had a really fun night and laughed my way through the Foley studio but after nearly 14 hours on my feet I virtually needed to crawl home!
How was your Halloween? Did anyone do anything fun?
The sash and glow sticks are great!
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