The Grady Twins – A DIY Halloween Costume Experiment

Halloween is a perfect holiday for exploring creativity and for putting fun ideas to use! It’s because of this that I still enjoy Halloween just as much as I did as a kid. As a horror movie fanatic, I especially enjoy costumes that pay tribute to the films that were terrifyingly entertaining when I was younger. In previous years, I’ve gone as Tippi Hedren from The Birds, and Linda Blair from The Exorcist. These costumes were made from pieces accumulated from various second hand shops and online stores.

The one Halloween costume that I always desperately wanted was not an option, because it required a second person that was equally excited about one of the classics – The Shining.

This movie was one of the first to thoroughly scare me while also hooking me back in to watch it over and over again. Anyone who has ever seen The Shining knows that the Grady twins are one of the most creepy parts of the movie. This year, I finally have a buddy that is just as thrilled as I am about this movie and costume! Here’s how we put together this year’s costume:

Originally, I was pretty committed to sewing our dresses myself. I quickly realized how much hard work and money that would require, so I set out to find a more suitable option. I decided that these Alice in Wonderland costumes would work really well with a few slight modifications.

The modifications that were made to the dress were minimal and easy. I removed the lace from the white detachable aprons, which won’t be used for this costume, and added it to the sleeves. Wide pink ribbon was added as bows for the waist.

Knee high socks are easy to find on Amazon, which were paired with affordable Mary Jane style shoes, also found on Amazon. Full disclaimer about the shoes: Amazon ran out of stock, and I ended up finding the exact same pair on eBay instead.

We decided to add blood to our dresses, but were concerned about using the fake blood from costume stores that gets everywhere and never seems to dry. After a little bit of online research, we settled on using acrylic paint thinned out with water. Just about every shade of red that I found was too bright or too pink, so I ended up mixing some cheap red acrylic paint with just a small dab of my black Liquitex acrylic paint that I already had at home. I tested this mixture on some fabric first, to make sure that the color and texture would work – and it did!