100th post: DIY ideas for a werewolf party

This is my 100th post and I am quite excited about it! Though I am more excited about that I have such nice people reading my posts and commenting them. ^___^

"Down the corridor, werewolves!"

This post is not only about being the hundredth post, I am going to give some "DIY" tips for a party themed as "Lycanthropy" or "Werewolves". Last week I had my birthday party with that theme for my university student friends. Because I temporarily live 200 kilometers away from those friends, I could not have the party in my home but luckily a friend let me have the party at her place.

Since I had to travel to my university city in the morning, collect the key to the apartment from the friend (she was at work till 18 o'clock), buy the ingredients for food and punch and then go to the apartment and work in a strange kitchen, I would not want to do anything too difficult that might flop, nor could I spend hours and hours to make really nice and theme related snacks, so here is what I made fast and easy:

Fingers
A classic Halloween snack is fitting for hungry werewolves, don't you think? I obeyed this recipe. Though, I did not obey it while actually making the fingers and accidentally I cooked for too long at least half the sausages and they just looked like they exploded. I still managed to make a decent amount of fingers and people thought they were funny yet yucky.

Moon cookies
Now, they are just plain oat biscuits bought from the store, and I think they are mimicking full moon rather poorly. If I have a party with this theme again, I shall make better moon biscuits.

Blood red punch
I decided to make a variation of a recipe for instant sangria. This meant vodka, red wine, coca-cola, and sprite. I can't tell the exact amounts I used because I just added them until it tasted and looked good. I think I added about 3/5 of wine, then 1/5 of each lemonade and then a splash of vodka. I had asked my friend to make some ice hearts for the punch with my heart shaped mold, since certainly werewolves like some human hearts! Unfortunately the weren't that visible in dark fluid but that's not such a big deal.

Chips and gore dip
Also known as boring and plain chips and salsa dip. :D

A hungry werewolf gnawing a finger

Then we are off to the more or less DIY ideas. I do realize some of these are not really DIY crafty stuff but they are ideas others can be inspired by, so what the heck!

"Looking for lycanthropes? One floor up!"

If I could have had the opportunity to drag a couple of video projectors to the place, I would have used them as lighting; I would have put old black and white Wolf Man movies on loop, muted, and projected on walls. Alas, I had no video projectors so the movies were on television as the playlist was playing as a weird soundtrack both to the party and to the movies.

Guiding notes are handy, especially if all guests have not been in the place party is held and the place is situated in a block of flats or some other maze.

It is preferable, that the notes are according to the theme of the party, so I had a couple of notes in the outdoors of the building. There were two doors, one on floor zero and the other on floor one, so the picture above was on the other door and the picture you can see in the beginning of this post was on the other door. They stated to the guests, which way to go.

This photo on the left of a note is from the door of my friend's apartment, because not all guests knew this was not actually my apartment and therefore my name would not be on the door. I thought this would make things less confusing. Do click photos for larger view, the one on the left is a quote from the old The Wolf Man movie. I have also smeared some fake blood on the note to give a little color. I got to admit, I like the stuff! I've had that particular bottle of fake blood for four years now and half of the content is still there! It is also easy to wash off skin and clothes.

Dressing according to the theme was encouraged among the guests and I am happy to say many were inspired. We had awesome werewolves, a moonbeam and even Sam and Dean Winchester of Supernatural, though luckily they had their day off.

Do you guys watch Supernatural?

Moonbeam and Wolf

Here is the moonbeam, with her slightly green moon. There is also a little werewolf, excited of the friend from the skies. These awesome two ladies with two other equally awesome ladies, who just are not in the picture, had given me as a present a bottle of red wine with a picture of a sheep on the label and a pack of bacon, because a wolf needs her vitamins!

The tails

For my own outfit, I had bought a fur collar made of two tails from an internet auction. I separated the tails and used one myself. I wondered for a while, if I should make ears out of old leather mittens, but decided they would probably not match with my tail.

I was slightly amused that in the advertise of the fur collar it stated that the product is "probably genuine mink". Really? With that long hair? Had this person ever seen a mink or a coat made of them? It doesn't take long to google "mink"... Well, it doesn't really matter, because I found it and thought it would fit my party theme. It was also lucky that the seller did not want ridiculous amounts of money of this "mink" fur.

I realized it would be awkward, if I would put wolf make-up on my hands and then fuss with the foods. My costume was not that special, I did not manage to make a good wolf make-up to my, so I just made my self look creepy. :D You can see it in the end of this post. I had the old skull of a brown hare stitched to a flower as a hair piece.


To entertain my guests, I held a quiz concerning werewolves. A couple of questions were for example "from what year is the first The Wolf Man movie?" and "In what werewolf movies did Bela Lugosi have a role?" I asked people to round up teams of three or four people, because there would be prizes.

The winning team got black candles and little jars filled with all the ingredients one needs to turn oneself into a wolf! Wolf's blood and magical herbs, that is. Or, at least something that will look cool around their neck, even if they do not start to sprout fur and fangs.

I bought some twine and the little plastic bottles from a local arts & crafts store Sinelli, unfortunately they did not have miniature jars of glass with real cork but these did just fine.

I then filled two with fake blood from a costume shop and then put some glue on the neck of the bottle before putting the cork on, to make sure the little bottles are well closed. It would be awkward, if a bottle started to ooze on an innocent guest and a winner of the quiz, even though that fake blood fades away pretty well from the clothes in the washing machine.

Then I gathered some natural elements (also known as twigs, blueberry shrubs and lichen) from the woods nearby, dried them and filled the other two bottles. I also put in some black pepper.

Final photos are of my outfit, I am oddly twisted so that my tail is seen and there is a good reason why I look a bit distressed; there is a close relative hanging on the wall!

That's about it! Those were my DIY ideas for partying like a werewolf. I had a really lovely birthday party, my friends were awesome and considerate, participating into the theme and giving me amazing and funny birthday gifts.

Thanks for reading and my next post is going to be about a short story by Ray Bradbury!

DIY: "Doctors & Drug Addicts" Party & Make Up Inspiration

Last Friday I had a party with my friends and in this post I am showing what snacks and other fun factors I made for the party. I also tell how some of them failed.

I had blood red punch, including an ice heart, which was also shown in a previous post. I also made a heart out of jelly. It was rather difficult to get the jelly out of the cast, but after some rude words and a tiny bit of violence it came out just fine.

I was also serving some other alcohol to the guests, but I replaced the bottles labels. On the other side is a sign of poison and on the other side reads "Tincture for Gout".

I had this great idea of making drug-like candy, but unfortunately my plans failed. As you can see from the picture below, I found some really colorful candy with the perfect shape and they actually were the original inspiration for this party theme.

First I tried to make a white frosting and dip candies so that half of the candy would be white and the other half some other color. The frosting was not concealing enough. Then I tried to saw candies in half and mix and match them.

They became more like Frankenstein's Creature, so I ended up serving candy and other "pills" the usual way. I guess some fancy cake paint from a special store would do the trick, but I did not have time nor money to go and get one at that point.

My other nifty idea for a party of Docs and Drug Addicts was to shop at an apothecary. I decided to make cocktail sticks, so what would be more macabre than to use hypodermic syringe!

I am pleased to tell that people thought they were really wicked and cool.

When having a theme party, it is no surprise people were wearing costumes. We had many addicts, a male nurse form an asylum, another nurse clearly gone psycho herself with blood all over her clothes and of course Doctor Who! I myself was just a heroin addict. An hour before the party was starting, I noticed my latex horror skin had dried up, so I had to improvise with make up.

This infected needle mark is made with wine red and black eye shadow, black eye-liner and skin color concealer. I have not done this sort of masking before, so I was really pleased with it. I have heard, that one can fix make up to hold better, if one sprays some hair spray on it. Well, I tried it and did not notice any difference on how my needle mark was preserved, but did not care that much, it was so fun a party. :) Of course some new people were moving to the block of flats that night, so my new neighbors saw me with this arm, since I had to go a few times down stairs to open the main door for my guests.

DIY: Edible Heart Transplant for a Party

This post is about a cool thing I found for parties. I was shopping in Helsinki with a friend and I ended up to the Heureka Shop which is a little shop of this Finnish science museum and exhibition place Heureka. I bought a cast of a human heart, not moulded with a help f a real heart, I would imagine, but it is still quite realistic.

Think of all those theme parties I can host! Edgar Allan Poe's Tell-Tale Heart is on the list, but before that I am hosting a party in the end of this month and the theme is "Docs & Drug addicts" You know, like "Vicar & Tarts" but my party is about the practitioners and abusers of Medicine. I know that is not that gothic a theme, but I wanted to show my new heart-maker and later some other ideas, because one can use them in a more goth party if one chooses to.

In this picture I have tested the heart-maker with the help of juice and a freezer. I am very pleased with the way my icy heart turned out! The cast is not flat from the bottom, so it is a bit tricky to make it stay in a position to manufacture ice, or jelly for that matter.

I shall make a post about my other party tricks after I have hosted the actual party, but this was just a little peek about my plans and funny food I am going to make.

DIY: Death Caps and Arsenic Cake

As featured in a previous post, I made death caps and arsenic cake for my Mad Tea Party. Now I'm going to reveal the recipes.

Death caps are made of eggs, covered with a carved tomato. The instruction said one should use mayonnaise to make them stick together and make the little white spots on top, but I forgot to buy it, so I just used pieces of cocktail sticks. I broke one in half and it kept the death cap in fine condition.

The middle layer

The arsenic cake is a lemon cheesecake-ish variation I made. To make it one needs a packet of some cookies (200g) and butter (100g or something), to mix and make the bottom part. One just crushes the cookies and melts the butter, mixes them and makes a flat layer in the baking tin.

Then 2 deciliters of whipped cream (before the whipping part) and two packs (2dl) of fromage frais / curd (do not know the terminology of baking in English) of lemon or another flavor one might prefer. and 4 leafs of gelatin. And of coarse, to make that beautiful color of imaginary arsenic, green food color. 

Candy worms

Not for least, I added some worm-shaped candy at the bottom. The maggoty wine gum tasted really nice. On top I added some skull-shaped candy too.

It is quite possible I added some freshly squished lemon juice in it too, but can't remember. But I did squish three lemons to make the darker green topping for the cake, and there I added some sugar and a lot more of the green color. I used about 5 gelatin leafs to it. Unfortunately the baking tin I used was one of those you can remove the bottom, so of coarse liquid like the topping just run down and on the table. -_- Luckily a part of it remained, so the cake was not completely ruined.

Cake, before the topping started to run away on the table.

Now, my main point with this post is, that if one has a basic recipe for something, one can alter it to be more gothic or to be suitable for a theme party. My basic recipe is the cookie bottom and the whipped cream + curd + gelatin. After that everything else is optional.

There is plenty of green color left over after this party, so I am planning on a next opportunity to use it. At the moment the party idea is something like "Decadence <3 Absinthe: Grab your top hat and hide a bottle of the Green Fairy in your pocket and join the frantic rampage on the edge of degradation!"

The cake, already half eaten.

DIY: Booze Jello, with tip to easily alter the theme

Unfortunately I have to postpone my plans to write about the last art book. We have a little break from the university, so I'm now visiting my parents and tomorrow I'm off to Saint Petersburg. I'll be back on Monday.

Meanwhile, I made a booze jello as a birthday present for two friends. The have this habit to hold parties that last the whole weekend. The also have some special theme for it and this time it was army.

My recipe:
0,5 litre of vodka
some sugar to make it sweeter (about 2 desilitres)
about 0,5 liters of concentrated juice (green)
15 leaves of gelatine
small plastic soldiers (as decoration)
conserved pieces of pineapple (1 can, so about 200g)
a mandarin or two (fresh)

First pour the vodka in to a huge bowl. Add sugar and juice untill it tastes ok. Use the instructions of the gelatine and when it is liquid pour it into the vodka and mix it well. Pour it into the cups or what ever you are going to serve it from. Add small pieces of fruit (not necessary). Put the jello to fridge. After a few hours plant the little plastic soldiers so that the can stand in the jello, looking fierce.

Of course, this simple recipe can be altered in to a more gothic style, which is the reason I am now telling about it. For example use dark red or violet juice. Insert little plastic spiders or eye balls or fake Dracula teeth into the jello instead of soldiers. I could not put soldiers to the jello before arriving to the party-place (a distant cottage 3 hour drive away), so the jello looks a bit scruffy.

This is an easy way to impress people and make it look like you made an effort!