Halloween 2020: Beetle Babe

Like many people, I really enjoy Halloween as a holiday. But every year, despite discussing ideas for months, the planning never quite comes through early enough. With so many balls that I’m juggling, Halloween costumes get dropped. This year, I started my inspo boards via Google Slides at the beginning of the month. As an indecisive person, I put together several ideas and hoped to get input from Angel and Dom on what to do. There were two main concepts I really liked: Pinup Disney Villains and Beetlejuice characters. 

    Now you may not know, but I’m a musical theatre fanatic, and Beetlejuice has been my favorite show for the past year or so. Late January/early February, Sam and I actually made the trip to New York to see Beetlejuice on Broadway. And it was INCREDIBLE. We went the whole nine yards to commemorate -- planning the perfect outfit, getting our “fifty dollar wine” (aka overpriced themed drinks), and purchasing merch. Every show I go to, I have to buy the program, plus I got a cute set of buttons for my denim jacket and backpack. Everything from the music to the set to the lighting was mind blowing. Unfortunately with COVID, Beetlejuice had its last show in March as they were set to close in June. I am so grateful to have seen the show, and ever since, I’ve been very inspired to do a Beetlejuice costume. 

    As the days went by, getting closer and closer to Halloween, we hadn’t confirmed a concept and I, quite frankly, wasn’t even sure if we were going to make it happen. On Thursday (10/22), Angel gave us the available dates and times for the studio and we didn’t book until late Monday! We would be shooting Wednesday at 8pm. Tuesday morning we really set in on concepts and decided -- Beetlejuice. And I was thrilled! Yet absolutely panicked because the only thing I had was the striped leggings from my NY trip. We wanted a corset, but it was too late to order one on Amazon and somehow there’s no sex store nearby to find lingerie. For my hair, I went to Sally Beauty for green and white hair spray. They had neither so I headed next door to CVS. Thankfully I found the green. Still no white, but I picked up silver just in case. I threw a few options for tops in my mini suitcase, including a white button down, a black top, and bodysuits in black and Beetlejuice “accent” colors, so green and purple. Right before the studio, I stopped at Party City to pick up a black bow tie per Dom’s request. I got to the studio a little after 7:30. 

   As soon as Dom arrived at the studio, we got started on styling. She comes very prepared for shoots -- anything we could need, she had, including the white hairspray. We added stripes to the white top with black electrical tape and covered the rest of the white space with a corset belt (another piece I had picked up for the NY trip). Hair was next, so we covered my top with some plastic bags and Dom started spraying the white and green into my hair. As an homage to our shoot last year, she did a few pinup rolls on one side and then teased the rest of my hair to the high heavens. A water-based cream was used for the initial white based and then we switched to a thicker white costume cream to save time. You see, we had only booked the studio for 2 hours, 8 until 10, when they closed. Which means the majority of that time would be spent on getting ready, and we could only hope we’d finish with enough time to get shots in the studio. After the white cream base, the rest didn’t take too long, but by the time we had the final touches, we had about 7 minutes to get some studio shots. The lovely Tia Powell stepped in to shoot in Angel’s place, we set a timer, and we got snapping away. Dom also brought a fog machine for some extra spooky shots. As soon as the timer buzzed, we quickly threw everything into our bags and migrated outside. 

    While we were disappointed we had very little time to actually shoot in the studio, we made the most of the outdoors. In the HGAB parking lot, there is a food truck with a great little sitting area. We utilized the fake grass here plus a wall mural with dripping green paint in the design. Then we got a little wild and messy with some fake blood. Beetlejuice is just a simple demon, with no problem getting his hands dirty!

    I had Sam bring a towel when he picked me up to make sure I didn’t get fake blood on the upholstery. Although I was tired, I had to get some TikToks out of the makeup! Cleanup was just about as bad as I expected. With the fake blood, the shirt was most likely trashed. The leggings had a small stain which I hope will come out. To remove my makeup, I started with just a plain water rinse, then a wash with the Alba Botanica Acnedote Face Scrub. After that, I removed eye makeup and another pass over my whole face with the Magic Makeup Eraser. Once my face seemed cleaned, I did a final wash with my favorite cleanser, the CeraVe Foaming Facial Cleanser. Body makeup was removed with a sugar scrub to break up the dried crusty areas, then a wash with a soapy loofa. I dreaded my hair the most. I soaked my hair during my makeup removal. First round of conditioner was allowed to sit in my hair for a while. I did a shampoo wash for all of the hair spray and color, then two more rounds of conditioner as I attempted to brush out the knots. I’d say overall it took 30 minutes to go from Beetle Babe Britt to plain ol’ Britt.

    Although I regret not being better on top of things for organizing and shooting, it was amazing what we put together in 48 hours or less. I look forward to collaborating more with this team on creative concepts in the future. Maybe I’ll even be more prepared 😉

 

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