Buying face paint for Halloween can be helpful and fun, but if you are broke or simply don’t want to buy any new makeup, there should be no reason why you can’t use your own makeup for some cool effects this Halloween. Here are a few ideas for using your own makeup kit for Halloween this year.

• Eyeliner for just about anything. I’ve used black eyeliner for spider webs, black lipstick, Egyptian eyes, scars or stitches, and just about everything else. I use black eyeliner every year on Halloween. My daughter’s cat effects are usually drawn with it rather than any other makeup as well. I was a face painter once, and a lot of people preferred to have spiders or webs drawn on their faces rather than painted with my set, and I was happy to oblige.
• Try drawing on tattoos, extra eyes, long extending eyelashes, or any other dramatic effects you like. Add glitter for more glamour, or for fairy costumes. A couple of years ago I used my eyeliner to sketch on a beard when my aunt was a trucker for Halloween, and it turned out really good.
• Lipstick or blush for shading. If you are, say, Snow White for Halloween, you can smudge some lipstick or blush on the apples of your cheeks for a rosy glow; this will also work for a clown costume, if done in a much more dramatic, darker capacity. Darker streaks can also be employed for creating fresh wounds, vampire teeth marks, and other scary effects.
• Dark eye shadow for shading. If you’re a monster, vampire, zombie, or anything dead, you can create some pretty amazing shading work with just some green, grey, and black eye shadow. I used to layer green and black to create a dramatic effect for vampire eyes; you can also do that with some shades of brown for bruising, which is great for zombie costumes.
• Use dusting powder for an aging effect. I did this for a play when I worked as a makeup artist once and it was really effective. The boy I was working on was Ebenezer Scrooge, and I made him look pretty old just by using dusting powder in his hair. He also seemed to dig the smell of the powder, which was a bonus. If you’re a ghost, ghoul, or any kind of ghostly creature, this could help enhance your costume as well.