Dracula's Disco

God I love Halloween, as well as any excuse to dress up. This year, I haven't made my BIG costume yet (see the Midsommar dress from last year here), but my boyfriend and I wanted to go ahead and get creative! Stephen is a super talented photographer, and we always shoot together when either of us has a fun idea.

I was very inspired by Emmy Rossum's Christine Daae look in the Phantom of the Opera, the one with the all white lace and corset when the Phantom leads her into his lair. Originally that was kind of the whole inspo - and we were going to shoot in the cemetery at night with a bunch of smoke. BUT....then we remembered that vampire fangs exist. And then Stephen remembered that we have a huge collection of disco balls from our friends at East Nashville Disco Balls.

So Stephen set up shop in our garage while I set up this whole look - which honestly, took a few hours to create. Not because makeup or hair really took too long, but because it took SO LONG to figure out how to get the fangs to stick. I've never had luck with getting the kit glue to set to my teeth, so I went the Fixodent route. I mean - it works for dentures so it should work for fangs, right? And it does...but it takes so long to set. You have to dry your teeth completely and then not get them wet while they set. So basically, I'm sitting there with my lips curled up like a rabid dog for like 20 minutes, and I had to redo the left fang because it kept not wanting to stick.

But, literally STICK with it and the Fixodent will eventually set lol. The outfit I ordered from Amazon, and for the makeup I went with that Phantom of the Opera inspired, smoky dark eye look. I was going to wear a dark brown wig for this - but we tried it on and decided it just wasn't the right vibe. So I curled my hair and put it in Velcro rollers while I did the rest of my makeup, then took it down with extra, extra hairspray for maximum hold. My hair likes to stay stick straight and fall, so the hairspray used for this was pretty much on the 80s level of excess. I also did an under-curl compared to my usual 70s back curl, which was really fun to see the result of.

Once that was all done, it was time to SHOOT! Stephen did such a great job setting this one up with absolutely perfect disco ball placement. Can you believe this was just in our garage? We also used a fog machine that we recently bought for photoshoots, and he did some cool back lighting to give it a mystical effect. Stephen is an absolute MASTER at photo lighting and really made this have such a cool, vintage 70s Playboy effect. It made us really want to recreate some old photoshoots from the magazines. I always love our shoots together, but we joke every single time that we simply can't top whatever it was we created. And then we do. It's so much fun!

Stephen also recently restored his vintage Polaroid camera, so we got to play with that and take a bunch of instant shots. I love the vintage look of these! I think they turned out so cool and such a vibe.

What are you dressing up as for Halloween? Do any of you like to do costume shoots too? Link me to your work in the comments, I'd love to see!