It’s days before Halloween, you want to go as a vampire, but the closest costume shop is a long drive away, or has a long line stretching out the door. Don’t despair, here’s five rough-and-ready solutions from the City of Eternals team:

Prescribe Some Drugstore Fangs!
The only must-have item for a Vampire costume is actually the easiest to obtain: Fangs are readily available in drug and toy stores. While you’re there, be sure to buy denture adhesive, to insure your bloodsuckers don’t go spewing from your mouth at an inopportune time.

Raid Your Make-Up Chest!
Chances are you or the make-up user in your life has the most important items you need: Face powder and dark lipstick. A man who wears both is halfway to vampire land. For women, pale face powder is probably preferable. That’s the basics. If you’re going for full makeup effect, here’s a good step-by-step tutorial.

Forget Old School Vampire, Go Modern!
Turn the popularity of modern day vampires to your advantage. While few of us have capes in our closet, most of us have leather jackets, long sleeve shirts with large collars, trench coats, and most other items so many contemporary vampires wear. Just Google “Vampire Diaries outfits”, “Edward Twilight outfits”, “True Blood outfits” for ideas — and a ready-made explanation. (”Where’s my costume? This is my costume. I’m X Vampire Character from Y Modern Vampire Movie/TV Show!”)

Get Bloody
Even the best Vampires spill their food — on their shirt, on their neck, and down their chin. The ingredients for decent fake blood are probably in your fridge already: corn syrup, red food coloring, and soy sauce. Mix, experiment, dribble away!

Accessorize!
Take a tip from actors, and find a vampire-ish prop that’ll do your costume’s heavy lifting. A walking cane, a piece of heirloom jewelry, a fancy wine glass full of pomegranate juice or merlot, a pair of gloves or a red velvet strip worn as a choker — your shelves and closets are full of possibilities!

Just some starter tips to get the blood pumping. If you try them out this Halloween, send us a link to a photo of the final results, and we may post it here!

Pictured: Top City of Eternal developers Susan and Sean, suitably and subtly vamped up for Halloween!