Costume Makeup - Applying a Prosthetic Nose

Emily: Hi! My name is Emily; we are here at Masters Costumes showing you how to utilize your local theatre departments cosmetic selection to get the most out of your Halloween costume. Today we are doing a cat and previously I did a demonstration on how to create the illusion of a cats muzzle using makeup only. We are going to go a little bit more in depth now, starting with a prosthetic piece, which you can purchase at any upscale Halloween costume provider or theatrical supply stores. This just consists of a muzzle and this particular appliance is pre-painted, the company is Ruby (ph), that makes this and we are going to be using spirit gum which is flesh adhesive to attach this to Heathers face. Now, the first thing you want to do with your prosthetic is to take it out of the package and hold it up and make sure that it is going to be form fitting. Now, you are going to notice that the edges of the prosthetic are a little bit thinner, you dont want to compromise these too much but you can trim it to make it fit to the face more accurately. For instance, I had to trim it little bit from the bottom just so that this isnt going in the Heathers mouth, its is going to be super uncomfortable, you really want to make sure that you are going to be comfortable in your prosthetic which does include air holes; if your prosthetic does not have holes where the nostrils are for you to breathe through, then you are going to want to cut some of those as well and seriously you can just trim it with regular scissors but once again be really careful not to obstruct the feather edges because those are going to give you the most accurate feel to your skin and not be as visible, the thinner they are the better. So, once you have that trimmed to the right size, observe where it is going to lay on your or whomever you are applying at your space and then take a little bit of spirit gum which ought to come with a little brush inside, almost like -- you are going to notice that this is really close to the consistency of nail polish and it is going to paint on a lot like nail polish too. It is going to seem awfully thin but as it settles a little bit it will get tacky and it will start to stick, which is good because it means that you have a couple of minutes, I would say probably 3-4 minutes to really play with the prosthetic and make sure that its laying the way you want. Not everyones face is shaped the same. If there is a little crease when you are applying it then thats okay because you are actually going to seal the ends with liquid latex. This prosthetic is made out of latex already, so it is going to be consistent, the materials we are using. I like to put the adhesive, the spirit gum onto the prosthetic as opposed to on the face, you dont want to accidentally use way too much, and you are just going to be waiting it for it to dry, its little tedious. So, lets makes this really easy and I just go right around the edges, the whole thing like I said, we are going to have about 4 minutes where this is going to be wet, that we can play with it before it really starts to stick and I am really only painting the top portion, the bottom part of the prosthetic is going to be covering her top lip and we really dont want to put the glue in your mouth so just leave that there. Now, we have got the spirit gum on it as you can see its awfully thin, but as it dries, it does get stickier. So, once it begins to get tacky, then you place that over the nose. Can you breathe Heather? Fabulous, that is very important and you are just going to follow the shape of their face, just let it fall naturally, like I said before you are going to be able to seal these edges with latex. We have some time to play with it, if that it is too far into corner of your eye, you really dont want to get latex in your eye, so, think about where we are going to be applying the latex and you can even trim just a little bit, you see how I am doing that, take a off little teeny bit at a time. Once again if you do take off too much it really isnt the end of the world, these prosthetics are usually $9-13 not too much and we will have a step involving liquid latex that will hide a lot imperfection. So hopefully, this is still wet, and it is, I will just and just finish that down. Basically, the whole portion beyond this part which is going to be the corner of the cats mouth, all of that you want to be sealed to the skin. Now we are going to let this dry, a very important thing to know is you dont want to use wet latex on top of wet spirit gum, it doesnt really create a great chemical reaction and if you are at all sensitive to cosmetic products then it might burn a little bit. So, you want to make sure you spirit gum is completely dry before you apply your latex, like I say, I would give it about 5-6 minutes to completely dry and make sure that you are not going to have a chemical reaction and that is how you apply a prosthetic, it is stuck on there pretty well so you can stop there if you like and just go on to the castor sealer makeup, I am going to seal the edges with liquid latex next, to make it really, really good seal and to create the most real realism, so we will be doing that next.