Store bought costumes are bright, and colorful. They come with some accessories and make it easy to put your look together. On the other hand, they are unimaginative, are made of thin, easily torn material, are limited in designs and they are expensive.

If you’re going to be heading out to a Halloween party, whether it’s a work party, a social party or even just a neighborhood party, why not take advantage of some creative ideas and make a costume that is uniquely your own?

With a few simple items, some of which you may have around the house, some you can get at second-hand stores, you can make some one-of-a-kind costumes.

* Waldo - You will need a red and white striped shirt and blue jeans, a red or white knit cap and some round framed glasses. Add other accessories as you can find them.

* Old Man - You will need a button down shirt and some pants, both in a couple of sizes too large so you can wear a pillow under them. A vest is a nice touch and an old suit jacket. For the jacket, the tackier, the better. Use an eyebrow pencil to paint on whisker stubble and a can of white or grey hair color spray paint. Grab an old wooden cane if you have one. Be creative, cuff the pants, wear argyle socks, mismatch your socks and/or shoes.

* Old Woman - you will need a large shapeless dress or housecoat, fuzzy slippers or running shoes with support hose rolled half-way down and some rollers for your hair. Put a hair net or tie a scarf over the rollers. Creative touches might include horn-rimmed glasses or glasses on a chain round your neck.

* Bag lady - a variation on the above but add some nice touches with a large brown shopping bag full of empty cans, an old coat and scarf and a knit hat. Use makeup to create lines and wrinkles.

* Nerd - wear a pair of pants that are too short, loafers, white socks, white shirt and red clip-on bow tie. A pair of dark-rimmed glasses helps and don’t forget to put tape on them. Slick your hair back with gel or another appropriate prodcut. A pocket protector with pens is a nice touch. Use a red makeup stick to dot on some acne on the face. A fanny pack and an encyclopedia are other accessory ideas.

Raid your closets, second-hand stores and the dollar store for costume ideas and accessories. Be creative, have fun and enjoy your individualism.

In many regions, fall is nearly over. That is, most of what there was to fall, has fallen. Now comes the job of gathering together all those dead leaves. Kids love to rake leaves into a big pile for jumping into, moms and dads with gardens might put them in the composter, others bag them up for the day they pick up the yard waste and in some communities you can still burn leaves.

But if you want to keep the kids busy outdoors in the fresh fall air, another idea is to use the leaves to make a scarecrow. The materials needed for the main body are simple:

* An old pair of pants or overalls, jeans or strong material

* An old button-down shirt, plaid flannel is traditional but any cotton shirt will do

* Some elastic bands

* Safety Pins

* Old boots or shoes

Wind elastic bands around the ends of both pant legs and at the cuffs of the shirt sleeves. Have the kids fill the pants with leaves. When the pants are stuffed full, tuck the shirt tails into the pants and attach with safety pins. Use at least two or three front and back and one on each side to keep your man together. Then they can start stuffing the shirt through the neckhole.

The head can be done a few ways. Some use a pumpkin for a head, but it may lack support. Another way is to draw a face on a pillowcase and gather it around a medium size air-filled play ball. This year the kids and I stuffed a plastic shopping bag with leaves and tied it up. We used a stick for support, long enough to go down the shirt and into the bag to hold it straight up, a neck if you will. Then we used a halloween mask fitted over the bag for the head and face. Ours is a jack o’lantern mask but any mask will do. Imagine how scary having Frankenstein sitting on the porch will be for the trick or treaters.

After the main construction, you can get creative with the shoes and other accessories. Your scarecrow can even sit in a chair holding the bowl of Halloween candy. Or use sticks to pose him standing in the yard. Put stuffed gloves on the ends of the shirtsleeves to give him hands. Let the kids be creative in making the scariest scarecrow in the neighborhood.

Have a happy and safe Halloween.

The picture we ended up with in the last post could, in fact, be used as a template. With a little more simplification, however, we will make the task of transferring it to the pumpkin or T-shirt that much easier. To begin with, we could get rid of the white around the image as it is no longer needed.

To do this we take the lasso tool and click through the black surrounding the face until we have circled the entire face. Now, go to Selections in the menu and click on Invert. This changes the selection so that only the outer part of the image is selected. It is an easy matter now to take the fill tool and fill the selection with black - just a click will do it.

We now have a template of the original picture. But if we can change the colors around so that the black is white and vice versa, transferring the image to the final surface will be a lot easier. Go to Colors in the menu and choose Negative Image. Suddenly we are presented with a negative of our template and the holes to be cut are in black. It is harder to see the face, but easier to envisage the holes now that they are black.

All that remains to be done is to print out the file, attach it to the pumpkin and start pricking through around the edges of the shapes to give a guideline for the cutting out. I am assuming that you already know how to carve a pumpkin - it is hardly rocket science, after all. For a design as complex as the one we are attempting, it is best to buy a set of pumpkin carving tools; they are very cheap but so much better than a kitchen knife for cutting fine detail.

Once the carving is done, all that remains is to place a lantern inside the pumpkin, turn off the lights and marvel at your creation!

In the last post, we ended up with a simplified black and white photograph still too complex to form a template. Now the task becomes more difficult - we are going to select certain areas to cut out and paste into a blank new image file. And selecting them is the hardest task confronting us - it requires good mouse control (if you have a graphics tablet you may now laugh) and patience.

Amongst all the icons for tools there is one that looks like a lasso - click on it and then right-click. This will bring up a list of options with Toolbars near the bottom. Click on this and a little window will pop up with options applicable to the lasso tool. Under Selection type, choose Point to Point. When you move the cursor back over the photo, it will change to a crosshair and we’re ready to start selecting.

Choose a large area to begin outlining - about three or four main ones will do as we will join them together again later. For instance, I outlined the left side of Herman’s face and his hair to begin with. Outlining is done by clicking where you want to start to cut a piece out, following the edge of the area, clicking each time you change direction (this anchors the line in that spot and allows you to draw the next section). Simplify shapes as you go - there is no need to follow every hair and wrinkle. Outline the entire shape to be cut out and, when you reach your start point again, right-click. PSP will join the lines for you to complete the outline.

Copy the selection to the pasteboard (Ctrl + C) and paste it into a new file by choosing Edit in the menu, then Paste and Paste as New Selection. Move the pasted shape to the correct position, allowing plenty of room for later selections to be positioned. Looks a bit scruffy, doesn’t it? Bits of white have been selected as well as the black, that’s the problem. Fill the whole shape with black by using the fill tool (the bucket icon in the toolbar).

Then repeat the process with the remaining segments of the photograph. With Herman, I cut out the right side of his face next and then a weird shape around his eyes and nose, finally adding the eyes themselves and his mouth as separate small selections.

Now we need to make sure that pieces aren’t going to fall out when cut and that means connecting everything around the holes we are going to carve (the white pieces will be the holes). The mouth, for instance, is floating out there without visible means of support. Go to Layers in the menu and choose Merge, Merge All. This is so that we can draw on all areas of the picture. Now select the pencil tool and draw lines to connect those pieces that are unsupported, using the natural lines and shadows in the original photo as your guide to where they would most naturally be.

You should now have the makings of a very effective template. There are a few more steps yet but I will leave those until the next post.