NEW ORLEANS – Halloween is almost here! Test Kitchen Taylor is showing us a new do it yourself costume each day this month.

A Mermaid – the most beautiful of sea creatures, and you can be her for Halloween! Here’s how I did it.

White top + purple puffy paint = shell top! Just trace two shells on your chest and you have a super easy mermaid top! You can customize it – long sleeves if it’s cold or a tank if it’s hot!

A piece of green-blue fabric from Walmart does the trick for a skirt! Decide if you want a maxi skirt or a mini and just pin it together. I settled on a midi skirt because it was in the discounted pre-cut scraps. I simply pulled it around my waist and pinned it all along the back! You could also just use any blue or green skirt that you have at home.

Since I went with a midi skirt, I also wore green-blue fishnet stockings and wedges. You could easily wear flip flops too.

I got so many compliments on my crown, and people really didn’t believe it was originally just $1. I just got a dollar store crown and hot glued on some shells! Shells are available at most Dollar Trees, Michael’s or Walmarts. I then painted the shells with some sparkly nail polish. For jewelry, I wore all the greens, blues, and pearls I could find.

My makeup. Well, it might look hard BUT its actually super simple. Remember those fishnets you had out to wear? Well just put them on your head. Yeah, you heard right! To get a scaley effect, I put on green and blue eyeshadow under my cheekbones and on the top of my forehead over the fishnet. When I took it off, I had scales! I also used a combination of blue, green, light green and purple eyeshadows on my eyes. I started with blue on the crease, green on the lid, light green on the inside corners and purple around the whole thing! I topped it with black eyeliner. Here’s a timelapse of my whole makeup routine for today’s costume.

Check back tomorrow to see what kind of other costume tricks I have up my sleeve. Happy Halloween!