A woman was left horrified after finding out the temporary face tattoos she’d applied for Halloween wouldn’t come off – and she had work to go to in the morning.

For those who love to go all-out for Halloween, a bit of face paint is par for the course – or, in this case, some gory temporary tattoos.

Elizabeth Rose – who aptly goes by @makeupandmeltdowns on TikTok – took to the video sharing platform to share her own Halloween fail, after finding that her tattoos were almost impossible to remove.

She recorded herself with a large gash tattoo on her forehead and a skeleton mouth as she told her followers: “Put a tattoo sticker on, join in a bit of Halloween, you know? Put some on my granddaughter as well, she’s seven, and my daughter rings up going ‘how does it come off?’ …Well, it couldn’t be that difficult, surely?”

However, it was indeed that difficult, as Elizabeth showed herself sloughing at her face with a silicone face scrubber, only to find the tattoo just wouldn’t budge.

“F**k’s sake, I’ve got meetings tomorrow!”, she said as she attempted to get the design off her lips, cheeks, and forehead with no avail.

The video has already amassed over 3.5 million views since she uploaded it last year, as her followers flooded the comments with tips on how to get the offending face art off.

One wrote: “Use oil based makeup remover or nail polish remover”, while another added: “Baby oil or olive oil will remove it.”

Another joked: “anything alcohol based, hand sanitiser, rubbing alcohol.. or you could just drink it and forget all the tattoo.” (On a serious note – never drink either of those things as it can be deadly).

Thankfully, it seems Elizabeth did manage to get the face tatts off – though she didn’t clarify whether that was before or after her day of meetings.

She shared a follow-up video revealing: “So, very successful. I did manage to get it all off. I used the Garnier [micellar] water cleanser. Only difference is, I literally look like I’ve been slapped in the face 10 times by Will Smith.”

She then – rather bravely – reapplied another huge face tatt to test out the removal techniques people had suggested in her comments to see which would work best out of hand sanitizer, vodka, parcel tape, and olive oil.

Parcel tape was the first thing she tried, which worked pretty brilliantly to lift the tattoo clean off her skin. Unable to hide her shock after having scrubbed her face raw with the last tattoo, she exclaimed: “Are you f**king kidding me?”

It turns out parcel tape has an unexpected use for removing temporary tattoos with ease. Credit: AleksandarGeorgiev/Getty Images

She was so stunned by how effective it was that she actually didn’t bother to test out the other methods, saying that she’d just drink the vodka instead.

Elizabeth later added that she’d tried different methods including nail polish remover which “did work but it wasn’t straight off or easy and still required a fair bit of rubbing, and since it was around my mouth it was vile to try that one,” adding that she would “never” use that method again.

She added that olive oil was “rubbish” as it didn’t help much at all, while hand sanitizer which “wasn’t too bad” but still required some scrubbing, and the alcohol was pretty similar too.

So now we know – if you ever need to remove fake tattoos, parcel tape is the only way to go.