With thousands of people in America celebrating Halloween each year, some people put hours of work into making their costumes.
“I have always helped my mom with making my costumes. When I was in elementary school, she would have me sew them after she pinned them. But I really started getting into making costumes in like eighth grade,” Spaulding said.
Spaulding has made many costumes including Captain Jack Sparrow, The Mad Hatter, Little Pink Riding Hood, Juliet from Romeo and Juliet, a pirate costume for her dog, and Aunt Alexandra from To Kill a Mockingbird.
“I’ve never exactly been taught how to make costumes. Most of the stuff I make is something that I have seen, and then I can figure out how to make it just by looking at it,” Spaulding said.
Spaulding has always helped her mom make costumes for her and her sister.
“For the mask the first thing that I did was get a foam head and make a clay mold around it to look like his face. Once that was done, I had to start painting it and for that I bought a large assortment of acrylic paint and have been layering in the different colors so that they will show through the final layer of paint that I choose and he won’t just be one solid color. For the coat I got a navy blue coat and bought a bunch of shells and things that look like they are from the sea and I glued all the sea life looking things on the coat and in order to get the dirty look to it ,” Spaulding said.
Spaulding’s costume this year is Davy Jones from the movie Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. She spent most of the time she’s been making it on the latex tentacle mask.
“So far, the majority of the time has been spent on making my mask because this is my first time ever working with latex,” Spaulding said.
Spaulding plans to continue her costume and makeup design in the future.
“I have no idea what I am going to do for my career in the future; I hope that I can do something with costuming, but I will most likely go into a science-related career and do costumes in my free time as a hobby,” Spaulding said.