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Jake Webb
Special to SaltWire
With Halloween just around the corner, people are thinking about Halloween costumes, but this year especially don't want to break the bank.
Cass Collins works at a costume store, Halloween Central, in Charlottetown, P.E.I. She says a great way to save money when buying costumes is not to get the full-packaged costume.
Instead, she says, just get the accessories.
“Wings or horns and a little bit of makeup, you can be a devil or an angel,” Collins said.
“Same with a witch, all you really need is a broom and a hat and use your own dress, you're good to go.”
You don't have to go big
Ashley Pitcher has worked as a manager in Party City in St. John’s, N.L. for “five Halloweens.” She also suggests buying accessories instead of the usually more expensive costume sets.
“Instead of buying the full Spider-Man costume, if you had a pair of Spider-Man gloves with the mask, and maybe a Spider-Man t-shirt,” Pitcher said.
“It would be a little cheaper than the full costume.”
Get creative
Outside of only purchasing accessories at costume stores, creativity saves money on Halloween costumes.
“A lot of people put together costumes using colour themes, so they can be a little more affordable,” said Pitcher.
“A lot of people (go as) the M&M and they'll come in and fit themselves out with a colour theme with three or four of their friends.”
Makeup goes a long way
Collins is a firm believer that all a person needs for a creative, spooky costume is makeup.
“If you come in and get a little jar of liquid latex, you can basically build any kind of horn on your forehead or skirt to be Freddy Krueger,” said Collins.
“As long as you grab a little piece of makeup and just do a little bit of YouTube-ing, it'll walk you through everything.”
Pitcher herself is going as a “female Freddy Kreuger.”
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Group costumes
Pitcher is also planning to dress up with her coworkers – Nicole Comerford, Ashley Pender, Melissa Squires, and Katelin King – as the crew from Despicable Me.
“There's ideas floating around about me being Gru and my team being minions,” she said.
“So that would be pretty cool if we were able to pull that off, but it's only in talking right now.”
Get crafty
Pitcher and her staff “live and breathe Halloween,” so they’re often getting crafty with their costumes.
She usually visits Michaels when she’s getting supplies.
“Michaels is always the place I send someone for crafting,” said Pitcher.
Thrift stores are other spots to hit up this time of year if you need a specific clothing item or a crafting item and don't want to buy something new.
Use anything and everything
Nancy Price teaches at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD) in the division of craft program. She’s been living in East Dover, N.S., for the last 25 years.
Her artistic designs come from introducing non-traditional items into the wardrobe.
“I have taught a few experimental fashion courses at NSCAD whereby students built art ‘wearables’ out of found materials or non-traditional materials,” Price said.
“My own work involves experimentation with the concept of clothing on the live moving body.”
To Price, anything and everything can be a part of a great Halloween costume. From “twisted newspapers” to “a hundred tin cans,” the holiday is about full-blown creativity.
“Halloween is a type of way that people play and they're performing and they get to explore identity,” said Price.
“For some, it's about embodying estrangement.”
Set limitations
While Pitcher and Collins both push for creativity when costume-making, Price wants people to go even broader. She recommended getting away from specifics and thinking about themes.
Price also said that when creating, it’s important to set “limitations” because it’s easy to get “overwhelmed.”
“Not gonna say ‘I'm gonna be this character, and I only have two dollars.’ Well, I'm sorry, but you'll probably never be happy,” said Price.
“But if you're more like, ‘I want to be a scary thing or a happy thing or a wild thing,’ then you’re embracing the theatre of Halloween.”
