Face Your Fears

FIFTEEN Senior Account Manager Kim Caruana wears many faces—she also creates those faces herself. As a special effects makeup artist, Kim doesn’t wait until Halloween to play dress up. Instead of twiddling her thumbs in her spare time, she sticks spaghetti to her face (it makes for bulging, life-like veins).

Ever since college, where she majored in theatre, Kim has had a desire to produce bloody, scream-inducing characters.

“I think, ‘How can I make my face look burnt, or how do I make it look like my throat’s slit?’” Caruana says. She doesn’t spend too much time perfecting the process. Instead, she lets her passion and creativity guide her toward her outcome. Considering she once made her own brother vomit from the gory sight of blood spurting from her neck, she seems to have this horror thing figured out.

Kim’s over-the-top visual personas have experimental beginnings and artistic endings. And her art—quite literally—stands out. She once fashioned a costume in which a zombie baby protruded from her stomach. She’s also sewn her mouth shut, fabricated gunshot wounds, constructed a zipper down the length of her face, in addition to choking up fake blood.

And speaking of blood, Kim assures she has the best fake blood recipe out there: Dish soap, corn syrup, blue and red dye, and chocolate syrup, she says, bring her characters back from the dead—and it doesn’t stain or taste too bad, either.

In all her blood, guts and gory glory, Kim dresses up as skin-crawling characters because she has a blast facing the challenge. Whether she’s sticking toilet paper to her skin to resemble gashes or sporting a dress soaked in fake blood (yep, she was Carrie), she’s proud of her creations and the process that leads to her final ensemble.

As for this year, Kim says she might take a less gory approach and portray this year’s horror token “The Nun.” But that’s no guarantee: She’s willing to try anything.

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