During winter, spring and summer, Janel Rauso works at the UPMC Horizon sleep lab and does medical transcribing from her home.

But when autumn hits, another side of the Wheatland woman's personality emerges, and it affects her friends, family, even those in the community.

That's when Ms. Rauso, 32, begins to create Halloween costume masterpieces.

"It's a seasonal thing. It kind of takes over until Halloween," she said, adding that her friends and family use the creations as costumes or model them for her as she works on them.

"They're all pretty good sports about it, because some of them are pretty uncomfortable," she added with a laugh.

Many times that discomfort leads to an award.

"If I win a costume award, it means so much more to me because I created it," Ms. Rauso said.

Her most recent creation is a walking Operation board game which includes the tweezers to pull out the Velcro body parts and a red bulb that lights up.

She won the "Most Original" costume award at the Southern Park Mall Thursday, and was awarded a party for 25 at Jillian's, mall certificates, T-shirts and CD's.

"It was worth the drive over," she said with a smile. "I win every year somewhere with my costumes. The year I did Bert and Ernie, they cleaned up everywhere we went."

Some of her other award winners include the entire casts of the Wizard of Oz and Cinderella, including the slipper, as well as Alvin and the Chipmunks and the Three Little Pigs.

"I began about 10 years ago," she said. "After a couple years, people started calling me to make costumes for them."

"But if I'm dressing my friends, it has to be just right," she said, describing her costume perfectionist tendencies. "They call me the queen of Halloween."

At one point she had about 200 costumes but sold them to Jan Mitcheltree, of Jan's costumes in South Pymatuning Township several years ago. "Now I keep them," she said.

She credits a childhood event as the thing that fired up her adult Halloween interest.

"I remember when my friend had this clown costume for a Halloween party in fifth grade, and I had a plain old costume," Ms. Rauso said. "Her costume had a hula-hoop and balloons that her mother had made. I thought it was so good. Her mother was the queen of Halloween and I thought that was so cool."

The community has probably seen her wearable works of art in area Christmas parades and light-up nights with her Grinch and Bert and Ernie costumes.

"Sometimes I wish I went to school for design, to make costumes for movies or television," she said. "I have so much fun doing it."

But instead, every year, beginning the third week of September, she channels her creative costuming talents and begins her descent into the dark side.

"I used to love to decorate the outside of my house for Halloween," she said. "Now, I come up with an idea for a costume, and I decorate my friends. They just come to me."