The simplest and most effective homemade Halloween masks are often built on previously made mask forms. Whether you want an eye mask that covers only your eyes and the bridge of your nose, a half mask covering your face from the hairline to just short of the tip of the nose, or a full face mask covering your face from hair to chin, the forms can be found at craft stores and event stores. If you fail to find mask forms in your neighborhood they can be purchased online from such sources as Amazon.com, as well as through a range of specialty houses.
Using the previously made forms as a basis to work up from, you must then decide what you would like to create. Do you want to be a cat? A bird? A tattooed pirate? Your imagination and your skill are the only limits to what you can make. By gluing a thin line of glitter around the eye holes of a mask, then carefully gluing fancy feathers to the mask starting in the center and working your way out, you can make a peacock, an owl, a canary. Feathers are again a common item at craft stores and in the craft section of many department stores.
Buy fake white fur. Cut it to match the form of the mask, then use a fabric ink pen to mark the fur with cat patterns. Or, if you like, purchase a base paint and a good grade of high gloss art enamels, and create a painted mask marked like a leopard or a tiger.
Base paint and high gloss enamel are also superb for fantasy masks. Painting the mask with spirals, stars, ribbons of color, gluing on sprinkles of glitter and tiny ribbon bows, you can make a delightful mask for a princess, an enchantress, or your favorite little fairy.
The same methods can be turned to more dramatic use if your fairy prefers to be a pirate. A black patch, a bandana (glued firmly at the forehead to prevent it from escaping during trick-or-treat fun) and a big black handlebar moustache painted on over the lip can give a girl or boy a great pirate face.
For zombies, ghouls, ghosts, and vampires it may be best to let the kids free to play with their own ideas. For their protection use safe tempera paints rather than enamels, and be sure to have plenty of red and green…they go fast when you’re designing your own monster!
Provide good “nasties” and a secure glue, too: frizzled yard for hair (and for unknown mutilations), fake bugs, worms — you would be amazed what creepy crawly things and bits of scrap fabric can be used for when the child is going for a serious case of “ICK!”
Another form of mask entirely can be based on a simple ski mask. These don’t take glue well, or paint, but they do take fabric ink pens and they are great to sew onto. A ragdoll mop of yarn hair, a couple chain stitch red circles for shiny doll cheeks, and you have a ragdoll in very little time. Again, the ski mask can make a very good base for sewn on monster ingredients. You can add dropping fleece jowls, flopping fleece ears, and soft fleece wrinkles to make a perfectly huggable basset hound pup. A set of tidy embroidered whiskers and pink felt ears can present you with a kitten in less than half an hour.
For more ideas check online and in the crafts section of your library. Yes, it can be fun to buy masks already designed and crafted, but it is much more fun to make you own at home!
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