Audrey II mask!
Published by Manning on November 19th, 2024
All right, this one wasn’t my project, but I want to take a minute to tell you about my wife’s Audrey II mask! Of course Audrey II is the killer plant in Little Shop of Horrors. Check out how we made this thing!
My wife, M, doesn’t consider herself an artist, but you can see she does fantastic work. We have this arrangement: I can sketch things for her, I can explain stuff, I can show her examples as I work on my own stuff, etc — but she does the whole mask herself; I make an effort to not actually touch what she’s working on at all.
So she had this idea for a glittery Audrey II mask, and I helped her realize it. I don’t have many progress pics, but I’ll explain all the major parts…
Building the base
We started with the same kind of foam board armature that I use for most of my masks. She cut out the flat profile piece, and then she made all the perpendicular parts and hot-glued them in place. This takes lots of measuring, math, and guessing. When that was done, she taped tons of strips of construction paper over the whole shape, to smooth out the edges a bit. Then she covered that in masking tape, which smoothes out the edges even more and makes the whole shape a lot more stable. Then she covered the whole thing with heavy duty shipping tape — this tape is there to act as a release agent for the paper maché, so it’s easier to remove all the inner materials when the paper maché is done.
She covered the whole shape with eight layers of paper maché, avoiding the two flat pieces that make up the interior of the mouth, since those would come out later.
When the paper maché was done, she removed those inner mouth panels and pulled out all the inside materials; all that foam and construction paper and tape.
Next step was to create the concave surfaces for the inside of the mouth. She did this with lots of thin layers of poster board, laid in place so they could sag a bit, and taped in place.
She made the lips from foam pipe insultation tubes. Imagine staring down into the tube, so you’re looking at a circle shape. She cut off one-quarter of the tube, basically from like 12 o’clock to 3 o’clock, leaving us with a long C-shaped tube. Make sense? That was what she used for the lips. Toward the back of the mouth, she trimmed the tubes to become more narrow, so they tapered down into a much thinner shape.
Once the inner mouth and lips were done, she covered those areas with shipping tape, and then six layers of paper maché.
At this point she cut out a hole at the bottom for head to go into, and a hole at the back of the mouth for her face. She also cut a hole in the bottom of the mouth, for her to look downward through. (This would get covered by the tongue, which also has a hole through it, later on.) And she cut a hole underneath, in the “chin” area; this hole is lined up with the one in the mouth, so she can see straight through both, down to the ground in front of her. She also cut out ear holes, to help with hearing and air circulation.
She reinforced the edges of all of these holes with one layer of paper maché.
Teeth
The teeth were easy: she took a piece of black pipe insultation foam and chopped it up with scissors, to create a large number of teeth in assorted sizes. Then she put just one layer of paper maché on each tooth. She needed about 40 teeth, so she made 50, and selected the best ones when they were done.
Tongue
The tongue is a really complicated shape and I ended up designing an armature for it; very similar to how we created the base for the head. So, foam armature, then construction paper strips, then masking tape, then shipping tape, then paper maché; just four layers. When that was dry she cut the whole thing open, removed the base materials, closed it up with tape, then covered that with two layers of paper maché.
When the tongue was done she cut two holes in it — one behind the base, and one below the base — to line up with the holes in the mouth that let her see the ground.
Leaves
The big leaves on the back are just foam board, curved and rolled to make these different curvatures. Masking tape helps the foam board retain the curves a bit. Then just one layer of paper maché is enough to make the curves permanent. There are two smaller leaves at the bottom that act as “feet” when setting the mask down; the mask can sit on the chin and these two small leaves. So those leaves needed to be strong, so I think she ended up doing eight layers of paper maché on them. The other five leaves have just one layer of paper maché.
The leaves are all connected to each other in the back with paper maché, to make one big leafy shape. This would not get connected to the head part of the mask until after painting. In the meantime, we put two holes in the middle part of the leaves and reinforced them with small metal washers, and then tape and paper maché. We did the same thing on the back of the head. Later these would get permanently connected with a twist tie and Gorilla Glue.
So, the head, the teeth, the tongue, and the leaves would all get connected after painting.
Painting
M applied a coat of Mod Podge to all these pieces, to help smooth out the paper maché a bit, and then she covered everything with one coat of gesso, to help the colors pop.
She did some work with blue painter’s tape and newspaper to mask out the lips for spray painting. She sprayed the inside of the mouth red, and the whole head green. She did a light dusting effect with a lighter green/yellow color, to create a sort of gradient from the front of the head to the back. She then used green glitter spray on the head, and then sealed it with glitter sealer.
When that was all dry, she removed the tape and newspaper, and then masked everything except for the lips, and then she spray painted the lips pink.
She painted the teeth by hand with white acrylic paint. She spray painted the tongue red.
She spray painted the leaves with a darker green color, then dark green glitter spray, and then glitter sealer. She created the white and pink effects by hand with acrylic paint. Same for the darker green lines.
When all the paint was done, she hot-glued the teeth and tongue in place. This didn’t work out great! Hot glue doesn’t want to stick to spray paint very well. I thought it would be strong enough, but some pieces came loose later on.
Screen and hard hat
M spray painted some bits of screen door material and glued them in place in the ear holes and face opening.
She modified a hard hat by attaching some layers of foam board on top to create a diagonal shape that would fit well in the “ceiling” of the head. She used Gorilla Glue to set the hard hat in place in the mask, and then laid a bag of rocks in the hard hat to hold it in place while the glue set.
Last but not least, she connected the leaves to the head with a twist tie through the holes she made earlier, and as well as a bunch of Gorilla Glue. Once again, she used a bag of rocks to weigh the pieces down as the glue set.
I think that’s it!
Accessories
M made the leaf/hands from piece of foam board, cut out and curved and covered with one layer of paper maché. The hands are held on with velcro, exactly like how I did for my Creature from the Black Lagoon hands.
She made the sign from two pieces of foam board, with a couple popsicle sticks in between to make the handle nice and sturdy. She covered all this with one layer of paper maché.
And then of course she painted all these pieces, with Mod Podge and gesso and some spray paint and some acrylic paint.
The sign has a hole through the handle with a string running through, so she could loop it around her wrist and not have to hold it the whole time.
Whew, that’s everything!
We also used the Audrey II mask as a decoration for our Halloween party in 2024; we set it in a big flower pot in our yard (just for one night; we wouldn’t want to leave it out there in the rain and stuff!).
This was an extremely ambitious and challenging project for us, and we learned a lot of lessons! Like, lesson one: don’t do anything this complicated again for a while.
About Manning Krull
How to make a 4-foot paper maché alligator
My violin skull mask, Mardi Gras 2015
Three-headed paper maché dragon sculpture
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