Manning Makes Stuff - Halloween decorations, paper mache masks, costumes, party ideas, and more

Manning Makes Stuff - Halloween decorations, paper mache masks, costumes, party ideas, and more

“Gras-goyle” gargoyle costume, WIP part 3: mask!


Published by Manning on January 18th, 2025

I’m currently working on this paper maché gargoyle mask for Mardi Gras 2025; it’s about halfway done! Check out my previous articles for this costume, part 2: gargoyle wings and part 1: the stone column.

Creating the armature

I start most of my mask projects by creating a sort of armature out of layers of foam board, to define the basic shape of the head. If you take a look through my paper maché gallery you can check out a bunch of my mask projects and see what this looks like. Basically a bunch of slices, held apart at specific distances, which I then cover with tape and other materials.

Cutting out foam slices in the shape of the gargoyle's profile

For this gargoyle mask I made up a brand new modified version of my usual process for creating the layered armature. A challenge in building this kind of thing is making sure all of the pieces line up with each other correctly. To give you an example, imagine you’ve got a middle slice that’s the profile of the face, and then the next slice on either side is a similar profile shape, a little smaller; they’re mirror copies of each other. In attaching these slices to the middle slice, what you don’t to do is to attach one of them a little higher than the other, or a little farther back than the other. It’s hard to manage this and keep everything symmetrical, especially as you add more and more slices.

All the slices stacked up, ready to assemble

So my new method involves creating a square hole in that first slice (the middle piece), and then tracing that same square hole into all the other slices, and then running a sort of box shape through it to keep everything perfectly lined up. I wasn’t sure if this would work out, but it really did!

Part 2: tower

All of those slices have a square hole that’s exactly 4″ square. To make a sort of tower shape that fits through all of those 4″ hole, I cut out four panels of foam board at 3.75″ x 20″. (20″ is just the default length of the foam board sheet — I prefer to have this tower be much longer than it needs to be; it makes it easier to work with.)

I assembled the four panels into the tower shape using heavy duty shipping tape. I then covered one end with a 4″x4″ foam board square, and before I covered the other end, I put a bunch of rocks in the tower. Why?

This might sound silly, but the rocks really help make it easier to work with all of this. The rocks let you stand the tower on its side, and it won’t fall over, even if the armature you’re building is unbalanced. And you can pick up the whole thing, turn it over, and let the rocks slide to the other side, and then you can set it on that end to work on that side. Simple and effective. (Btw, there’s a pic of the tower with the slices coming up.)

By the way, even if you don’t want to bother with rocks, the squares on the ends make the tower much more sturdy and they also help keep it in a perfect square shape, so it can’t get squished into more a diamond shape as you work with it.

Part 3: triangles

Lots of little foam triangle shapes

This is a technique I’ve used for years; I make little triangular structures out of strips of foam board, and I stick these between my slices of foam board to hold them apart at regular distances. I just measure and cut a ton of strips and then fold them up and tape them closed. Folding the strips against the hard edge of a table or desk helps get a nice straight crease.

Part 4: assembling

Assembling the slices on the vertical tower shape

To put all of this together, I started by standing the tower on my work space and measuring and drawing a line across it horizontally, near the middle. Doesn’t have to be the exact middle.

I then hot-glued one triangle structure on each side of the tower, directly under the line and touching it.

Then I slid my first slice of the face — the middle slice — onto the tower, and set it onto the triangles.

Then I set four more triangles on top of this slice and hot glued them to the tower and to the slice. Tiny dots of glue are fine for this! Doesn’t have to be very strong.

Now, in making the slices, I marked them with letters. (I mark everything with letters and numbers because I’m an idiot.) The middle slice is A, and then the two slices that go on either side of that are both B, and the next pieces on both sides are both labeled C, etc. So at this point I could build one whole side of the face on top of the A slice. Triangles, then B, then more triangles, then C, then more triangles, then D, etc.

When the first side of the face was done, I flipped the tower over and did the same thing on the other side.

When all the slices and triangles were assembled, I used my X-acto knife to cut and remove the tower. The parts of the tower that are inside the head can stay there; I just cut out the lengths of the tower that were sticking out from the sides of the face.

At this point you’ve got an armature that’s complete, but with a big square-shaped hole running through it. The hole really isn’t a problem; it’ll get covered up in the next steps…

Part 5: covering/padding

Covering the mask with strips of construction paper

At this point I covered my armature with a variety of materials in order to smooth and pad it out. I usually do a layer of torn construction paper strips, taped in place, and then cover that entirely with masking tape. Sometimes that ends up looking pretty smooth and final, and sometimes the edges of the foam board armature are still really visible. From there I might do another layer of construction paper strips and tape, or, for larger masks, I sometimes do a layer of strips of bubble wrap, and then more tape. For this mask I didn’t need to do the bubble wrap; I was happy with the shape after one layer of construction paper strips and then two layers of masking tape.

The mask shape covered in masking tape

Part 6: additional details

Building up foam eyebrow ridges around Christmas ornament eyeballs

I built up some more shapes for the face using foam clay. I also added eyes that are just cheap Christmas ornaments from the dollar store. To insert the eyes I cut some big holes in the head shape with my X-acto knife, and then I hot glued the ornaments in place. When the glue was set I built up some shapes around the eyes with foam clay — basically the whole eye socket area and a pronounced brow ridge.

Not shown here, I also built up some cheek muscles that define the upper shape of the mouth a bit more, and I added some nostrils. All of this was foam clay. I let the foam clay set overnight and then I covered it with masking tape.

At this point I felt like the head was a little too narrow, especially at the bottom where my head would need to go in, so I built up some more thickness with some strips of foam board and craft foam and tape. If I showed you before and after pics you might not even see the difference, but I think it helped.

And with that, it’s time for…

Part 7: paper maché!

The mask covered in paper maché

I covered the entire head, minus the eyeballs, with eight layers of paper maché. You can read about my paper maché process and materials here.

Part 8: cutting out, reinforcing

This is always my favorite step! When the paper maché was 100% dry, I cut out the bottom of the mask and removed all the junk that was inside — all that foam board, paper, tape, and clay.

I also cut out the mouth shape and the nostrils.

The mask in profile; the mouth area has been cut out, as have the holes behind the mouth

I cut out two big holes on the sides of the head to help with hearing and air circulation. Two pro tips here:

1. Getting the holes to be the same size/shape: I drew the hole on one side, cut that bit out, and then I took that piece and flipped it over and traced it onto the other side of the head for the other hole. Easy!

The leftover bits that were cut out from the sides of the head; I've marked them 1 and 2

2. Save these pieces! They’ll come in handy later on when it’s time to cut out the pieces of screen to go in these holes.

I reinforced the edges of all these holes (eyes, mouth, nostrils, sides of head) with one layer of paper maché; tiny pieces.

I have a trick I do in most of my masks to strengthen the bottom edge and make the mask feel more solid overall. I take a bunch of plastic zip ties, snip off the little square bit, and tape these into the inner bottom edge of the mask. I cover the zip ties with masking tape and then two or three layers of paper maché. This makes a huge difference in how sturdy the mask feels when you pick it up. Before this step, the paper maché gives quite a bit as you handle it; it’s easy to squeeze and squish the bottom of the mask with your hands. Once the zip ties are in there, the bottom edge feels very solid. One reason this is useful is that you may find yourself carrying your mask by this bottom edge, like hanging from your fingers.

That’s the main head shape done! Now for lots of details…

Ears

An ear, shaped roughly like a bat wing, with ridges built up from red foam clay

I cut out the basic ear shapes from foam board, and then curled them up in my hands a bit to give them a gentle S curve. I used foam clay to build up the various ridges. And then I covered the ears with two layers of paper maché. I took this pic to show the S shape from above:

Top view of the ear showing it has a gentle S curve

I set the ears aside for later…

Horns

A couple months before this project I created a new method for making symmetrical horns, which is really easy and produces great results. So I made the horns for his mask using that process. For this mask I decided to leave the inner materials in the horns and just cover them with three layers of paper maché.

Two horns laid out on the table

At this point I set the horns aside for later…

Tongue

I made the tongue from a piece of foam board. In trying the tongue shape in the mouth of the mask, I realized that I needed it to curve in a pretty dramatic S shape, and the best way to do that is to mount it perpendicularly on another piece of foam that’s cut in that exact shape. Like this:

The tongue; a piece of foam board that's mounted on another piece of foam that vaguely looks like a roller coaster track

Front view of the tongue showing the red foam clay that's built up on both sides, leaving a groove in the middle

I added some foam clay to round out the shape a bit and give it the groove in the middle. When that was dry, I covered the tongue with two layers of paper maché, just on the top surface and sides, while it was still mounted on the S shape. When that was dry I removed it and put paper maché on the rest. Easy!

I set the tongue aside for later…

Nose ring

The nose ring; a large ring covered in newspaper

The nose ring is a random hard plastic ring I found, which I covered in one layer of the tiniest pieces of paper maché I’ve ever used. I wanted to cover the smooth plastic surface in paper so it would hold paint much better.

When the paper maché was dry, I cut a tiny segment out of the nose ring, just a few millimeters wide. I did this in a dumb way, by sawing at it with an X-acto knife, which took ages and killed the blade. It worked though! Anyway, this little open space will make it easier to slip the ring through the nose.

On the mask, I cut two lines running down from the nostrils in a tall, narrow V shape. This created a little vertical strip that I can bend slightly outward, so I that I could insert the ring in the nostrils.

Front view of the mask showing a pencil going through the nostrils

When I tried the ring in the nostrils, there was a problem where the ring didn’t want to sit flat on the face, because of the way the strip between the nostrils (let’s call it the septum) was flat and flush with the face. Hard to explain. The fix for this was to stretch the septum so that it’s slightly arced. The way I did this was to bend it with my fingers a bit, then shove a pencil in there, and then tape the bottom part down. Then I covered that bottom part with a couple layers of paper maché — and, importantly, I rubbed a lot of paste into septum strip so that it became saturated and damp, and that allowed it to bend and settle into this new curved shape. As it dried with the pencil in there, that curve became permanent.

A second test of the nose ring in the nose worked beautifully; it sits in there just fine now. It’ll get permanently installed after painting. So I set the nose ring aside for now.

That’s all for part three (well, part one of this mask)! More soon!

One Response to ““Gras-goyle” gargoyle costume, WIP part 3: mask!”

  1. InarticulateQuilter Says:

    Yep, catching up on this make today; apologies for the multiple comments. Cannot wait to see the result pics from Mardi Gras! It’s a fabulous idea and looks so fun

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