One-day challenge: Halloween devil mask
Published by Manning on November 1st, 2024
TMI backstory here; feel free to skip! Every Halloween I run into the same problem: I put a few months of effort into our Halloween party decorations as well as my costume for the party, but our party is always the Saturday before Halloween, and then on Halloween night I never have a great costume; I usually half-ass something at the last minute. Part of the problem is that the masks/costumes I make for our party just aren’t practical for a night on the town; they’re hard to see in and navigate in, they’re bulky, and — critically — you can’t drink in ’em. So on Halloween night I usually end up just putting on weird colorful clothes and a dumb hat or whatever, and go out in that. It’s pretty anticlimactic.
So this year, while I was out on an early morning walk on Halloween day, I thought, why not try making a mask to wear tonight? Is that even possible? A mask in one day? I decided I wanted to give it a try, and just cut as many corners as possible. I started working on this mask at around 9:30am, and we had plans to go out at 5:30pm that same evening. So that gave me eight hours! I pulled it off, just barely. Here’s how I made the thing, and at the end I’ll write about some lessons I learned in trying this project…
I started off not even knowing what kind of mask I was going to make; I just knew that I wanted it to be small and lightweight, and to not cover my mouth, so I could talk and drink easily.
I cut out two strips of foam board and two strips of pasteboard (from a Lacroix box). I curled up a strip of foam board, taped a strip of pasteboard into it, and hot-glued some makeup pads (for comfort) onto the pasteboard. (This is me overdoing things. I could’ve glued the makeup pads directly onto the foam board, but I wanted to be able to remove them before spray painting the mask, and then glue them in. Hence the blue tape.)
I added a second strip of foam board and pasteboard and makeup pads to go across the top of my head from front to back. I hot-glued this in place.
I made up a new technique to create the top dome of the mask, and it worked out great! I did some sloppy measuring of the headband and top crest, and drew an oval on poster board that would theoretically cover the top of my head. I cut out this oval and then snipped dozens of radial cuts into it, all the way around, leaving about a 2″ circle untouched in the middle. I then hot-glued the center point of this poster board shape onto the top of the crest of the headband, and then I curved all those little strips of poster board down and taped them in place around the headband thing. Amazingly, this worked out great, and once all the pieces were taped down, the dome shape actually felt fairly sturdy. I covered the whole thing in masking tape for good measure.
Next, through some trial and error, I made this curved strip of foam board to fit across my face, with holes for my eyes and nose. I hot-glued makeup pads in it for comfort. I taped this strip to the dome shape. I put the mask on, and it looked great but was a little too tight while putting it on and taking it off, so I snipped three cuts in the back: one directly in the back, and two closer to the sides. I stretched these gaps out a little and taped some poster board into them to make the whole dome a little wider. This worked out fine; the mask fit great and was easy to put on and take off after that.
I made all the facial features from pieces of foam board: two pieces for the nose, and then eyebrow ridges, cheekbones, and lower eyelids. I smoothed the nose out with tiny pieces of pink construction paper. I then covered everything with masking tape. Oh yeah, and I added an upper lip area made from some pasteboard.
The ears are a layer of pasteboard in the back and then foam board for the details.
The horns are a middle layer of foam board, and then lots of little pieces of foam insulation tubing on both sides to make it 3D. I covered these with tape.
I hot-glued the horns onto the mask, and then I covered the entire mask with just one layer of paper maché, applied very hastily. You can read about my paper maché process and materials here. I intentionally used white paper bags on this mask so I could skip having to paint a base coat, and save myself some time.
I set the mask in front of a fan to dry, and I rotated it every twenty minutes or so until it was… let’s say 95% dry. I was in a real hurry on this thing!
I took the mask outside and spray-painted it orange, and then I gave it a light dusting of yellow spray paint, to highlight the features a bit.
I let this set for about an hour, which was not enough, but I was running out of time! I took the very-sticky mask inside and pointed the fan at it for a while, and then I said screw it and started painting the details…
I painted lots of big shadows with red acrylic paint, and then I mixed some black and red to make a few deeper/thinner shadows.
I used yellow acrylic paint to paint some highlights, but the cheap paint I used ended up not being very visible over the orange.
I painted the horns black — just one coat, which was not solid at all and looks kind of streaked, but this is fine! It made for an almost organic-looking effect. But if I’d had more time I would’ve done a second coat to make them solid black.
I hot-glued bits of screen behind the eyes. I then punched out two orange dots from a Lacroix box and hot-glued them into the eyes.
I cut the teeth from craft foam, I covered them in paper maché, and put them in front of the fan to dry. Before painting them and gluing them in the mask, I realized that if I were to set the mask down, the teeth would need to be strong enough to not bend or break, so I reinforced them with bits of a wooden coffee stirrer hot-glued behind them.
I painted the teeth with light yellow acrylic paint, dried them in front of the fan, and then hot-glued them into the mask.
Boom! Done! I finished this thing literally about twenty minutes before we had to head out. Even after pointing the fan at it for as long as I could, the spray paint was still very tacky when we were in the car on our way out for a night on the town, and there was one spot on the horns where the black paint was very thick and not yet dry! Some of it got on my hands, but luckily there was no great disaster.
Things I learned from making this mask in one day:
– This was a foolish idea. I will try not to do that again.
– It was fun and easy to wear this kind of mask shape! I will probably make some others like this in the future!
– I could easily drink out of my flask while wearing this mask, but I could not drink out of a glass — I could put a glass to my lips but if I tilted it to drink it would hit the nose of the mask way before it was angled enough to actually drink out of. With my flask it was easy to just throw my head back far enough.
– One layer of paper maché is okay for something like this. I’d prefer to do at least three or four layers on a mask like this where I’m leaving the base materials inside, and for a mask where I’m removing the base materials, I always do at least six layers for smaller masks or eight to ten layers for larger ones.
– Because the mask only had one layer of paper maché, there were a lot of places where it felt soft and squishy; not really a problem, but it made me worry the thing would get damaged easily.
– I should’ve made the teeth out of something more solid, like bits of wood or hard plastic, since they needed to be able to support the weight of the mask when it’s set down.
– One hour is not enough time for spray paint to set. (Duh.) By the way, I’ve learned that different brands of spray paint need different amounts of time to set, and, perhaps more importantly, to stop smelling like poison. Montana spray paint, for example, is the best quality stuff I use, with the best colors, but it takes the longest to set and it smells really bad for at least 24 hours. I used Krylon and Rustoleum paints on this mask; I knew that they both set a lot faster, but not fast enough for a one-day mask! Luckily this mask didn’t smell too bad when I was wearing it.
Whew! Now time for a short break, and then Mardi Gras 2025 projects! (Okay haha I actually already started; details soon.)
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
November 20th, 2024 at 5:33 pm
FANTASTIC!
November 20th, 2024 at 8:34 pm
Heyyyyyyyy friend! Thank you!