Tons of tips for paper maché projects; sculpting, painting, etc
Published by Manning on November 9th, 2024
Hello! I’m going to use this space to jot down any and all tips I can think of regarding my paper maché mask and sculpture projects, so I can easily point people at them later. Let me know if there’s anything else I should add!
Jump down to a section:
Paper maché
See my full article about my paper maché process for way more info.
I use Roman Pro-543 wallpaper adhesive (paid link) for all my paper maché projects. No mixing; the adhesive is ready to go right out of the container.
I use alternating layers of newspaper and brown paper so I can keep track of what I’ve covered.
I like to finish my paper maché projects with a layer of white paper (I buy white paper bags; paid link), rather than newspaper or brown paper, because a white surface makes color pop. You can also do a white base coat of paint, but that’s more money, and you gotta let the white paint dry/set before moving on to other colors.
Paper maché: speed up drying
When you’re done with paper maché, use a paper towel or damp sponge to wipe off any excess blobs of paste.
An electric fan greatly speeds up drying! Point the fan directly at the project, very close, and either rotate the project or move the fan every hour or so.
Direct sunlight really helps speed up drying! However, if the weather is very humid you’re probably better off inside with a fan.
Mask-making
Most of my large paper maché masks start with a big sculpture, and then I install a hard hat, screen material, and sometimes a counterweight.
Installing a hard hat in a big mask is a great way to make it wearable and comfortable and stable on your head.
I usually modify the hard hat by cutting holes in the sides with a Dremel tool or power drill. This makes it much easier to attach other materials to the hard hat in order to connect it inside the mask, e.g. wire, wooden dowels, tape, paper maché, etc.
Of course any mask needs eye holes for visibility. Along with eye holes, I basically put as many holes in my masks as possible, to help with vision (especially downward) as well as hearing and air circulation (in the sides/back). For holes I’ll be looking through, I install pieces of screen door material, specifically pet screen (paid link), which is thicker than regular screen door material. For holes where I don’t need to see, I use thicker plastic mesh material (paid link). Both of these types of screen can be painted (carefully!).
When spray-painting screen material, the paint can sometimes pool in the holes and clog them. The solution for this is to immediately blow on it to clear out the holes.
When spray-painting screen material, it’s important not to do it while it’s laying flat on a surface, as the paint will go through and make the screen stick to the surface. I always build a little structure out of foam board to hold the screen over empty space for spray-painting.
My method for attaching screen material in the mask is to hot-glue little folded tabs of paper around the edges of the screen, and then hot-glue these tabs into the mask. This is much, much easier than trying to hot-glue the screen directly into the mask.
If a large mask is unbalanced, a counterweight will make it much easier to wear. I just glue pennies or rocks in the side opposite the heavy part. You can set the mask on a broom handle to see which way it leans, and keep adjusting until it’s balanced.
I build a simple vertical base to store my masks on. This helps prevent warping. If they just sit on a shelf or whatever, the tend to warp under their own weight over time.
Foam board
Foam board (aka foam core) is the main material I use when building the base for all of my paper maché sculptures.
I buy cheap foam board in bulk from Dollar Tree; currently $1.25 per 30″x20″ sheet. This cheap stuff is easier to cut, bend, and curl than the good stuff from the art store — which is also a lot more expensive.
Did I say bend and curl? Yup, that’s right, with cheap foam board you can carefully roll the foam while crunching it up in your hands to make all sorts of curved shapes; the more you crunch it up the more pliable it gets. You can also bend it at any angle and secure it with tape or glue or whatever.
I use an X-acto knife to cut the sheets of foam; it’s important to change the blade pretty often. You’ll feel it when it’s time.
Smoothing out surfaces (pre-paper maché)
When I’m building a base for a paper maché project, I usually use different materials like foam board, bits of foam packaging, etc, all glued and taped together. Something I frequently need to do is to smooth out a connecting area between two different objects. My preferred method for this is to tear up little strips of construction paper, tape them over the area with masking tape, and then cover the whole area with more masking tape. This method can smooth out unwanted edges, gaps, etc.
Another great way to smooth out surfaces is with foam clay (paid link). You can fill any gaps with foam clay, let it set, and then put masking tape over it to get a really smooth surface.
Hot glue
If you want something to set immediately, use tiny drops of glue. If you want to have time to move the thing around a bit, use larger drops of glue.
If the piece you’re working on is small, you can make hot glue set much faster by putting the piece in the freezer (or fridge) for 15-30 seconds.
Gorilla Glue hot glue sticks (paid link) are much stronger than the regular cheap-o hot glue sticks. Gorilla Glue hot glue sticks also do a much better job of sticking to materials that the cheap ones don’t want to, like spray-painted surfaces, plastic, etc.
When hot-gluing two things together that aren’t very porous — like two spray-painted paper maché things — I scratch up the surfaces with a knife, and/or poke holes into them with an awl in order to create tiny nooks and crannies for the glue to hold onto better.
Another option is, before spray-painting, protect the areas you’re going to glue with some blue painter’s tape. Remove the tape for hot-gluing. Hot glue will stick to plain paper maché way better than it will stick to painted surfaces.
Gorilla Glue
We’re talking normal glue in a bottle here, not hot glue. I use Gorilla Glue (paid link) for anything where I need an extremely strong connection. It’s important to note, this stuff expands a huge amount as it dries. This can cause your objects to get pushed apart or move out of position. When I’m using Gorilla Glue I do various things to lock the objects in place. Sometimes this means putting a lot of weight on them (e.g. books, or rocks in a bag). Sometimes it means wedging the objects between two heavy things, like chairs. Sometimes it means wrapping them in blue painter’s tape so they can’t move.
A trick I sometimes use when Gorilla-Gluing two things together is to make a circle of drops of hot glue and then in the middle of the circle I put a few drops of Gorilla Glue. The hot glue sets in just a minute or so while the Gorilla Glue takes an hour or two to set (and then several more hours to completely dry).
There’s also a version of Gorilla Glue that doesn’t expand (it’s clear rather than amber colored), but I don’t use it very often because I find that the expansion of the regular kind really helps lock pieces together.
Other types of glue
I’m putting this here just to mention that 99% of the times that I need glue I use either hot glue or Gorilla Glue, as mentioned above. Once in a while I’ll use some Elmer’s Glue or Tacky Glue for certain things, and that’s just about it.
Painting
A coat of Mod Podge (paid link) will seriously smooth out your paper maché surface before painting. It won’t hide big bumps and wrinkles, but it can totally hide the torn edges of the paper.
When applying Mod Podge to a large project, I first mix a few drops of acrylic paint into the Mod Podge, as this lets me see what areas I’ve covered. Without this, it can be hard to keep track of where you’ve applied the Mod Podge.
I used to use gesso rather than Mod Podge, but I’ve found, for my projects, Mod Podge is a better fit. It tends to go on smoother than gesso, although this may be because I use cheap brushes, which maybe don’t allow the gesso to smooth out perfectly. Mod Podge just smoothes itself out. However, the nice thing about gesso is that it’s (usually) white, which gives you a base coat for whatever paint job you’re going to do.
I used to use really cheap acrylic paint — any ol’ brand — but I’ve recently upgraded to Liquitex Basics Fluid paints (paid link), which are only a little more expensive, and much nicer quality.
I don’t waste a lot of money on brushes; I buy whatever cheap brushes come in a set with many different shapes and sizes.
For large projects, I sometimes use an old sponge, cut into quarters, to apply acrylic paint. This can go a lot faster and give you nice even coverage. However, it’s a bit wasteful, as some of the paint is going to stay in the sponge and you’re ultimately just going to rinse it out and lose it down the drain.
A sponge is great for covering large areas, but you can also use it to paint thick lines and shapes, and even create a sort of stippling effect by dabbing it at your surface.
Spray paint
Do not buy the Lowe’s brand of spray paint. I’ve had several cans that were just total duds — like, wouldn’t spray at all (even after replacing the nozzle), and one that seemed like it was mixed totally wrong; it was supposed to be bright pink but it was weirdly milky and didn’t match the cap. Anyway, the Lowe’s brand might be tempting because it’s cheap, but with how often the cans are bad it’s just not worth it.
The main brands of spray paint that I like are Rustoleum (fairly cheap, great for less important projects) and Montana Gold (more expensive, high-end, for important projects).
For whatever it’s worth, although the Montana Gold spray paint cans are more expensive, I seriously think they last much longer than other brands of spray paint — meaning you get way more coverage out of them.
If you do use Montana Gold spray paint, two things to be aware of: 1. Before you can use the can, you have to remove the nozzle and then remove the black washer that’s underneath. It’s there to prevent the can from spraying during transport or whatever. 2. When you’re done painting, you have to clear the nozzle by turning the can upside down and spraying short bursts; keep an eye on the spray coming out, and when it becomes clear that means you’re good. If you don’t do this, the nozzle will become permanently clogged.
With spray paint, I can’t stress this enough: shake the can for a long, long time. If you don’t shake it long enough, several different problems can occur. The paint may come out in big drops that land on your project and look bad. The paint might not come out at all, and the nozzle might get stuck in the down position. Anyway, just shake for at least one minute; I usually try to do two minutes.
If the can was stored somewhere cold (like a shed), I recommend bringing it inside to warm it up for an hour before shaking and then using. It’s okay to go back outside in the cold to do the spray painting, as long as it’s not below freezing.
If you want to use blue painter’s tape to mask out an area on already-painted piece, here are some tips. 1. Let the base coat set for at least 48 hours before applying tape; otherwise there’s a large risk of the tape damaging the base coat. 2. Do not leave the tape on for a long time. Apply the tape only when you’re ready to do the spray-painting. Leave it on for an hour or so and then carefully remove. If you leave it on too long, there’s a much greater risk it’ll damage the base coat when you remove it.
Glitter
I’ve used spray glitter several times, with varying degrees of success; I’ve had enough bad luck and frustration with it that I will probably not use it again. Over the years I’ve bought several cans that were complete duds; they either would not spray at all, or they’d spray for a minute and then get completely clogged, with no way to fix them. I think the technology just isn’t good enough to prevent clogging, for any brand of spray glitter.
If you do use spray glitter, adding a coat of spray sealant for glitter afterward is important and works very well.
I’ve never used the method where you dump loose glitter onto glue; I do not want to deal with that level of mess. I hear from friends that you will never stop finding glitter in your house and on your person if you work with glitter this way. No thanks.
For whatever it’s worth, loose glitter on glue creates a much more dramatic visual effect than spray glitter does. The reason is that spray glitter has to be really tiny pieces in order to work with the spray can. I preferred spray glitter for a while just because I didn’t want to deal with the mess of regular glitter.
There’s also the kind of glitter than you can paint on; this stuff is inexpensive at Michael’s or whatever, and it can look great. However, a few tips:
Be aware, this paint-on glitter is really just bits of glitter suspended in a clear gel. Let’s say you buy red. If you paint this onto a white surface, you’re just going to get red bits of glitter spread onto your white surface. The surface will not look red. This usually doesn’t look good at all. (And seeing the bottle in the store is a little misleading because it looks solid red in the bottle.)
So to get the best results, what you want to do is paint the surface with the color that you actually want, e.g. red (with spray paint or acrylic paint or whatever), and then when that’s dry, paint the red glitter paint onto that. That will give you a nice opaque colorful effect that looks great: a bright red surface covered with shiny red glitter.
Fyi, you may need to do many coats of the glitter paint to get the effect you want. One coat probably won’t do it. Three is usually the minimum. The glitter goes on pretty sparse with the first coat, but you can definitely build up a nice effect with multiple coats.
Last thing about glitter paint: because it’s glitter suspended in clear gel, there’s an annoying thing that happens when you brush it on with your paint brush; the bits of glitter tend to get pushed to the sides of where you’re painting, like the middle of the brush stroke often has very little glitter in it as most of the glitter collects at the sides of the brush stroke, creating thin glittery lines. The best way I’ve found to get more even coverage is to dab at the surface with the glitter paint rather than brush it on. This takes more time, and it may result in a surface that’s not very smooth, as the glitter and gel may dry in tiny clumps. However, I’ve been satisfied with the results I’ve had working this way. If you’re patient enough, you can get a very good glittery effect this way.
Foam
Along with foam board (aka foam core), mentioned above, I use a ton of different kinds of foam when building up 3D shapes for my projects. Here are the main types I use, basically in order from most used to least used:
Pipe insulation tubing (paid link) — You can buy these in six-foot tubes at Lowe’s or wherever; I use them for tons of stuff. This foam is lightweight and soft but very firm, and it’s easy to cut. These foam tubes are very cheap and they’re probably the best value of anything I use, in terms of how much foam you get for your buck.
Craft foam (paid link) — You can get sheets of this stuff at craft stores; it’s thin, rubbery, flexible foam that’s easy to cut with scissors. Nice and cheap.
Foam clay (paid link) — A little more expensive, but totally worth it. Great for sculpting smaller, simple shapes where you don’t need a lot of fine detail. Just bear in mind it tends to sag a lot as it sets. So, it’s great for building up an eyebrow ridge or something relatively low. Not great for building teeth or horns that need to stand up (but you can sometimes make it work by building around a wire or something else inside.)
Foam backer rod (paid link) — This stuff is very expensive (for foam) so I don’t use it much, but it’s extremely useful for a ton of things. You can buy it in different widths on Amazon. I’ve used this stuff for fingers, tentacles, anything snake-like, or creating a ribbed texture, etc etc.
Random bits of foam packaging — I save all the weird foam bits that come with… well, everything! Hard styrofoam stuff, softer plasticky stuff, etc etc. Once in a while a piece of foam I saved a year or two ago is the perfect fit for something I’m making.
Styrofoam cups — super cheap and lightweight, easy to cut, and often very useful for various curved shapes. I’ve used pieces of styrofoam cups for teeth, cheekbones, eyebrow ridges, noses, etc.
Spray foam? A lot of artists use spray foam for sculpting, but I never have. The main reason I’ve avoided it is that everyone says it creates a HUGE mess when you carve, with tons of foam dust getting everywhere. No thanks. Maybe if I had a garage.
Not foam, but: bubble wrap. While I’m talking about all the materials I use to build up 3D shapes, I should mention bubble wrap. When I’m making a large shape, one way to smooth it out a bit and de-emphasize hard edges is to wrap it in bubble wrap. I take a 12″ roll and cut it into long 3″ strips, and then I wrap them tightly and carefully around the shape, securing them with tape.
Tape
I go through TONS of tape for all my paper maché projects; I think you’d be shocked to see how much I use throughout the year. I buy tape in bulk on Amazon a few times a year. The main kinds of tape I use are:
Scotch heavy duty shipping tape (paid link) — I use this tape whenever I’m connecting pieces of foam board together, which is very often. It creates a very strong connection with very little give to it. I also use this tape as a release agent just before paper maché; I cover my whole base sculpture with the tape (often torn/cut into thin strips), as paper maché doesn’t stick very well to the plastic surface of the tape. That means when the paper maché is 100% dry, I can cut it open and it’s relatively easy to remove all the base materials, leaving me with a hollow sculpture.
Note: they used to make a tan version of the heavy duty shipping tape; these days it’s only available in clear.
Scotch masking tape (paid link) — I use tons of masking tape as a way to smooth out sculptures before paper maché. I will often cover a sculpture entirely in masking tape right before applying a layer of shipping tape as a release agent and then doing paper maché. I sometimes do two layers of masking tape to get an even smoother surface.
Scotch blue painter’s tape (paid link) — I use this stuff whenever I want to mask out an area for spray-painting. I also sometimes use it as one of my two layers of masking tape when I’m smoothing out a shape before paper maché.
Drawing circles
See my article on my method for drawing precise circles. I find that I need to draw circles all the time for various art projects, usually because I need to cut out a disk of foam board in a specific size. Take a look through my gallery and you’ll see tons of examples.
Chickenwire?
I’ve only tried chickenwire a couple times and I have not had great success with it. I find it hard to work with and also just not fun to work with. I prefer materials that allow me to have some precision, or make something that’s nice and symmetrical, etc.
Miscellaneous
Coming soon(?): some various tips on things like magnets, lights, using an airbrush, etc.
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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