Medium: Costuming
Supplies: Hot glue, acrylic paint, Styrofoam head (optional), gems/accessories (optional)
Tips & Tricks: My plan was to create a masquerade mask that fit the shape of a person’s face. I conveniently had a Styrofoam head lying around 😉 and lightly traced the shape of the overall mask look I wanted. Then I just applied the hot glue onto the Styrofoam, around the traced edges and filled it in. It looked messy at first, but I continued to apply more layers and used the hot tip of the gun to smooth it over. Once it was dry and had the shape and look, I wanted, I just peeled it off the head.
Pitfalls (aka, what I learned the hard way): Make sure the eye holes are large enough to see only the eyes but not too big so that it just looks weird. While creating my first mask, I made the eye holes much too big, and it looked not nearly as professional when someone was wearing it. Many, many layers of the hot glue are not required but to make it sturdy, very much recommended.
Outcome: Once the glue has dried, it’s time to decorate. Acrylic paint works alright on hot glue, but you need to add many coats since the glue is a smooth plastic. After the base layer was finished, I did some dry brushing in gold and added the feathers. I had white gems that were perfect accents (and covered up any messy hot glue that couldn’t be smoothed over). I had an elastic cord that I included so the wearer of the mask wouldn’t have to worry about strings untying or it falling off. I punched holes in the sides and tied the cord easily. I used a regular hole puncher that worked quite well, even through the thick layers of hot glue. Overall, the outcome was spectacular!