Today we are going to attempt to make paper mache masks. I talked a little earlier about having aluminum foil for your mold. And I will show you an alternative to that, but it's really nice. These, when you use the aluminum foil, the mask fits right up to your face. Custom made.
So, it's best to use heavy duty aluminum foil if you have this, and if not, you should use regular aluminum foil. And you'll need three sheets, because you need it to be pretty thick. But only do one sheet at a time. So put it over your face.
Try to mold that up to your face as best you can. Really get the eye holes and the nose and mouth. And then do it two more times.
So here's an alternative if you don't have aluminum foil. You can take a bunch of newspaper, paper bags, anything wadded up to be about the size of your head. Maybe look in a mirror, make sure that you're getting it close.
This one won't fit quite as well on you. on your face but it will work so after you tape it down to something plastic hopefully then you might want to well you have to cover it with saran wrap or something plasticky so that it won't stick to the newspaper So whenever I start a mask project, I like to go into my file of my world masks to look at to get inspiration. These are from cultures that use masks a lot in ceremonies.
So there's a lot of history behind each one from each country. But this is just to give me ideas of things that you can do. And also I want to think about if I'm going to add things to my mask like ears. or human ears or animal ears and that will do tomorrow in the next pass but this is just to get you thinking about how you're going to decorate your mask before we make them so if you've used aluminum foil we want to cut down the edge a little bit so that it's a little easier to work with and we also don't eat this excess hopefully you'll see your eyes your nose your mouth your chin and if not maybe go back and try doing it again It's sometimes helpful to do this with another person, maybe a parent is nearby to help you.
And don't forget to pull it off your face every few minutes so that you can breathe. You might want to just try this on your head again to make sure that it fits right. And we want to have a little bit, a wad of some kind of paper underneath to keep it from, keep from pushing down on it when you are putting the paper mache on. Okay.
If you are using a wad of paper, make sure that you put saran wrap, plastic wrap, over it. And you might want to tape that down too so that it doesn't slide around. I hope you guys have your paper mache still available and if not I will go over it again. It's quarter cup flour to a cup water, a few minutes on the stove, a parent might want to help you with that.
Stirring in a pot, it thickens up right away then just let it cool before you use it or it's about two minutes in the microwave and stir every 30 seconds if you do it that way. I got my paper mache out of the refrigerator. Again we don't want to use too much just like in the paper mache bird video. Just a couple of spoonfuls to start.
I'm going to put a little bit of padding under underneath so I can press down a little bit harder. Now when you're doing your mask you don't want to push too hard on it because you don't want to collapse it and if you need to you can always pick it back up. up again smash it against your face but it is better if you don't need to do that and you would want to do that while your paper mache is a little bit wet so again the first few scraps of paper that you're putting down here it's a little bit hard to stick to the aluminum foil but you will find that as you go it gets easier and you want to make sure that you are massaging just a little bit of paper mache into the paper.
You don't want to make too much of a mess. And you want to really go around your curves well. Again, if your hands are a little bit pasty, you can always just pick up a piece and rub it into your wet hands. It dries your hands a little bit.
And it... the paper has enough to stick. All right I'm going to do this for a little bit longer and then we can talk about the second layer. Once you've done one layer just make sure that everything's smooth smooth and make sure that there's no bits of paper sticking up and and make sure that you get a good strip along the edge here.
I see that I missed a little. because you want that to be really strong that's where we're going to be attaching the string so once you've done one layer go ahead and do the second layer it's okay if it's a little bit ragged along the edge we're going to be trimming that and then if you've missed a spot then you can do two layers of paper with your second coat and if you do a little bit more than two layers that's great but it's gonna get really soppy after a while so after you've done two layers then you just let it dry overnight. Oh, hi Steve. And again, make sure that you have all the hollows finished. It's kind of fun.
It's almost like applying band-aid sometimes. And make sure that you have it nice and smooth on the chin. It's a little tricky, but just if you're using this thinner paper, you can just massage it down if it starts to stick up. Now, if you do not have your aluminum foil and you are doing this mask, I've done one layer and I can sort of form it a little bit as I go and then you just go ahead and do your second layer. Okay so remember to let it dry after you've done two layers and tomorrow we will add things like ears and cut eye holes if this is going to be a mask you're going to wear and we'll do a couple more coats of mache so I will see you then.