Even MORE masks in the making!

Sketch of a mask idea.
I used the template from my dragon mask for this. 

All cut out! 

Impression for my wolf mask! 

Impression for a fox mask... with ears this time! 

All cut out and ready for stamping and moulding. 

I'm really loving the entire process of mask making. I've got several templates I feel really confident in and I've been taking suggestions on my Facebook wall for new ideas. I'm definitely keen to try a panda, puma and snake. At this rate I'll need a new sheet of leather to work with. 

I've discovered I prefer the thick stuff over the thinner stuff because even though the thinner stuff is easier to cut and mould I love how solid the thicker stuff feels when it sets at the very end. 

I'm now in the process of building up some stock and will be sorting out pricing soon so keep watching my blog, website and Facebook and Twitter. I'll soon have these available!

Pixie King!

I have a Pixie King costume I made for Hallowe'en a few years back. I'm pretty happy with it and at the time I wore a latex mouth and put on pointy ears to give myself pixie features. I really wanted wings for the costume too but at the time I didn't really have a plan or the time to make them so I just went with a tail and painting stripes on my outfit. 

So recently I decided to finish off the pixie costume and because I wanted to play around with leather I thought I'd make a mask to go with it too - as an experiment. As you saw in my last blog post, I ended up doing a fox mask at the same time and in the end that was the first one I officially finished. 

I finished my pixie mask a few days later and it is definitely not the shining success that the fox was as I think I cut the entire thing a bit crookedly. But it it was still a really good first attempt and one that has prepared me for more ambitious leather masks including things like horns, ears or spikes. 

The initial sketch indented into the leather and ready for cutting. 

All cut out! Looking at it now I can see how I didn't get both sides even. 

Moulded around a plaster casting of my face, starting to dry. 

The fox and pixie, all dry and ready for the dye! 

All the videos I watched said to dye the leather masks
as the dye helps with hardening. I went with a tan dye and
didn't cover it evenly because I knew I'd be painting over it. 

Left the dye to set for a day and then painted it blue! 

Done!

In good time I'll have a shot of the entire costume with wings included.
My first attempt at wings has proven problematic because they were simply too big.

A new skill!

I've made costumes since the age of about six or seven. Hallowe'en is a really big deal in Canada and every year I started my Hallowe'en costume around August or September. As a teenager and young adult my family threw Mardi Gras parties and my annual costume making turned into a double-act as I worked to create one costume for Hallowe'en and one for Mardi Gras.

The list of costumes I've made is rather long and includes (off the top of my head) a wolf, Jack Skellington, Harriet the Spy, Hobbes, two different dragons, the night sky, a killer marshmallow, Gollum, a praying mantis, very gay Robin (as in Batman & Robin), a mardi gras cat, a zebra, a Brian Froud faery, a pixie king, a goblin and a fox.

The fox in my office, last Hallowe'en

When I made my fox costume I sculpted a plaster cast nose to go with it. Plaster cast is the material I've traditionally used for my mask making. It's a fun material to work with and hardens into a really solid mask. It does, of course, weigh quite a lot and isn't generally comfortable against the face, especially when you're wearing it for a long time.

The original nose didn't turn out how I wanted. It was too long and just looked beaky, so I hardly ever used it. No matter, my fox costume is rather cute regardless and I just go without.

So recently I wanted to finish my pixie king costume and I began looking up how to make wings. I found some great youtube videos for wings, which linked to other costume making videos, including leather mask making. I watched a few and found the entire process was shockingly simple so for the last six weeks I've been collecting supplies, researching techniques and testing things out.

Well, I've finished my first leather mask and it just happens to go with my fox costume.

I'm so chuffed with the end result and whilst it's not perfect by any means (I've learned a lot about the nature of leather dye and the initial pattern cutting) it's a damn good start. And leather mask making is probably one of the most fun creative endeavours I've had! Not only does it feed my love of costume making, it involves carving, sculpting AND painting, three things that really feed my soul.

In short, this is not one of those things I'm just dabbling in for a short while. I suspect that in a very short span of time I'm going to be building a stock of leather masks and taking orders because this was amazingly fun and something I want to do again and again.

The initial outline. To get this I drew a template
in pencil. Then I wet down the leather and traced over top the paper
template with a pen. This indents the leather and gives clear lines for cutting and tooling. 

After cutting out the mask from the larger piece of leather
I smooth the edges with my utility knife, just getting rid of any bumps or sharp parts. 

Cutting out the eye holes is probably the most challenging
thing in the entire process of making a leather mask.
I managed to knick the top of one of the holes but did an okay job fixing it so it's not really noticeable. 

I wet down the leather again and did the tooling,
which really just involves using various tools to crease and dent the leather
so the detail has ridges and texture. 

This is the coolest bit and what stunned me about how simple it is to make a leather mask.
The next bit involves immersing the leather into hot water mixed with a bit of white glue.
I did this for about a minute and then took the mask out and moulded it to the shape I wanted.
The heat of the water makes it very pliable and the glue helps with hardening it when it dries. 

I was working on my pixie mask at the same time. Here are both of them after they've dried.
The leather goes very pale, which is how you know they're dry - and it is really stiff. 

Next I rubbed both the masks down with dye. 

I learned rather quickly that the dye is incredibly potent and powerful stuff.
It absolutely destroyed the sponge I was using. The thing just start disintegrating.
I'll need to stock up on more solid sponges.

Once the dye had set I got out my acrylics to paint the final detail...

And voila! The finished product!

Such fun.  

Hallowe'en shenanigans!

Hallowe'en is in just a few days. I was on the ball this year with my costume making. Since moving to London I've found my resources are greatly reduced. In Calgary I had a very tiny room in the house I live in that I used as a studio. This allowed me to get quite mucky on a regular basis and have multiple projects going at once. It also allowed me plenty of storage space for scraps of material, bits of chicken wire, and other crafty stuff that worked well for costume design.

Just before I move to London I also made a big effort to purge my life of 'unneccesary' stuff. Anything I hadn't touched in a year was either thrown out, donated to charity or gifted to friends, depending on the state of it.

What I could bring over was stuffed into two large suitcases that couldn't weigh more than 50lbs each and everything else was put into storage to await my eventual (possibly, maybe) return.

I did keep a few things but they're all in Canada. I also had a pretty good list of stores where I could source supplies from and of course, I had that space in which to work.

Since coming to the UK my costume making has become far less fulfilling. I still have all the same great ideas and enthusiasm, but finding the space hasn't been successful. Regardless, this year I decided to get started sooner rather than later.

The first step was deciding on what I wanted to be. I have a long list of costume to make, and eventually I will when the time is right, but I knew that most of them were far too ambitious given a current lack of funds. Whatever it was would be clever and creative but also simple. 

I opened up my Book of Faeries - a childhood favourite and one of the few books I simply had to bring with me from Canada - and scanned the pages for inspiration. I considered Jenny Greenteeth but didn't immediately warm to it when I considered how I'd go about it. I scanned the pixies, although Pixie King has already been a costume I've done and I seek to do something different every year.

And then I saw the Phooka, an Irish Goblin that likes to shape shift into animal forms and often has the head of a goat. This reminded me of 'Snuff' the latest Discworld novel from Terry Pratchett, which also features goblins. Perfect. 

So, this Hallowe'en my costume is that of a Goblin. I'm quite pleased with the outcome. I've been commissioned to make the occasional costume for others and would love to do it again. If you like what you see visit www.FaunawolfCreations.com to find out about commissioning work from me.

First I build the basic shape of the mask on my face using plaster cast.
I use warm water so it will dry faster as the entire thing is done on my face
in one go so the sooner it dries, the less time I have to wear it. 

This is a new to me material - one of the problems with making plaster masks is that
they end up weighing quite a bit. I figured I could give this a go as it's a light, foamy material
and it air dries. The initial mask I did didn't work as, when it dries, it also expands the
plaster so it no longer fit my face. 

After some careful sculpting I have covered the entire plaster base with the Fimo.
I did a single layer all over and then built up the eyebrows, nose and lip.
I added the horns and ears last. 

When it was dry (24 hours later) I painted it using acrylic.
You can see that I still had some side expansion but it still fits nicely so I'm not worried. 

And voila! My goblin face is complete! 

I got the vest in a charity shop and
picked up some faux-fur (Just half a metre) to make the loin cloth.
The brown 'body suit' is a cheap set of leggings with a tight fitting shirt.
I used a little acrylic paint to add the muscles.

For more of my artwork visit www.faunawolfcreations.com