Masquerade!

Phantom fans, can you just hear the singing??

Paul's annual work party had a theme of Masquerade Ball, and so I took that as a challenge and made our masks! WHAT FUN! I had a project like this about three years ago when I put on a Friday-night activity program that had a Phantom theme. We had a mask-making station and I of course had to make prototypes to give people ideas. But because these two were specifically for us, I felt they were much more personalized. Paul wanted a nose and for his to be dark red. I had some fabric lying around that I knew would be wonderful to use for mine. The base of each is cereal box-like cardboard.

For mine, I used the wonderful fusing I mentioned in my last post to fuse the fabric seamlessly to the cardboard. Then there was enough fusing on the edges of the fabric that I could just fold over the edges and iron down. If you'd like to see a photo of the back before I covered it up with black paper, just let me know. I knew it had to have feathers. And the sequins are part of the fabric.


For Paul's, I used red paint as a base, then with a dry brush and lots of pressure, painted four more layers on the eyes (but just three layers on the nose) in this order: black, copper, red, black. In person you can see the luster of the copper come through better than you can in this photo. I painted the underside black and attached it with black elastic.


The funniest thing was when Paul pulled his mask off his eyes and rested it on his forehead: the silhouette made him look like a nail. If you'd like to see photos of us with our masks, email me or leave a comment below and I'll send them your way.