Ball mask

I will not show my face at a ball.

Materials

Face mould

• plaster
• plaster gauze
• scissors
• vaseline
• clingy plastic food wrap
• bowl for water
• mirror

Mask

• flour
• glue for paper and wood
• newspaper type paper (absorbent, soft and malleable, not tearing when wet, paper bags don’t work)
• bowl
• clingy plastic food wrap (reuse the piece from previous step)
• (elastic) ribbon

Mask Decoration

At minimum, you need some acrylic paint to paint the mask. It looks superb when the mask has some 3D effect, i used contour paint for this, it is great for small and precise decorations. You can use paper mache to sculpt on the mask, and also attach to the mask whatever objects or cutout shapes from thicker paper. Add glitters or whatever you fancy. Acrylic varnish can help seal it all and make it more glossy.

Making

Face mould

You will need a space in front of a mirror with surface to put things on, plaster will be dropping all over this area, so cover surfaces that are hard to clean. Cut most of the roll of plaster gauze into pieces, prepare larger pieces to cover flat area like forehead and cheeks, prepare also some very thin stripes to put around your eyes and nose. Prepare more larger pieces, you will make them smaller later as needed. You need to position the first layers on your face quickly and they are also more difficult to place, so it is better to have the pieces prepared and not be burdened by cutting. Have the cut pieces, rest of the roll, scissors and bowl with water you will dip the gauze into ready next to the mirror.

Fixate your hair out of your face and cover hair around your face in food wrap. Cover your face in vaseline, be generous on your eyebrows but elsewhere you do not need much. Focus on maintaining neutral expression and not frown in concentration, unless you want a frowning mould. Start taking the big stripes, make them wet in the bowl of water, squeeze the excess water out and place them on your face, continue with smaller pieces. Cover your lips, surround the nostrils and eyes. If you have low forehead, you might want to cover part of your scalp.

Start another layer with the big stripes again. Try to cover the surface evenly, change direction of the stripes, so there is no weak spot. Surround the nostrils and eyes as close as you dare to. After a while you do not need to concentrate on your expression as hard anymore, since the base layers are dryer and will not change shape easily. This mask will be a face shaped bowl in which you will pour plaster, so make sure it is strong enough around the edge. At the end, you may cover one eye. Leave a strip of gauze unused for covering the nostrils and eye(s) later.

• Do not be afraid that you will not be able to liberate your face from the plaster. It may feel like you are trapped but the feeling is deceptive. I covered my face all the way to the ears and neck and it came off easily.
• Plaster gets warmer when it dries but with this technique i felt no warmth at all, if anything my face felt cold as it was wet.
• You may make a test mask of about two layers of plaster gauze. This will be too thin to hold a shape, but you can use it to prototype your mask (cut it, paint on it) and you will gain experience on how to go about covering your face, which areas are unpleasant, and you may want to leave them for later.

When the mould feels hard, start moving your face muscles, after a moment the plaster will separate from your face. Do not put it face down on a flat surface, but position it on or in a suitable bowl and pad it with rags or crumpled newspaper. From the outside of the mould, cover the holes for nostrils and eye(s) with remaining gauze. Try to remove or smooth out any obvious bumps and imperfection, but not worry too much about it now, since it can be done more easily later. Let it around 12 hours to dry.

When all is dry, cover the inside surface lightly in vaseline. If you put too much, as i did, the poured plaster will remain greasy and discolored. Position the mould securely in a bowl, conscious of where the water/plaster level will be. I used a structure of clay to hold it in desired position. Mix your plaster and pour a thin layer into the mould while making sure (using a spoon or another tool) that it flows into all creases. When all is covered, pour the rest and leave it to dry for around a day, then pull your plaster face from the mould. Sand off any bumps, mix thick plaster to fill holes and smooth things over, sand it all.

Mask

Make a paper mache paste in a bowl, i used one part flour with two part water and a little of glue. When you don’t use up everything, you can cover it with food wrap and put into the fridge for the next day. Prepare your table/working area, cover it in something that you don’t mind getting dirty, tear (do not cut with scissors) strips of newspaper of varied sizes and prepare a big rug to clean your hands. Your hands will get gluey very fast, everything will stick to them and you will need to use them to tear more stripes. Position your plaster face and cover it by food wrap (may be the same you used earlier to cover your hair).

Take the newspaper strips one by one, coat them in the paper mache paste (squeeze off excess paste) and lay them on the face, one slightly overlapping the other. Place smaller pieces on very curved areas like nose. You will always make one layer and then let it dry for several hours (i didn’t have time for that, so i put it into oven on low temperature with wind).I tried to place the strip perpendicularly to the strips on the previous layer.

When the mask starts to feel sturdy enough for you, think about decorations and attaching the ribbon. Use the newspaper stripes to attach any paper shapes, they will seamlessly join to the mask. Put objects (crumpled paper, rope …) under the newspaper stripes to make shapes. Put the mask on your face and mark the spots where the ribbon should go through and then cut the holes with a craft knife. Cut off any excess material around the edges of the mask and eye holes. Reinforce weak areas (mainly around where the ribbon will be attached). Wrap the newspaper strips around the edges, this will make the edges stronger and look good. If your ribbon is not elastic, you can try covering it in newspaper so it is not visible on the top of the mask.

Image above displays left to right: 1. prototype made of plaster gauze 2. mould made of plaster gauze 3. first fail 4. face mould covered in food wrap 5. second fail 6. final mask painted in white acrylic

• first fail: i was running out of time, so i tried to make the mask directly on the inside of the mould, this did not work since it was impossible to sculpt the narrow areas properly
• second fail: i thought, since paper mache does not stick to plastic, it will also not stick to several thick layers of good quality acrylic varnish. It did stick to it a lot.

Decorating

• I found it helpful to first paint everything in white acrylic and sketch placement of objects with pencil.
• Tings can be glued on with glue gun.
• The area around the attached eyes is sculpted with paper mache, it holds the eyes firmly.
• The fine 3D lines are made using contour paint, it is very easy to use and very effective.

• Everything is painted with acrylic paint, the white area has several color tints and a little of silver paint to make it look pearlescent. Blue area has also several shades of blue to make it more interesting.
• The rays are covered in glitters, it is much more glittery than silver acrylic paint. It looks good applied on grey background.
• Everything is covered in two layers of clear acrylic varnish.

Decorating done:

Wisdom gained

• paper mache paste cannot be made from spelt flour
• paper mache pate does not work properly with paper from paper bags, it will not integrate, it mostly just sits on the paper and peels off
• paper mache paste will not stick to plastic but will happily stick to a good and thick layer of acrylic varnish
• have enough time, things need to dry properly and it takes time. When you make a mistake, you need to make things again and let them dry again for the same time as before, some things may need significantly more time to dry than is written in the instructions

What could have been better

• Attach the ribbon before all the paper layers are placed and hide the part of it on the outer side of the mask under paper.
• Cover the inner side of the mask (or at least some parts) with fabric to prevent the mask uncomfortably sticking to the face.

Final steps

• put it on your face