WHO'S AFRAID OF THE BIG BAD WOLF MASK?

Here's a mask I created to go along with a Little Red Ridinghood costume that my wife wore one year. Not content with the latex masks widely available I decided to make my own out of fake fur and a baseball cap. Though created for a Halloween party, this wolf mask could also be well used for children's theatre. You could also use it as a werewolf costume.

As you can see, my face is visible inside the wolf's mouth. This, I explained, was because my face was the Hunter looking out the wolf's throat getting ready to make his move. You could also combine it with a black see through mask (or even black pantyhose) like I did with the Parrot Head Hat if you don't want your face seen.

I began construction by building the muzzle down from the hat brim with black craft foam. This gave ma a base for the fur. As you can see in the photos, the head was covered with three distince pieces of fur. To achieve the effect I wanted I started with three rough cut strips of fur slightly larger than I thought I would need. I began with the top, center piece and painted a stripe of fabric glue about half an inch wide down the middle to secure it tentatively to the hat. This piece I cut longer so that it would hang down my neck and tuck it to whatever shirt I wore. The center strip starts at the top of the nose, and makes the top of the muzzle. When it reaches the spot where the brim meet the rest of the hat, that's where the eyes will be , so the fabric should fan out to create the brows and then continue upwards to the ears. Glue the top down.

The side pieces of fur meet in the front beneath the nose and continue to wrap around the back beneath the the neck flap. I used the same process of gluing a small strip down, trimming to the shape I wanted and then gluing the rest down.

The nose is just a folded piece of black craft foam glued in place.

The eyes were painted buttons, and I cut the fur around the eyes in the typical diamond shape of a wolf's eye and tucked the top of the button underneath a flap of the top strip of fur.

The lower jaw was constructed out of 1/2 inch upholstery foam and attached to the bottom of the hat with a large button as a hinge. The teeth were added last, cut from 1/4 inch white craft foam and glued in place.

For the rest of the costume I made really simple fingerless gloves out of the fur and really simple shoe covers. The nice thing about using fur like this is that you can't get caught up too much in fiddley details because they just won't show. Finish it off with either a flannel shirt and jeans or go the Grandma disguise route and find your self a nightgown!.

Pirated from the web

So it's been while. As I begin to prepare some of our own posts take a gander at this incredible pirate mask I found at chensational.blogspot.com.
It was created talented puppet builder Kanja Chen whose work I've been following since his Chewbacca puppet was featured in a magazine.
This mechanical mask uses a $30 hockey helmet as the base and a bike cable to control the mouth and eyebrows. It's somewhat complicated and uses some pretty specific materials, but the finished product is really impressive. Check out his tutorial at the link above. There's also a youtube video to show it working.
I'll be adding some more stuff soon, but in the meantime enjoy the pirate. It definitely is Chensational.

WHAT'S A PIRATE WITHOUT A PARROT?

So you're going to a pirate themed party and you just don't feel like being one of the 30 some odd Jack Sparrows in the room. When faced with a similar problem I decided to become the favorite accessory of every pirate and piratess. ess. After all, how can you be a real pirate without a parrot on your shoulder? And Jimmy Buffet fans take note: this would probably make a swell parrothead get up for you too.

My skills at the time were pretty basic, so the materials are too:

• a green baseball cap
• 2 styrofoam balls (1 1/2" - 2" dia)
• 1 bag of green feathers
• 1 bag of assorted feathers
• yellow crafter's foam
• green red and yellow felt

As you can see, the construction is pretty basic too. I cut the upper half of the beak out of the yellow craft foam with a split down the middle on the front so I could create the curve. I wrapped the foam sides underneath the hat brim and stapled and hot glued it in place. I then cut a piece of red felt to go behind the eyes to make him a little less monochromatic.

The styrofoam balls were wired in place and I carefully drew the eyeballs in with a sharpie pen. I actually used construction paper circles to figure out the best placement for the pupils; I learned from a Jim Henson interview that if you make them ever so slightly crossed then it looks like they are focused on something and that can be the key to making your creation come alive.

After that it was a matter of layering and gluing the feathers in place. I added longer yellow feathers on the sides as pseudo eyebrows.

The body was just a series of simple tubes made in felt and stuffed with feathers glued to the wings. The lower beak was made similarly to the upper and then attached to the hat with elastic while the body hung around my neck like a necktie.

A black turtleneck and a see-through hood and I was ready to sit atop friends' shoulders for the perfect piratey photo opportunity.