Creating masks for a Masquerade Ball

Back in September my wife Glen and I were shouted to an evening out at the Hamilton Great Race Masquerade Ball by our good friend Gemma. Well, talk about fantastic! There was millions and billions of people there, all dressed up super flash and wearing masks. We were not prepared for the awesomeness that greeted us. The organisers put on masses of entertainment, heaps of decorations and mountains of food.

But enough about that.

Glen and Gemma had been discussing the ball for a while and had decided that they would simply die if they were to wear store bought masks. They said:

“We can just make something - I’m sure we can quickly pop something together”.

Now to anyone else this sentence would translate thusly: “Glen and Gemma would quickly make their own masks.”

But not to me, the warning bells started chiming in my head. The womanese translator cells in my brain heard …

“Tony can design, build and paint us all masks even though he has no prior experience, suitable materials nor any knowledge of where to obtain said materials…. all of which will no doubt take ages and be very tricky but that won’t be our problem as us girls can just sit around eating tim-tams and drinking mochaccinos”

A part of me quite liked the idea of making the girls create their own masks just to teach them a lesson. But a larger part of me thought “No, they will make a hash job of it so it would be better if you gave it a crack at it yourself”. And I bet that is exactly what Glen had been planning the whole time. Curse her.

Anyway. After lots of R&D and gluey fingers 3 masks were created. Each has its own style to tie in with the character of the person wearing it along with their outfit. Here they are:

1. The Water Nymphy Thingy

This is Gemma’s mask. We had previously worked out an outfit with her that had a watery theme. She liked old looking Venetian masks so I wanted to create something that looked like it could have been knocking around for a couple of hundred years, perhaps originally made from a cast costume metal.
The base mask was cut out to the wavy shape then structural gel was used to created the beaten swirly areas. This was then sprayed with a texturising agent to give it the roughness. The splashes were created the same way and attached with wire.
The whole lot was painted with coats of glossy semi metallic paints to give it that thick old crafty look. This was then dry brushed with silver to make it look worn through to the supposed metal base.

2. Gothicy Lady Shadowy Thingy

Glen was wearing a dark purply red dress with black extras and wanted a gothic styled mask. As her mask was going to be very dark and not have a lot of 3D structure added I chose to incorporate a lot of the detail into the edge - all hand filed! Urgh! The surface of the mask was textured with swirled structural gel and then inscribed with a pattern that tied in with the design around the edge and give it a hand tooled leather like finish.
The mask was given a coat with black gloss paint and dry brushed with a metallic purple that matched the dress. This dry brushing highlighted the texture and swirls on the mask surface and was also used to pick out some of the edge details to add interest.
Although it looks like the simplest of the 3 masks it took the most effort to make.

3. Norse Lordy Grumpy Thingy

I have always like old medieval looking stuff and was sure no one else would be wearing anything like this.
The rough metal looking parts are actually textured flooring vinyl left over from my parents house. It is my new favourite building material. When I run out of scraps I am going to be forced to take a craft knife to their kitchen floor. The studs are furniture pins and the wooden texture was obtained by using a structural modelling gel.
The whole lot was painted with several layers of varying colours to create the right depth and then given a good work over with black paint to make it all grimy.

All in all I enjoyed making the masks as it was something completely new to me. All 3 masks received a lot of comments during the night from other patrons and even some of the organisers and entertainers. I expect I will find myself making more for next years ball. At least I know what to expect…….