El Cuervo
A paper-mache crow mask made for Halloween made with a plastic helmet, wood slats, paper mache, duct tape, string, fabric, acrylic paint. (Personal project, created in one week timeframe, October 2022).
Project Brief
I have recently been inspired by Victorian era Halloween costumes, which are immensely creative and incredibly creepy. Some of my favorites incorporate elaborate paper mache masks. I've long partaken in the tradition of making my own Halloween costumes and I decided that it would be worth giving a Victorian-inspired costume a try; not only would it be a fun process, but paper mache is inexpensive, perfect for a college student costume. So, I set out to create the most unnerving costume I could with supplies I largely already had.
I chose to create a crow because, besides being an iconic symbol of Halloween, I have a lot of friends that are afraid of birds and decided it would be a good way to give everybody a good balance of "oh, I don't know if I like that" and "oh, that's really cool!"
What I Created
The helmet is made mostly with unwanted materials from around my house, supplemented with a few things picked up from thrift stores. The head is built around a plastic costume helmet I picked up at a thrift store, with the skeleton built out of slats cut out of my old set of window blinds. I created the paper mache out of a stack of junk mail and grocery coupons and painted it with cheap craft store acrylic paint. (See below for a more extensive process.) The most expensive component actually ended up being the children's craft glue I had to buy to make the paper mache.
The finished mask is lightweight and can be easily slipped on and off over the head. The open mouth is covered with a piece of cotton fabric, allowing the wearer to see out but making it so other people can't see in. To complete the costume, I wore the head with all-black clothes and a black floor-length cape.
Takeaways
This project ended up being a good example in how, as articulated by Michael Beirut, design problems often contain their own solution. I wanted to make a Halloween costume that would be inexpensive and mostly use stuff I already had, making a costume made of paper mache and a trash-bound set of window blinds as an excellent solution.
Process work
Engineering the Structure
I created the frame of the mask by duct taping flexible wooden slats I harvested from a discarded set of window blinds to a plastic costume helmet from a thrift store. Ensuring I could easily fit the helmet over my head and that I had a reasonable field of view from the gap left in the beak, I continued filling out the frame until I had a dense network to support the paper mache. I then applied several layers of paper mache inside and out, molding the eyes out of air-dry clay and affixing them to the helmet between layers. Once dry, I painted the helmet with acrylic paint and glued a piece of cotton fabric over the beak opening, ensuring that I could see out but I couldn't be seen within.
Design Improvement Points
While the helmet came out lightweight, it is still heavier in the front because of the beak, causing it to slide forwards on the wearer's head and lowering the window of sight. Were I to make another version of this mask or continue working on this one, I would include some counterweight at the back of the helmet (perhaps by adding a bit of clay in a flat layer at the back) or create some kind of chinstrap to keep the helmet in place.