Bat Girl Mask

We recently discovered the awesomeness of foam. Did you know that if you heat foam you can mold it and it will hold the shape?!?!

Bat Girl wanted a hood with ears like Batman, but she also wanted a cool mask. The Masks at the store have ears on them, but it was only $3, so we got it anyway. Mostly cause I wanted to try this. :)

Regular piece of craft foam

Apply heat. We used a heat gun, cause Marisa is AWESOME and just happened to have one. But I have also done this over a burner on the stove. Set the heat to med-low or med. When the burner is hot hold the piece of foam about 6 inches over the burner. When the foam goes limp it's ready to mold. It's hot, but not hot enough to burn you. You can put it on your skin if you want to mold it to a specific part of you. (but I don't suggest putting it on a child's skin)

This is the mask I used as a mold

I learned it's easier to cut teh foam down to size before you heat and mold it. I didn't get a smooth edge cause I had too much excess. 

You can see I just pressed it down and used my fingers to get it into the crevasses (it's really a 2 handed operation)

After it cooled (about 15 secs) This is what it looked like!

I also took a black ball point pen and drew some crease lines on the forehead. Gives it extra depth. :)

I didn't trim up the edges cause I wasn't  sure how I wanted to do the nose, but I ended up just cutting it straight across the bottom. 

Now use a glue water mix. I do roughly 3 parts glue to 1 part water. But I NEVER measure. I just pour some in till the glue is about the consistency of egg nog, or slightly thinner.  Paint it on the out side to seal the foam. 

When the out side dries turn it around and to a layer of glue water, then a layer of fabric strips, and then another layer of glue water on top. This keeps it stiff  and helps it hold it's shape.  (I found out that it's easier to cut teh eye holes BEFORE the glue and fabric. So trim it FIRST)

 This is what it looks like dry and trimmed. Pretty awesome huh!

 Then I just sewed a strap of elastic to the back

 And the mask is done. Just think what else you can do with foam!!

Now we have a formed black mask for the costume box. Zoro, Dread Pirate Roberts, super hero, villain  we can use this for a number of things. 

We have plans for storm trooper armor some time in the future with this technique. :) Seriously, now cool would THAT be?!

Splatted Witch

Hilarious halloween decoration for your front yard. Start with 4 sticks of wood. Make 2 black for the arms, and paint 2 stripped for socks. You're going to need some long screws or nails to keep them sturdy on your tree. Then to keep it an all weather witch, use a black trash bag for the cape, and foam sheets for shoes and hair. Cut your shoes out and hair out. Just make the hair pointy so it sticks out of the bottom of your hat. Screw the shoes to the leg sticks and after your cape is up, nail your hair to the tree and the hat over top. A pair of rubber washing gloves stuffed with walmart sacks finish it off. And for that special touch, don't forget your stick witch broom. After the broom is made it takes a total of 3 minutes to put on your tree. If it's really windy tack down your hat, hair and cape so it covers your witch.

Craft Foam Vader Mask (on a pair of sun glasses)

IT's always easier to start with a pattern, so I searched Paper Vader mask, and I found a picture of the print out for a mini Vader mask made out of paper on Google image search. I saved the image to my computer and then zoomed in till it was about the size I wanted and then traced the image onto paper directly from the monitor. 

It's hard to make sense of the random shapes, but this top shape is the cheek bones, and the middle piece between the L shaped ones and the triangle is the out side of the mouth.

So in order to see what I actually needed I cut it out of paper and taped it all together

Turns out I really only needed these pieces. I used black craft foam, and you can manipulate it better than paper, so I changed some of the pattern pieces. Oh I guess I used the L shaped ones and the triangle ones, 

This is just the top piece. I cut the nose piece bigger. To glue it I tapes the gaps shut on the out side, and then on the inside I used hot glue to close the seams

 This is a view of the inside

I forgot to take a picture of the mouth piece separate from the cheek bones, but here they are together

 To make teh concave piece for the nose I heated a small piece of foam and wrapped it around the end of my knife which had a great curve

 The I ended up with this, then I just cut out the rounded piece for the nose

 Now I had to guess for teh rest of the shapes, so I held up paper and marked it to the size I needed then cut it out and placed it on to see if it would work, like this

This is the shape I came up with

Instead if cutting it all the way out I only cut a slit in on the curved part of the line to give a rounded look to the eyebrow part.

 Then I folded the "extra" part under on the line so it was the original shape. I heated it and gave it a round shape on a bowl. 

To heat it just hold it a few inches over a burner on med heat till the foam goes limp, hold it over what you want to mold till it cools. With craft foam it only take s a few seconds

 Then I found a curve going the opposit way to curve it up for the eyebrow-ish part just over his eyes.

 Ah, see. Now you can see what I'm talking about. It worked, so I just cut one of and did it the opposite direction to go over the other eye. (9the eyes are sun glassed, but they are not attached yet, I just needed to see the shape.)

 Now i have both eyes

 Now for the nose

 I placed the mask on a batman mask to help keep the shape stiff cause my 3 year old wouldn't let me hold it on his face (it's not hot, don't worry) :) then I heated the nose and shaped it to the mask

 I used some wire for the tusks. A wire hanger would be just the right size
I cut a few pieces to fill in the gaps on the sides of the mask so I had something to glue the tusks to. 

 then wrap and glue the foam around it, and do the other one facing the opposite direction 

 Position and glue to the mask (you can see the final shape of the base of the mask as well. It doesn't have to be great, the helmet will cover most of it up)

Once I got the tusks on I cut them flush with the back edge of the mask. Then I cut out 6 small circles and glued them on each end to cover up the exposed wire.

 You can see that the mouth does not sit straight, so I cut a piece of wire to go across the bottom of the triangle and glued it on the inside

 Then I made some foam frames to go over the glasses to make it easier to glue in place. I had to use my made for plastic glue 

 I positioned them in and glued the foam to the foam on the inside. now I went to the eyes, remember the slit that I cut in the eye brow piece. I put glue on the bigger piece then laid the triangle piece on top of it to make the cavity for the eyes.

 The triangle piece hung over a bit so I had to trim it up . Then I taped paper to the bottom to figure out the shape for teh bottom piece

This is the final shape, can you see the upside down triangle drawn in the middle?

 I heated this piece and molded it over the card board form to make the bottom triangle of the mask

 To get the cross mesh look I scored it with a nail. An x-acto would have cut to far in. You can also use a black ball point pen. I used the pin to do the out line. It defines the lines a little better. 

 Bottom piece glued on

 To reinforce the glue joints and stiffen the mask a bit I took strips of fabric (I happen to have black) and  mixture of elmers glue and a little bit of water and applied it like paper mache. (about 3:1 glue:water, but I never measure, you just need to thin it enough to make it paint with out leaving big brush strokes)

 Then I used the same glue mixture to paint the out side. This seals the foam, and gives it a plastic look. It also acts as a primer if you want/need to paint. I ended up doing 2 or 3 coats. (let it dry completely between each coat)

 I didn't paint the glue over the lines that I scored in the foam because I wanted the extra depth and texture.

 Last step, a little grey accent on the end of the tusks and in the nose

And I decided not to use the black gloss paint for the mask cause the glue gave it a bit of a gloss.

 COMPLETE MASK AND HELMET!!!

$2.67 for the sun glasses $0.75 for the craft foam

Total cost of mask $3.42

UPDATE: 

Here are just the pieces that I used from the original pattern. Everything else I had to fill in my self. But this is the cheek bones, and mouth part.

Save the image to your computer and print it as large as you can on a 8 1/2 x 11 piece of paper, and it should be about the right size for a child. OR if you need it slightly bigger then zoom in a little and trace it right off the screen. white tissue paper works great for this. Good luck!!!