 Sarah - a willing participant  Plaster Gauze  Perimeter First  Build it Up  Now Decorate it!
| The main thing that you need for the base of the mask is the gauze.
This gauze is impregnated with plaster. It comes in rolls. - a willing participant
- plaster impregnated gauze (about 1 roll per adult face)
- bowl of water
- vaseline
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This is a great project that you can stretch out over a couple of work days. Great for classrooms or camp. At the first sitting you could make the mask. At the next sitting you could do the first layer of decoration-- for example smoothing it out or adding contours with other mediums. At then later on you could paint and put on the final details.
- If the person has long hair pull it back with clips
- Put a liberal coating of vaseline around the hair line, including eyebrows
- To begin with use strips that are about 1" by 3". Start by dunking them in the bowl of water, and squeezing out excess water. I find it easiest to start at the top of the face and work around the perimeter first, overlapping the strips as you go.
- Fill in and thicken the face.
- When you have a couple of layers, you can build up certain areas of the face. The nose should be reinforced. If you want to the cheeks can be built up. Use smaller strips if necessary.
- After about 30-40 minutes the subject will feel the mask pulling away from their face. At this time, the mask can be taken off. Examine it to see if there are any areas that you think are too light.
- Put on more gauze if necessary.
- It will probably take about 1 day for the mask to be completely dry.
- Do not fiddle with it while it is drying.
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Now comes the really creative part.
Do you want the mask to be its natural color but protected?
Use a clear acrylic sealer such as Plaid's "Mod Podge"(available in either matte of gloss) or Liquitex's "gloss medium" or "matte medium." Do you want to paint it, but feel like you want to prime it first to smooth out the texture?
Use gesso first, then paint it with acrylic paints. Use the sealer after for a protective coat if necessary. Do you want something more than just paint?
Glue feathers, sequins, glitter, buttons, bits of paper, ribbon, magazine pages... to it.
For things like feather and sequins a glue gun will work well. For other things, consider using acrylic paint as your glue.
So you are intrigued by the gauze but you don't want to do a regular mask? Lots of pregnant women like to do a cast of their torsos at different stages. (Our best guess is that for a belly you would need between 2 and 3 packages... depending on how pregnant you are I guess....) Or start with your face, but build it up to look like a bird, a bat, a monster etc...
Check out the mold and mask making page for all of the supplies.
If you have questions drop us an email, and we'll try to help!
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