Halloween Masks

Enlarge Image Image Gallery [1] Maskmakers first draw rough sketches of their proposed creations. [2] Next, each youngster covers a bowl with plastic wrap... and [3] sculpts a mold in clay for the funny face. [4] After the clay has dried, strips of newspaper are dipped in a flour/water paste and applied to the form. Six layers will produce a light-weight, durable masks. [5] The paper ""sculpture"" is set aside to dry. [6] Garish paints breathe life into a faceless demon. [7] A pint-size horrifier... ready to stalk the night.

Your whole family can have a lot of fun constructing your own ghastly, horrifying, hair-raising, goose-pimpling, and easy-to-make...

Begone, catalog costumes ... Away, discount store superheroes . . . Out, out, Halloween sewing machine blues!

That's right, you don't need to purchase commercial costumes (or put in hours sitting at a sewing machine) to outfit your children !n Halloween regalia, because—by spending some enjoyable, creative time together— you and your youngsters can create papiermache goon, witch, and monster masks so terrifying that the homemade disguises will surely satisfy the timeless roaming spirits of Allhallows' Eve ... and your own trick-or-treaters as well!

Before you can begin making the demons, though, you have to find a "secret" (that is, mess-tolerant) work spot and assemble some necessary supplies. You'll need paper and pencils ... a face-sized bowl for each youngster ... potter's or earth-dug clay . . . plastic wrap . . . newspapers . . . flour, water, and a large mixing container . . . a board (or stiff cardboard) work surface for each mask . . . scissors . . . acrylic paints . . . and some half-inch-wide elastic. (Books about trolls or animals are also useful resources, since the illustrations in such volumes can often help turn reluctant young artists into selfmotivated frenzies of invention.)

Our own maskmaking gang includes my children—John, Pedro, Julie, and Melissa—as well as their technical assistant, my husband Todd. We usually congregate around the outdoor picnic table and plunge right into the task of sketching the mask designs. Oh, there's always at least one child who feels that he or she will "never think of anything to make" (the rest are absolutely exploding with ideas), but before long every youth is eagerly offering suggestions, combining efforts, and asking weird questions:

"Would three eyes look good, Dad?".. . "How about a nice juicy wart on my witch's loooong chin?" ... "Should my mask be blue with a red nose?" (My husband and I, of course, encourage all such original thinking.)

After a considerable amount of brainstorming and drawing, every child has produced a good ghoulish sketch and is ready to start creating a mask mold. And while it's true that an upside-down oval bowl covered with plastic wrap can serve perfectly well as a mold all by itself, we've found that maskmaking is easier—and a heck of a lot more fun—if we shape clay over the containers and build the monster faces we want.

Once the children have formed cheeks, noses, mouths, chins, and eyes on their upturned bowls . . . we let the earthen material dry long enough to become firm. Then each person covers his or her mold with a close-fitting skin of plastic wrap . . . to ensure that the finished masks won't stick to the clay.

Next, part of the work crew mixes up a batch of flour and water paste (for the soon-to-be-used papier-mache strips) by half-filling a large container with water and working flour into the liquid until the resulting glop obtains the consistency of cream soup. Meanwhile, other workers prepare a large basketload of torn strips of newspaper, 3/4" to 1 "wide.