Make Your Own Halloween Masks!

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Fasten all your additions to your mask by covering the head with more glued paper strips. One or two more layers will be enough. After that, you'll have to hang the mask again and let it dry for another day.

While your Halloween creation is drying, you can start the next stage: making the soft mash you will cover, it with. Tear up at least four large newspaper sheets into small pieces. Cover them with water and leave them to soak overnight. The next day, boil the mixture for 20 minutes or until it becomes a soft pulp. (If you stir the boiling mash, it will "cook" faster.) Once the paper's all turned to pulp, let the pot cool for a while.

Now cover a sieve with an old cotton rag and dump the pulp in. Squeeze the towel to remove extra water and produce a soft, wet lump. Put the pulp in a big bowl and mix in two tablespoons of wallpaper paste and two tablespoons of liquid white glue. Stir the sticky mixture until you've gotten rid of all the lumps.

Apply the mash all over your mask. Don't put much on the ears, though, or they'll probably collapse. Cory and I just put a little mash around the base of our masks' ears.

You can smooth the wet guck out with your hands. My brother and I didn't smooth ours too much, because we wanted our masks to have lizardlike skins. If you want a smoother surface, you can stick on some tissue paper with wallpaper paste or sand the mask with fine sandpaper after the mash has dried.

Once the mask is perfectly dry (which will take at least two more days), you can paint it. We used enamel spray paints and made our masks white and yellow, with a light overcoat of green. If you don't have any spray paint around, you can use any water-based paint and just spray the finished dry surface with a clear vinyl sealer. [EDITOR'S NOTE: Use any spray paints or sealers outdoors and under adult supervision.]

All in all, it took Cory and me two weeks to make our masks, but we didn't hurry because we wanted to do a really nice job on them. Our work paid off, too. Our masks were a big hit at school. All the kids liked them. We even won the costume parade!

We had the most fun on Halloween night, though. Everywhere we went, people made a big fuss over us. They took our pictures and even gave us extra treats!

The only problem Cory and I have found with the masks is that it's much easier to see where you're going if you just wear face makeup instead. Our mom always goes out trickor-treating with us, though, so she helped us get around all right.

Making your own mask is fun, costs next to nothing, uses up old newspapers, and can give you your best Halloween ever! (It did for me!) Now I have people asking me to make masks for them. Hey! Maybe I've found a good bootstrap business idea!

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