Difficulty: All Levels
Safety Warning: Adults should always supervise children when using glue and paint, and when cutting eye and mouth holes. This one can be messy – make sure you cover the surface you’re working on!
Alice shows you how to make a circus mask using a papier-mâché technique!
Equipment:
- Round balloon
- Scrap paper (newspaper, old notepaper, etc.)
- Paintbrush
- PVA Glue
- Water
- Wool
- Paint
First, Alice shows you how to cover a blown-up balloon with papier-mâché to create your mask base. She demonstrates using a paintbrush to make sure everything is really smooth, but you can do this with your hands.
It’s important that you make the mask big enough to cover your head and forehead, so that it stays on comfortably.
You’ll need to do 4-5 layers, and dry each layer for 8-12 hours in between. Once it’s dry, you should be able to pull the balloon out of the mask and mark out eye and mouth holes.
When you’ve decided what kind of mask you want to make, you can start building up features like eyebrows and a nose with more papier-mâché.
When all this is dry, you’ll create eye holes and a mouth hole. Now that you’ve learnt how to make a circus mask, your mask is ready to decorate!
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