Mask #23: Faux Mosaic (Fauxsaic?) Moon Mask

(Click the pictures to see larger versions.)

I made today's mask by referring to this wikiHow tutorial on making a mask out of tin foil and masking tape as an alternative to paper mache or plaster. I had to tweak it to my purposes, of course, and did a couple of things differently but the underlying construction was definitely pretty much as described in the tutorial.

First I pressed down sheets of aluminum foil over my moon mask armature. I used about three layers in all, and spent a lot of time smoothing and pressing down the foil so that it was as flat as possible. Then I went over the entire thing, front and back, with masking tape. I determined where the eye holes should be and used an exacto knife to cut them out, then cut out a hole under the point of the nose to allow breathing. I went back with small pieces of masking tape and sealed the raw edges of the cuts.

I decided to leave the masking tape as it was rather than paint over it, since I wanted a more natural colour for the 'grout'. I sketched the swirls on and after cutting all of my colours into small, irregular shapes I started gluing bits of cardstock on to mimic mosaic tiles. I started with the blue swirls, added orange for the edges and the smile, then filled in the rest of the space with yellow.

I mixed up some white glue with a drop of black paint and painted over the entire surface. The intention was to add some variance to the tiles themselves, and to make the tiles blend in with the 'grout' a bit more. I'll be either hot-gluing or using grommets to add the ties, and I intend to buy some twine to use as ties.


There's a lot I'd do differently with this mask, I'm sorry to say. Firstly I'd use paper and not cardstock for the fake tiles. The cardstock was too stiff for this kind of surface and didn't have enough give on the irregular surface and over the corners, highlighting the fact that it's not real tile. I would also either use a patterned paper or paint the paper myself so that the fake tiles aren't just a flat colour. The tinted glue helped with that, but I'd use a warmer colour than the black paint I used to tint it. Next time I'll definitely use a brown or even a red, or not tint it at all.

I'm going to go over it a couple more times with non-tinted glue to further the effect of the tiles being grouted, but that's all. I might (might) add the tiniest drop of red to the next glue layer, but we'll see about that.