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	family fun guide

Making Masks

We make our masks out of old file folders. They are sturdy, cheap, easy to cut, and --this is an important consideration--comfortable to breathe through.

Here’s how to get started.

1. Decide what kind of mask you’re going to make: a cat, a bug, a robot, a space alien...

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2. Draw the basic shape of your character’s head on the file folder. (See some examples below.) If, for example, you’re drawing a cat, make a simple oval shape with triangles on the top for ears. If you are drawing a ladybug, you might want a fat, round face; but for a robot, you might want a square face. Make sure the basic shape you or your child draws is at least big enough to cover your child’s face.

3. Cut out the shape.

4. Hold the mask up to your child’s face and draw eye holes approximately where the child’s eyes are. Carefully cut out these holes.

5. Decorate the mask with markers or paint.

6. Staple elastic to the sides of the mask near each eye hole. Knot the ends of the elastic first to prevent it from slipping through the staple. You can buy elastic at fabric shops and discount stores; it’s usually near the thread.

If your children aren’t old enough to draw and cut independently, offer help with the mechanics. But let them decide how their masks will look. When my son made his first mask, he ignored all the brilliant blue, green, yellow, and purple paints and dipped his brush in black. The result was a very idiosyncratic--and magnetic--pitch-black bird.

Keep your first mask project simple. But as you make more masks, become more elaborate with designs and decorations. Add dramatic embellishments such as feathers, sequins, foil eyebrows, or a mouth cut from bright red fabric. For terrific whiskers or bug antennae, bend a pipe cleaner in half and poke the two ends through the back of the mask.

For even more ideas, I recommend the following books:

• A Collector’s Guide to Masks by Timothy Teuten (Wellfleet Books, 1990)

• Making Masks and Crazy Faces by Jen Green (Gloucester Press, 1992)

• Masks by Meryl Doney (Franklin Watts, 1995)

• Masks of Bali by Judy Slattum (Chronicle Books, 1997)

• The Metropolitan Museum of Art Masks (DK Ink Books, 1997)

• North American Indian Masks by Frieda Gates (Walker and Company, 1982)

-- Mary Koepke Amato

Back to Tinker, Tiger, Robot, Spy: Wearing masks, children can do and be anything