A Masquerade Mask

Any of you who were following my blog last year at about this time, may remember that I attended Romancing the Capital (RTC), a reader and author get together in Ottawa (Kanata to be exact), and it’s coming up this week! I’m so excited!

The format is slightly different this year, in that there will only be a dinner/dance on Friday night, rather than one on both Friday and Saturday nights, but I’m thrilled that the theme for this year is a masquerade ball.

I found a fantastic dress at a second hand store here in Ottawa. It’s a nice rich red colour, strapless, and laces up in the back (the only thing I don’t like about it, because I’ll need help to get into and out of it). It is tacked underneath in a few spots to give it  a layered look, and has black crinoline underneath to give it nice shape. The only problem with it is that a couple of the spots where it was tacked up underneath have come undone, so I need to throw in a few stitches, and possibly reinforce the ones that are still in place.

I kind of forgot about needing a mask for my costume, so about a month ago I started looking online for one. I found lots of very nice masks, and for very reasonable prices too, except that I could not find one on a stick, which is a necessity for me because I wear glasses and I can’t go without them (unless I want to walk around bumping into things all night).

Finally it hit me to check on the Cricut website to see if they had any masquerade mask templates and I found one that suited! If you have a Cricut and use Design Space, I used the Gray Feather Mask project to cut out my base and then I tried to let my imagination run wild.

I had hoped to make quite a few masks so that I would have some to choose from, and I was going to make some for my friend to choose from as well, but they were much more time consuming than I had thought they would be. As a result, I ended up buying one for my friend, and I only got making two for me, so at least I have a backup.

This is the mask I bought for my friend. It’s pretty isn’t it? We may still add some embellishments to it before the party, once she has seen it. I really wish I could have found one like this on a stick, but it’s a bit heavier still than the ones I made, and I”m not sure hot glue would hold it on a stick if I had tried to adapt it.

For my homemade ones, here is my first attempt, and initially the one I thought I would go with.

For this one, I outlined the eyes with gold paint (it is much more metallic looking than it appears in the picture), and painted rosebuds on the front before adding the jewels and roses to the front. The jewels had adhesive on them so I didn’t need to glue them down.

The roses I cut with my Cricut. I used gold gelato and brushed the edges of the petals, before rolling them with a quilling tool and tacking them with hot glue. I then attached them to the front with hot glue, and attached the feathers and dowl (painted with gold paint) to the back, also with hot glue.

I used thick foam dots to attach a second mask to the back of the mask to both hide the glued feathers and dowel, and to give the mask a little more stability.

And this is the second, which I think is now my favourite and the one I’ll wear unless I break it.

The second was made in almost the same manner as the first, except I used the gold paint with a stencil to decorate the front. For this mask, I had to use additional adhesive to attach the clear jewels because the adhesive on them was not very strong. I also cut the back for this one from black chipboard to make it even more sturdy, especially with the roses on the other side, since it made that side quite heavy.

I’m thinking I might go all out and pull out the tiara I wore for my wedding. Do you think it will be too much?