quick and easy mask

Halloween is only a couple days away.  Are you ready?

I must confess, at this point, I'm usually scrambling around trying to get costumes completed and the candy bought.  This year, at least the costumes are done.  That's the most important part anyway, right?

This year we have a zombie, a vampire-sort-of-thing (this one is still confusing me, but she is happy), a witch, Batgirl and Spiderman.  The costume that has required the most work is Batgirl.  This is a hard one to find on the shelf at the store, so I went into 'I can make that!' mode.  (Nope.  I haven't changed that much over the past year.)

The  Batman symbol was easy.  A Google search brought up this template.  Craft felt and Tacky Spray worked great as my materials. Then I just pinned it on the front of a black shirt. Very easy.

The mask was a little more difficult to figure out.  I wanted something that would stay in place, be easy to see out, and not have to be tied.  Ever tried tying something around a little girl's head and not getting hair tangled in the string?  Close to impossible.

An easy alternative came about while playing with some recently purchased knit headbands.  I believe these were found at Walmart, but I'm sure they can be found at many different stores or online.

So.  Let's get started.

Take your headband and put it on the face/person who will be wearing it.

As you can see above, once the headband is in place, you can trace for the eye holes.  (The white showed this better in a picture than the black.)  On lighter colors you can use a Mark-Be-Gone or similar fabric pen.  I used chalk on the black to outline the eyes.  Remember you are wanting to be able to see out of this mask easily, so make the eye holes a little bigger than the actual eye.

I soon realized the mask fits better if you make an indentation for the bridge of the nose.  Yes, that is sidewalk chalk in the picture above.  I recommend using regular chalkboard chalk, but all of mine seems to have walked off.  All by itself, too, I'm sure.

Next, do a quick zig-zag stitch around the eye area and along the nose.

Get your scissors and start cutting the openings open and trim any strings once the stitching is done.

Now, it's ready to try on.

I've had requests from all the other kids for one in their favorite color just for fun.  I think the hardest part was getting my little model to lay still while I traced around her eyes.

Let me know what you think.  Or, if you are able to improve on this, share with us what you did.  I'm sure I'll be making more masks in my future.