easy last minute DIY Halloween masks

Tomorrow night marks the official start to our end of year festivities. The drama school our children go to don’t do a Christmas concert, instead, they do a Halloween concert to avoid any clashes with all the other events that seem to crop up around Christmas. Generally, the children get to pick their own costumes, and the directer asks that the grown-ups consider dressing up too. I had already planned on joining the fun this year, with some witches robes similar to those I made for Bear last year, and my Slytherin cowl. Easy peasy. We are not long past the school walkathon, and after three costumes needing to be made for that, I am kind of on the edge of costume burn-out. The idea of recycling costumes or making very simple ones was very appealing.

A couple of weeks back, CreativeBug reached out to me and asked if I would be interested in working with them for Halloween, and when I took a look at their class offering, I spotted a DIY Halloween Mask class which included a tawny owl…and thus Beetle’s costume was decided! (And yes, this post is sponsored by CreativeBug, however, the class was of my choosing, and the project idea, result, and words in this post are all mine. I had already planned most of the costumes and would have been making & sharing my Harry Potter inspired costume regardless of this opportunity. I was also a member of CreativeBug before this. Look to the bottom of this post for more info on my decision to trial a sponsored post.)

One thing I’m not a huge fan of when it comes to classes (or sew-alongs, or blocks-of-the-month, as the girls and I chatted about at quilt camp), is the idea that I’ll end up with something that looks just like everyone else’s, so I dipped in and out of the class videos (broken up by class) to use as a starting point, and then did my own thing, based on the techniques shown. The masks are still definitely inspired by the class, and I found it useful having that starting point and the basic techniques to work from. I ended up with two masks – an owl for Beetle, and a masquerade mask for me.

While the class is built around using premade masks and customising them, I instead opted to make the base of mine – I had felt and interfacing on hand, and didn’t need a shaped mask. I could use my stash and make a smaller size to suit little man. Want to make your own too? I’ve created a downloadable template with the patterns I sketched up, which you can download HERE. For Beetle’s owl, I cut one piece of felt on the fold, and one piece of interfacing on the fold, and fused the two together. I then used the video as a bit of a guide, but quickly discovered I was cutting my feathers too large, so stopped there and cut them myself – I used similar shapes and just downsized them, and also used a smaller number – before going back to the video for feather layout help. 10 minutes work with the hot glue gun and I had myself an owl. It’s definitely not a replica of the class mask, but I think it’s super cute, and it was handy having the shape guide.

See how big my feathers started out as? I trimmed them down before glueing on and still had to cut around the eye hole when I was done! I added a couple of layered feathers to the bridge of the nose, which I’m still not completely sold on, but we’ll see how I go for time to correct it. If I don’t have the time, it’s still cute enough without me being a fusspot!

For my mask, I cut two each of felt and interfacing of a larger version of the mask template, also included on the printable pattern. I had planned on stitching around the two once they were joined together but my pretty new metallic thread has disappeared, so I ended up glueing them back to back. It was quite quick as well, maybe 15 minutes? A lot more burnt fingers though, trying to get those sequins to behave!! I’m still not entirely sure whether I will add a stick as per the class to make it a masquerade mask, or just add elastic and wear it as a normal mask – possibly the latter, as I will have my hands full of costumes and children and drinks and programs and pizza. The rest of my costume, as mentioned will be robes over an outfit very similar to the one I wore in the cowl photos. I’m thinking of slicing the robe pattern down the front to give me open flowing robes – which also gives me the option to remove them once I start to feel like a goose if no-one else is dressed up. Or not. Maybe I’ll ignore everyone else and just roll with the costume and have some fun. Next on the making list is Butterfly’s dress – she’s asked for Monster High (cheers, Maccas Happy Meals, for introducing that one), so I am going for a MH-inspired dress, some cute lime green stripy tights we found at BigW and her awesome hot pink snow boots.

CreativeBug is currently offering new members a free month to kick them off, just use the code Halloween when signing up. After that you get unlimited access to their catalogue of classes for $4.95US a month, including one to keep each month. The mask class I used was definitely worth the $5, versus me googling owl pictures and trying to decide on feather shapes and mucking it up and starting again (likely more than once!). I’ve also got my eye on a watercolour and a calligraphy class (which is how I found CreativeBug in the first place).

As mentioned above, this post is sponsored by CreativeBug. This is my first foray into the world of sponsored posts, and I confess, it wasn’t without a great deal of thought and consideration. I take very seriously the trust that you, my lovely readers, place in me, and I have no intention into turning this blog into one great big ad. I have decided that if I go forward with sponsored posts, it will be no more than one per month – as a blog reader I hate reading post after post after post that have been sponsored. I am also committed to only accepting posts which fit my style and this blog – this post, for instance, as I mentioned, fit with my plans for my crafting and blogging this week, and so I decided to give it a chance. I would have had a costume post this week, in fact, I still have a couple planned for next week for the costumes I made for the school walkathon. I also have used CreativeBug classes in the past, so it wasn’t completely out of left field. It’s not something I plan to do often, or want to do, even – my crafting is too haphazard to force it into someone else’s schedule! But when I had something to share anyway, that fit the proposal, I felt it was a good chance to dabble my feet in the waters of sponsorship. As always, I welcome your thoughts. Thanks for bearing with me as I try something a little bit new (for me,anyway!)