Sorceress With Skull Mask and Horns

A few days before Devil's Night, I decided I needed a(nother) costume! So I decided to put together a witch-sorceress-demon thing. The goal was to make a costume out of supplies I already had in the house, and I wanted to make something out of paper-mâché, since it had been *years* since I had worked with the stuff.

I sketched out my initial design, then got to work. Instead of having to apply makeup and fake nails on the night I was going out, I glued nails to nylon gloves and dripped black paint over the hands. For the mask, I drew out the top and side of a skull on my computer, printed it, then made a rough cardboard pattern that I duct-taped and hot-glued together. I paper-mâchéd the skull, sped up the dryer process with a fan, spray-painted it and then used acrylics to paint in some details. For the horns I cut six horn shapes out of foam, hot-glued them together and shaved down the sides with scissors. I used a wood-burning tool to cut details into the foam, then spray-painted the horns black. I cut a slit into the base of both horns and passed a plastic headband through the openings before gluing them to the band. The dress was made from cheap broadcloth using an old medieval dress pattern I had - I improvised on the sleeves. I tattered the ends up a little bit with a cheese-grater, and sprayed water-down acrylics at the ends of the sleeves and bottom of the dress. I back-combed and hair-sprayed the heck out of my hair, wore black contacts and some red eye-makeup, and made people feel a bit uneasy all night.

There was a lot of rain that night, BUT my mask held up surprisingly well - must have been the coats of Mod Podge.