Spawn of Cthulhu Mask!

Inspired by the story The Shadow Over Innsmouth by HP Lovecraft, this mask transforms me into a citizen of Massachussets who is displaying genetic abnormalities due to a hybridization with an ancient race of "Deep Ones". The story, about a creepy New England town with a terrible secret, is pretty vague with the details, mostly describing the hybrids as 'fish-frog men'. I started with the basic idea presented in the story and then let just kind of let myself go, drawing from my own imagination as well as popular artistic representations of Lovecraft's most famous creation, Cthulhu. Technically, this character is a servant of Dagon.

The materials I used to construct this mask:

One shipping box
One foil-embossed poster for the movie Ultraviolet
A few issues of The Onion
Several cups of flour
A few yards of crushed velvet
Two four-inch party balloons. Mine had pictures of superheroes on them.
Some sheer fabric
A sewing machine and associated doo-dads like needles and stuff
Paint
Miscellaneous scraps of cardboard
Acrylic varnish
Masking tape
Duct tape
Hairdryer

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Step 1: Invent a Monster Out of Nothing

I came up with a premise beforehand, but this monster was essentially developed from the materials as I worked. I knew that it needed to be fishlike, and I envisioned it with a long snout hanging down my chest. Having recently acquired an old sewing machine, I was looking forward to making tentacles, so I intended to make it look like I was just vomitting tentacles out of a huge fishmouth. So I knew it should have a huge mouth.

I started by roughing out a basic shape with an Ultraviolet movie poster and a Diamond Comics shipping box.
The poster was folded into a tube into which I was able to fit my head. I cut large openings for the eye-holes. If my head could successfully fit into this section, then I was free to build anything else I wanted around it!

Taking large hunks of the shipping box, I built up the general shape of the mask around the head area and taped the pieces into place. I filled in the empty spaces with newspaper.