Sinead Kavanagh used paper mache, ribbon and vivid painting to turn her masks into beautiful Tibetan Cham Dance costume elements.

Custom Decorating Your Mask

Today's feature is all about our builders around the globe who use our masks as a jumping off point for their imagination. We love seeing their custom decorations and creative use of alternative materials. It's inspiring to us and hopefully this article will give you some ideas. Above, we see Sinead Kavanagh's clever use of paper mache, which fortifies the base mask and primes it for painting. Did you know you can apply paper mache to the inside of the mask for extra structural fortitude as well? Give it a shot if you are a dancer or performer looking for a little extra strength.

Chelsla Rochelle celebrated Day of the Dead by decorating our Bull Skull with hundreds of flowers.

Mask Making with Natural Materials 

Day of the Dead is such an exciting time of year for us and we love seeing the incredible masks and characters created seasonally to honour those that have passed. It's such an evocative and celebratory way to go about it and we feel deeply honoured that our masks have become a part of the festivities. Sometimes, the elements that make the mask are provided by nature, just have a look around.

"Kenichi Woodworking used Wintercroft templates to create bamboo veneered masks. We are currently planning our next collaboration so stay tuned!" - Dave Kodama

Bamboo Overlays for Amazing Texturing 

We've been working with Dave Kodama for a few years now and are continually blown away by his bamboo veneered mask builds. He's shown them in galleries and each one is stunningly unique. The wood grain creates immersive surface textures that set off the panels in such a unique way. Keep an eye out for a full feature on this amazing artist. Why not try using the templates to cut out panel overlays from materials with interesting colours, textures or patterns? Helpful hint: this technique is great for covering up where the templates show on the inside of ears on some of the designs. Just use a bit of excess card. 

The idea was to create four massive Mask builds based on our designs to serve as interactive set pieces for a modern theatrical production of Kipling's timeless "Jungle Book" story.

Timber and Plywood Set Pieces

A few years back we collaborated with a German Technical Theatre Director named Patrick Pohl at the Staatstheater Braunschweig - a beautiful 19th Century theatre and opera house in Brunswick, Germany. He used timber frames and  plywood cladding to build the huge Elephant and Wolf heads you see in the photos. It was incredible to see the production stills of the giant masks used as set pieces for the modernist interpretation of the classic Jungle Book story. Did you know that you don't have to build within the confines of A4 sizing? If you have access to a larger printer, you can go beyond 100% on your printer settings for a larger than life build. You can read and see more from our feature here: The Giant Mask Set of Dschungelbuch

Women unite with purpose and intensity that burns beyond the beauty of the movement, challenging gender violence and oppression without words.

Heat-Bonded PVC Masks

The City of Ignoble Women comprises a group of dance performance artists from Quito, a beautiful city nestled in the Andean foothills who use the art of movement to challenge gender violence. Their heat-bonded PVC masks create a translucent halo of the dogs they feel women are sometimes perceived as. This metaphor shows the strong female human within, making a striking statement against toxic masculinity. You can find out more about their travels and actions in our recent feature: Wintercroft in the City of Ignoble Women

"I was able to modify the Fish Mask to make a Gyarados Cosplay it was a huge success!" - Kels

EVA Foam for Cosplay Costumes

When a builder called Kels used our Fish Mask as a base for the Pokemon Cosplay character Gyarados, we were blown away when we saw the photo in her review. It apparently turned many heads at the Con she attended and the likeness is uncanny. She built the mask as a base and added EVA foam to bring the character to low poly life. Many of our Cosplay builders have used the templates to cut whole masks from EVA foam. If you have a go at this, disregard the tabs and use a hot glue gun to join the edges.

From left to right, Daisy'r De Fer, Adalberto and Cyril Widmer all made their masks in metal.

Masks Made From Metal

We've seen masks made using all sorts of metal, from reclaimed coffee cans, to aluminium and steel. This fairly involved process involves a bit of welding skill or if that is not available, one can use pop-rivets after bending the components to form. Impressive results are sure to come out the effort. 

I hope this feature has inspired some new ideas and if you have done something incredible with alternate materials already, we'd love to see it in the inbox. Remember, the templates are just a jumping off point. You can scale them up or down and build the mask from many different kinds of materials.