Feathered Mask Tutorial

I love feathered masks. I have been looking at them at the Renaissance Faire for a long time, but YIKES they are not very cheap. I had been thinking about making one from scratch with the supplies they sell at Hobby Lobby, then I found this one at a thrift store for only $.40 cents.

For $.40 cents I thought I could work with it. 

My first reaction was that the mask looked far too much like Big Bird. As much as I love yellow, this was just too much color. 

I was also attracted to it because of the peacock feathers. Peacock feathers are expensive to buy at the store in case you didn't know.

I wanted less Big Bird, more elegant Peacock for Betty's Mask. The mask was also far too large for her small face so the first thing I did was to cut away the lower feathers that covered the cheeks. They were easy to cut, it is just cardboard on the other side.

I saved the pieces and reused them else where on the mask. I also removed the gold sequins around the eyes so I could work with that area a bit more.

The yellow pieces were placed between the eyes, building a bit of height on the brow. I glued them in place with my favorite Tacky Craft Glue.

Then I worked on adding more peacock feathers to the crown. I used the old ones, and a few new ones that I had purchased. The center peacock piece came from Hobby Lobby as well.

I  bought two bags of colored smaller feathers, one green and one blue. I built up the area around the eyes with first the green, then the blue feathers. I worked with them without the glue first, to decided exactly where I wanted to place them.

I used a small paint brush to attach the glue to the back of the feathers. Sometimes it was easier to apply the glue to the mask, then press the feathers into the glue. Be sure to apply the glue with the direction of the grain of the feathers, or it's very messy looking.  Then I re-applied the sequin trim around the eyes, and added the miscellaneous sequins I had removed before.

Oddly enough, the eye trim seemed longer than before.  I gave the mask a bit of a decorative twist at the corner of the eye, I didn't have the heart to cut it off.

I think the mask turned out rather well. This is my first try with feathers, and I must say they are fun to work with. However, be sure you don't sneeze in the process or you will have quite a mess on your hands.

If you would like to learn more about how I made Betty, click here for the complete tutorial.

Thanks for stopping by!