Paper Masquerade Mask Tutorial

A few weeks ago, I made 30 masks for a Phantom of the Opera themed charity dinner a group of friends throw every November.  I was making the favors to go in the goody bags for each attendee. Each bag included a bracelet with a sparkly connector charm, this mask, a notebook like the one here, a bookmark, and a plaque which I will post later this week.

I used my Cricut to cut the masks, but you could easily find a template online and cut the mask by hand.

This is several masks together.  Looks like a Predator to me! 🙂

Cricut Cartridge: “Chic & Scary”
Black cardstock (Recollections 8 1/2 x 11″ used here)
1/4″ Black Polyester Ribbon – 18-24″ lengths x2 per mask
Crop-A-Dile 1/8″ hole punch
Stampin Up – Stampin Around stamp in “So Swirly”
Stamp Pad (Used Copper and Gold ink)


Step 1:
Cut mask on Cricut at 7″ (Speed: Medium, Pressure: Medium, Needle: 5).  I could get two masks per 8 1/2″ x 11″ sheet of cardstock.

Mask waiting for decoration

Step 2:
I went very basic for the decoration on these masks, but have been much more detailed in past years.  I used the Stampin Around stamp by Stampin Up in So Swirly and used a standard ink pad.  Some masks I did in gold and others in copper.  My gold pad was drying up so more masks ended up with copper ink which showed up better on the cardstock anyway.  Due to the height of the mask being larger than the stamp, I rolled the stamp across the top of the mask then the bottom half.  I wasn’t being too precious about matching up the pattern and there was some overlap.  The pattern of the stamp looked fantastic wherever it overlapped, so it was definitely not worth fussing with matching it up.

First pass with the stamp on the top half of the mask. You can see where I missed a small section on the very top.

Second pass with the stamp on the bottom half of the mask.

Step 3:
Using the Crop-A-Dile, I punch a hole on each side of the mask using the 1/8″ punch.  You want to make sure your ribbon is twice as wide as the hole size so you don\’t have to make too many knots. I used 1/4″ black ribbon and triple knotted each side and trimmed off any excess.  I cut the ribbon at 24″ for each side. (NOTE: I used 10 yard rolls of ribbon which gave me 15 lengths of 24″ ribbon.)

I put the knots on the front side of the mask, but it can knotted on the backside as well.

Triple knot.

Voila! You have a great mask for your masquerade party! Remember you can add all the bling and glitter you want to your mask, and these would be a great craft to make with the kids!

TTFN,
V