The Venetian Mask

Well, the tattoo being performed on my roof has finally ended and the scaffolding outside my window has been taken down (see previous post) so I will return to the planned post for today. Since I have now had several requests for photos of my venetian mask craft project your wish is my command.

Before you get to see the photo, though, I'm going to have to write some more boring words for you to read to explain a little bit about it all. I decided back when Rob and I were in Venice last year that I would like to attempt to make a traditional mask. Well not entirely traditional. Of course, the first Venetian masks were fairly simple, usually made out of molded leather, and designed to be worn, but I wanted to make a "traditional" decorative mask instead. The decorative masks are usually either ceramic or paper mache, usually full face rather than the half face designs that are common in masks designed to be worn, and usually include a jester's hat. While we saw hundreds, or perhaps even thousands, of masks while we were in Venice we didn't take many photos of them. I'm not sure why we didn't - probably a combination of the fact that the guys selling the masks were a little bit scary most of the time and the fact that we were too busy taking photos of the Venetian glass instead. Anyway, the only photo we seem to have is this one:

That meant that when I was designing my mask I did so partly from memory of the one's I'd seen and partly from the results of a google image search. Then it was off to Spotlight to figure out how I was going to do it. I bought a flimsy plastic mask mold to start with and decided to reinforce it with paper mache. Several layers later, I got to start painting and decorating and the fun began. The jester's hat was the most challenging part because I haven't done anything like that before but it was fun and I got to make rather a lot of mess with glue and scraps of material everywhere. Anyway, this is the finished project on my wall.