If you’re ready to get crafty this Halloween, but you don’t quite feel like you have the prowess to proceed without a guide, consider making a papercraft mask from an easy to follow template.
These animal masks made by Steve and Marianne Wintercroft are a perfect example. You just download a template, print it out, and follow the pattern as you cut out the shapes in heavy cardstock. Then just paste it together and you’ve got your own polygonal, minimalist mask for your upcoming costume party. Leave it white, use colored cardstock, or decorate and paint the finished mask to your heart’s content.
These masks are great not only because they’re easy to make and accessible from anywhere that you can print out the template, they’re also one of the greenest choices for Halloween. No energy is wasted on manufacturing or shipping since all you need is a downloadable file.
While I could see these masks being great for lots of different types of festivals or parties, Steve was inspired to make the first one specifically for Halloween. He says,
A couple of years ago, I received an invite to a friend’s Halloween party but struggling for costume ideas and short of time, I raided the recycling bin and gathered together a pile of packaging cardboard. Then sat down with some parcel tape, a pair of scissors and plenty of hot tea. An hour or so later and after some trial and error I had made myself an animal mask. The mask was well received so I decided to redesign it and make the templates available and accessible to everyone. The goal was to create a set of masks that could be built by anyone, using local materials, removing the need for mass manufacturing or shipping and with the minimum environmental impact.
Update: If you don’t see any designs that tickle your fancy, or you just want to make one completely from scratch, Make: reader Sean F. Kennedy shared this Instructables project that shows you how to do just that. Thanks, Sean!
13 thoughts on “Fold These Amazing Geometric Animal Masks from Cardstock”
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This is walking a fine line between article and advertisement, Make. More informing, less shilling.
It can indeed be a fine line, although I’d hate to pass up on showcasing someone’s awesome stuff because they happen to be selling it.
It would be good to have something on how to design one of our own. I always found this helpful: http://www.instructables.com/id/Create-faceted-paper-objects/
that’s awesome!! Would you mind being credited by name if I were to add this to the post?
It isn’t my instructable. The user is named “krummrey” and has other similar projects. (http://jan.krummrey.de/) I used his method for this: https://goo.gl/photos/oFSJvJyzS1kaZ2ZA7 You can credit me on this and that I pointed you in his direction.
Thanks!
There’s a lot of awesome stuff being sold by people. Is it your goal to turn Make into an Etsy advertisement service to showcase all their awesomeness?
Etsy is not mentioned or linked anywhere in the post. I did add a link to the Instructables to make your own. I’d love to see pictures if you decide to make one!
Etsy as in the place things like this belong. When I tell my mother to look something up I also tell her to google it, even though she uses yahoo. Does this pedantry excite you?
Eh. How different is it than articles talking about Sugru, Sculpy, Arduino or Adafruit products, for example?
I think this is a good article. Nice and simple, and even though it’s a pre-purposed product, it’s a cheap afternoon activity to have with your kids.
Those are professional products themselves used to create other projects, this is not. Even when there is an article about those products it will generally be about the applications you can then use the product for (informative) or a detailed review or comparison of the products(informative). I’ve yet to see an article here whose sole purpose was to alert readers of its existence and then tell them where to buy it(advertising). The internet is awash with cutesy things people have made and there are a slew of sites just for showing them off and making it easy to buy them…. this isn’t one of those no matter how much Mrs Smith wants it to be her own personal pinterest or how badly she wants her friends to make money on their crafts. If you truly want a cheap project for the kiddos this doesn’t fit the bill considering the hundreds of other sites out there dedicated to FREE projects of a more child friendly nature.
Can we stop BSing please? This isnt a kids craft, nor did the “article” bill it as one, this wasn’t meant to “showcase” the masks which could have been done without the purchase link, it was a blatant advertisement. I’d prefer to not have to weed through an intern’s nepotism to get to some real information.
Really great to know about. Thank you. Wouldn’t these look great made from copper foil or brass?
trying to find the torrent of some of these. 6 bucks for pdf is a bit much