# Paper Mache Day Four, Part Two



## lizzyborden (Sep 17, 2009)

View attachment 194068


Since the duct tape and foil skulls didn't turn out as good as I liked, I finally sacrificed a roll of my good masking tape to try it again. It looks good but I'm still worried about it distorting once I cut it off the skull and stuff with paper, so I decide to experiment once again.

View attachment 194069


This time I do use the paper towels. These particular ones are Bounty. They are two-ply so I separated the layers and used the back one as it has less of the design on it. Notice I tore off all the straight edges. 

View attachment 194070


I tore the paper towel into strips and pasted them to the layer of tape. Notice that the color of the paste and the masking tape are very close. This made it very difficult to see where I had been. If this works I may have to resort to tinting the paste on the next try.

View attachment 194071


Now for another experiment! This is the female styrofoam wig head covered in foil and the loose edges secured with a strip of duct tape. 

View attachment 194072


I can find the male wig heads pretty reasonable until I factor in the shipping which is twice as much as the head.  Cash is pretty tight right now so here is my attempt at turning a female into a male.  I added folded strips of newspaper to build up the brow, cheek bones, and chin. Plastic grocery bags were wadded up and taped to the top and back of the head and secured with tape. Sorry I did not get any pictures of the process as I actually did this while watching Bates Motel on Monday.

View attachment 194073

View attachment 194074


I'm pretty happy with how it turned out! Next I'll be adding a couple layers of strips. My plan is for this to be my the head for my Barnabas Collins prop and I'm hoping I can carefully remove this and save the form to make at least one more head.

I'm planning to post day five as well as more links I've found useful this evening or in the morning depending on the internet as it has been lousy this week!


----------



## jetskijigsaw84 (Feb 1, 2014)

Looking good! One thing I have found (not sure if it will help) in my experimentation with the paper mache, is that using one or the other works best when comes to aluminum foil and duct tape. Seems I lost detail in my work when I used both, rather than one or the other. Is that what you found? Just curious. And one more question, what kind of masking tape do you use? I was using Dollar Store brand, and it ended badly. Lol


----------



## lizzyborden (Sep 17, 2009)

Yes, I lost much detail with the foil and duct tape, especially on the skulls. Since I'm planning to use paper clay to build up the skulls it's something I can deal with as long as I have the basic features to guide me. The masking tape and foil really captured the detail and actually I tried it with the duct tape skulls using Dollar Tree masking tape and it too ended badly.  This time I used a roll of 3M masking tape and Reynold's foil and am quite happy with the way it turned out. When it came time to cut off the foil, masking tape and paper towel form, it turned out quite nice. However when it came time to "bandage" the seams, the paper towels started getting mushy so I had to put on a really light layer of strips and let it dry before trying to do another layer.


----------

