Children love to dress up, both in everyday life when playing and on special occasions such as carnival. How convenient that Carnival is approaching, because that's reason enough to take an afternoon off to make costumes or accessories. And the little ones can even help out! How about making masks with children?
Whether animal masks, classic carnival masks like those from Venice or colorful and crazy for a jester's costume - when it comes to mask design for carnival, there are really no limits. And that also applies to the materials used.
Make a carnival mask from handprints
A template that you always carry with you? Your hands (or those of the children)! You can easily use these to make masks for carnival. And as you can see, the carnival masks are anything but boring, they look really lively with the fingers sticking out.
- Construction paper (or foam rubber)
- Any materials for designing: felt-tip pens, rhinestones, acrylic paints, confetti (punched out circles or other scraps of paper), etc.
- Wooden stick, paper straw or something similar to hold (or alternatively rubber)
- double-sided and regular tape or glue
How to make a carnival mask with children:
- Take the paper you want and fold it once.
- Now trace the outline of a hand on the fold (so the wrist is on the fold).
- Draw and cut holes for the eyes in the mask. If you do this when folded, you will get both holes at once.
- Now design them however you like, or let the little ones get creative.
- Stick a piece of double-sided tape on the tip of one of the two thumbs and stick the other on top. This gives the mask a slightly curved shape.
- Attach the stick or rubber and the first carnival mask is ready.
With a headdress made of leaves
This carnival mask also has leaves so you can have onepretty headdressreceive. You can easily draw the individual elements freehand or use our mask templates to print out.
- Construction paper
- Rubber band
- scissors, glue
- any decorations
Making masks with children with or without templates – Here’s how it works:
- Draw the leaf designs and mask shape on a piece of paper (or print them out) and cut them out.
- Transfer the elements to any color of craft card and cut them out again. You need 5 sheets per carnival mask.
- Place the sheets together as shown. There is a single one at the front and center, followed by two more layers on the side, each made up of two leaf shapes. We recommend only applying glue to the lower area so that the leaves lie a little looser at the top.
- Now glue the headdress to the mask.
- Poke holes on the left and right sides of the mask and attach an elastic band of the correct length.
- Now you can do a little more designing. For example, apply liquid glue where the lashes would be and sprinkle glitter on top. Once the glue dries, shake off the excess glitter and you will have glitter lashes.
Print here for thatCarnival mask templatesout of.
Make masks with children out of paper plates
You may have seen this craft idea before.From a paper platejust cut out a mask shape. Remember to add a small curve in the nose area. Cut out holes for the eyes.
Now you can design the mask. Paint them with acrylic paints (if you used a white plate), decorate with rhinestones, sequins and/or glitter, add feathers or other decorations as desired. Just be creative!
Tipp:
- If you glue on the ears typical of some animals, you getanimal masks in no time. For example, choose rabbit ears or fox ears (also suitable for cats). Rounded bear ears are also suitable, as are the typical tips of owls (which of course are not actually ears). You can even attach elephant ears to the mask. Then feel free to add whiskers where appropriate.
- With a crown, the children quickly become a prince, a princess or a king and queen.
- A party hat or a bowler hat isfor the clownwell suited. A few curls made from paper strips also work. Don't forget the red nose! This is how you can avoid putting on make-up with carnival masks.
Make your own superheroes for boys
Especially boys arefascinated by superheroes, which is why they are often requested as a costume. Whether you want to make a mask for Hulk, Batman, Deadpool or Spiderman, the base can always be the same. Only the eye shape and colors differ. Here you will find three examples to imitate:
- white paper for making the stencils
- Construction paper in the desired colors (depending on the superhero); Foam rubber and felt are also suitable
- Glue
- Scissors
- Cutter and suitable base
- punch
- Rubber band
First prepare the base and then design the carnival masks:
- Start with strips that are the desired width of the masks. Work with one at a time or stack several at once and fold the bundle in half.
- Now cut the corners on the open side round.
- Then cut the wave for the nose area. The base is ready.
- Draw the desired eye shape (in the example for Deadpool, Hulk and Spiderman) on the paper mask and cut it out (works particularly well with a cutter).
- Now use the resulting template to transfer the shape to the respective paper color. Cut out the masks.
- Now all you have to do is cut out the remaining elements, such as the hair for Hulk or the black eye rims for Deadpool. The easiest is probably Spiderman, which simply requires you to draw a spider web.
- Punch holes in the masks on both sides and tie an appropriately sized elastic band.
Make glittering masks with children
Simply transfer the classic shape of the carnival masks (for example from our print template) out of glittering craft cardboard and you have a pretty mask for carnival and also for other parties. A perfect last minute craft idea. If you want, you can also design a two-layer model like in the first image of our post.
