DIY Dias De Los Muertos Mask

Happy Fall!!  Oh how I miss it. Hawaii is an amazing place to live, but come October  I start to get homesick for some orange leaves and crisp air.  Nevertheless, the people in Hawaii know how to celebrate Halloween - one of my favorite Holidays!  In fact, we have quite a few parties/costumes to attend to this year.  One of which is a Dias de Los Muertos party.  

I don't like gory and super scary, but I do really appreciate the Day of the Dead masks and face painting.  For some reason, I think they are beautiful works of art.  My husband and I plan to paint our faces, but face paint for our son wouldn't last one hour.  So, I decided to make him a felt mask.

I began by using an old eye mask for a template.

I cut the straps off and traced it. 

I then began to sketch out the skeleton.

Once I got one side drawn, I cut it out and traced the other side. 

You can see that it took me a few sketches to get the shape I wanted.  Also, I cut out eyes.

Here I sketched a decorative design so that I could get a sense of what I was going to create.

I then traced it onto yellow felt.

I cut two - front and back.

 Next, I traced the eyes onto black felt using a white colored pencil. 

I drew a trim around the eyes. 

For the blue flowers, I first traced the eye.

Then I drew a flower shape around the eye.

I used one to make the other one. 

Here we are so far. 

For some decoration, I cut out some drops in purple and orange and a little black skeleton nose.

Before stitching on all the decor, I put the front and back together with a strip of elastic in between. 

I zigzag stitched around the outside edges.  The elastic strip was sewn in between.

I made some felt roses and flowers, using this tutorial.  After I hand stitched the eye flowers, black eye pieces, and drops using a whip stitch, I hot glued the flowers on.  Later, I added gold seed beads to the inside of a few flowers.

My little guy loves his new mask.

Stay tuned for a few more Halloween tutorials.