Back in either August or September, I sent a text to my brother and sister telling them if they are thinking of making a costume for Halloween to let me know as soon as possible so if they wanted help, I wouldn’t be rushing last minute. Well, of course, a week before Halloween my brother asks me to make a mask from the movie Mad Max. He wanted to be the crazy guitar player man with a flame thrower. I still have yet to see this movie so I relied on Youtube videos and Google Images. The Youtube video didn’t show much details (though the Conan spoof was pretty funny) and Google Images had a wide range of references that I was not entirely sure of what to do. My brother just said to have it look home made and “just make a paper machè skull mask”. Yeah… no way it was going to be that simple.

I went to the Garment District looking for supplies for my own costume and came across a clear skull mask with painted on details. It was a great find and completely saved me time.

I ended up painting the inside of the mask a bone-ish color and let it dry. It looked great and really brought out the details of the original mask. I found some white stretchy sweater fabric and decided to use that as the bandages to wrap his face. This is the main point of where the reference pictures varied. Some had white bandages, some had darker leathery looking ones, some covered the majority of the face and some covered barely any. This is where I just picked one, interpreted it and just went from there.

I went for the whiter bandages. I thought it offered food contrast to the skull. I also was in a rush to head over to my friend’s house to watch the Pat’s game. I sent a picture over to my brother and he said he wants it to look dirtier.

“No, dirtier.” I then said I’ll do it later because the game was starting.

I sent him this image on Friday. I was pretty pleased with how the color turned out. He said it was better but “like literally just throw dirt on it”. I was pretty frustrated. It was late on Friday and I was not going to go searching for dirt especially since he could do it himself. I felt like he was belittling my efforts in a way but I knew he didn’t mean it that way. I was just having a stressful day and just wanted to go to bed. Before I did though, I talked out my frustrations and thoughts with my boyfriend. He’s a pretty good person to bounce ideas off of so I’m lucky. He suggested putting more bandages on. When I did, I thought it looked great so I was so happy he helped out with that idea. My brother is usually better at expressing things so I felt like he would have said “more bandages” instead of making it look dirtier if that is what he meant. So I added some more bandages and rushed to finish it before he came over to grab it.

Ta-da! Final product. The sand in Mad Max was pretty yellow so I wanted to make sure it still had a hint of that opposed to regular New England dirt. When I finally gave it to Bill, he said it was perfect which made me extremely pleased. Then he “paid” me by giving me a band t-shirt from his friend’s band. -_- Maybe I’ll see if I can at least get him to pay for the supplies. His costume came together perfectly and he looked like he had a great night.

Rock on, everyone. Happy (belated) Halloween!