Animal masks – manifold possibilities

Since ancient times animal masks were used in various culture groups for ritual and religious acts. Nowadays, such masks are used as costume or costume accessories for events such as carnival, stag nights or theme parties. Also, the usage for ritual or religious acts has become scarce, while today having fun with this kind of masks prevails. An example can be seen in the video below, where horse masks are used. Horse masks are among the greatest inventions of mankind. Everyone should own a horse mask.

Disguising oneself as animal for fun, whether by using a mask or a complete costume is becoming increasingly popular. Hence, we would like to give a short overview of the options to disguise ones face in a funny way.

In case the budget available is rather small, a mask could be handmade by oneself from paper and paperboard. There are many templates for animal masks available on the internet for free. All you have to do is to print them on high quality paper using a color printer and cut them out following the given lines. Following that, it is best to strenghten this printout using robust paperboard. This kind of masks seems especially suited of children to to teach them handicraft using paper. This should obviously be supervised by adults because of the usage of scissors.

Painting one’s face is another way to create an animal costume by imitating an animals face. When buying makeup suited for carnival, it is iadvisable to look for high quality products, for example special makeup made for teather usage. Low quality makeup may come with the danger of causing allergic skin reactions. As the applying of such makeup requires some experience or guidance, the following video tutorial showing how to create the face of a lion might prove helpful.

Anyone liking his animal masks more classical may be well advised with using venetian masks made from papier mâché. These masks are available in several traditional designs of animals or mythical creatures such as monkey, donkey, dragon, fox, lion, mouse, cat, rabbit, pig and goat. Because of the relatively costly fabrication of such masks, the original venetian animal masks are usually rather high priced. Also, venetian masks are not only suitable for wearing but also for using them as decoration for walls.

A rather fancy variant of animal masks are animal masks made from latex. The outstanding feature of these latex animal masks is that they cover the whole head and are realtively close to the skin of the wearer. So, in case you are suffering from claustrophobia, using half masks or makeup might be more appropriate. Some of these animal masks are made from a special kind of latex, which is very elastic and adapts to the head of the wearer relatively well. In contrast to latex palliances that need glueing to the skin, over the head masks can be used many times without the need for additional elements to fix them. As can be seen in the video below, some masks even allow you to grimace, so that the special costume may become a extraordinary enjoyment. A cool video of a chimapnzee mask being worn can be seen below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdrSwA7HSxY