How to Make a Roman Janus Mask Part 2

You could think about some simple designs. You can use lines. You can use dots, you can do dots from the front side so they look like dimples and then of you flip it over and you do dots on the back side then they’re going to stick out like little bumps. So you have to think in terms of things that go in, indented areas and areas that pop out.

So we could do the eyebrow here. And I think I’ll flip this over and we’ll make that eyebrow pop out just like the center of the eye and you can see how that eyebrows really is popping out there. The same thing I did on the eye just going to outline around it so it just accentuates the parts that’s already popping out. Then, you would go ahead and you’ll continue on the other eye, work your way to the nose, the mouth. It’s a long process. It’s going to take you awhile but eventually, you’re going to come up with something that’s very creative, has lots of texture and design on it and has dimensionality to it.

Now, that you have finished decorating your mask, you can set that aside. And I just happen to have kind of an off white burlap here. And I want to make certain that it’s going to be bigger than the mask’s sandwich I’m going to make. And you can actually make as much hair as you want. The bigger a piece you have the more fringes you’re going to have around your mask. One thing you need to make sure you do if you’re cutting it off with the big section that you’ve bought at the fabric store, all the burlap on one edge is sewn on a machine so it doesn’t come unraveled. And that side you definitely want to trim off because if you don’t, when you start pulling the threads, they’re going to be get stuck on that one side.

Then, I’m going to cut another color and like I said earlier, you can use whatever colors you want and you can use as many as you want. There are no rules about it. If you just want to do one color, that’s fine, if you want to do two, that’s fine also and if you want to do more than two, that’s great. It just depends how much time you want to spend pulling the threads.

Now, what you’re going to start to do here is you’ll see that you have threads that go one direction and you want to pull those threads out that are all going in one direction. You want to make sure that, just do them to a certain point first. And as you start to do this, you’ll start to see why you need to be careful because you could literally pull the whole thing apart if you don’t leave some of the woven sections in the center. Actually, it’s still inside here that’s actually still woven, you can actually see if you look close. This is woven still. The burlap here is still woven and you pull the threads out until you get to a section of the mask. And probably you want to pull out maybe three inches worth. So you see how easy this is. You just start pulling them out.

Now, I’ve got probably not three or four inches but enough and then you’re going to go this other direction now. So you’re going to pull all this little ones out first just to get it started. Later, you get to give this mask a haircut.

I have finished pulling out the threads for the first one and I’ll double check to make sure that the mask is going to cover most of it. And what I’m going to do is I’m actually going to hot glue this burlap to the completed mask. Now, you just have to pretend that this mask has actually been completed. So I’m going to try and center it here so that I have the burlap where I want it. Now, you’ll notice that on the edges, I have a little excess which actually is fine because what I’m going to do like right here I’m going to pull these extra ones out. And I’m going to pull on weave this right here.

And you can actually separate this so that in the corners, it’s just more fringe because once they’re glued in place, they’re not going to go anywhere. And this one will work fine. And right down in this corner, you’re just going to pull this apart. You just pull them apart up to the edge of the mask so it looks like it’s all fringe. And if you actually put some glue down here, then they won’t totally unravel and you just pull this apart. You do this all the way around. In this left side, I’m just going to glue this down on the edge just like that and pull this apart and there you have your first layer.

So what you would do is on this one you would do the exact same thing and you would glue this on to this one. And on this mask, I actually just put cardboard on the back because it was meant to hang on the wall and I really didn’t intent to put the double sided mask. But, you could also if you took this part like this and glue it on to here then you would have your double sided mask with extra burlap fringe. So happy mask making, have a good time and I know that they will terrific when you’re finish.