Zebra Mask

Made by Jennifer B

I made the zebra mask largely following the pattern instructions, except for the mane I added some paint brush (new) bristles. I glued them on to the already painted cardboard mane then repainted the stripes a little past the card edge but left the tips of the bristles unpainted.

I also used glued some grey feather fluff inside the ears, and used bits of trimmed black feather for eyelashes – a bit difficult to persuade these to stay glued down (a hot glue gun might have helped if I had one).

One mistake I made was to spray varnish the whole thing when finished without protecting the polystyrene eyes – they melted badly! Fortunately I had a spare polystyrene ball so was able to recreate them. I then borrowed some clear nail varnish to coat them as I should have in the first place!

One other change I made was to use parts of an old bicycle helmet (the buckle and strap dividers) in place of shoe laces to hold it on my head. I cut some cotton webbing material to length and threaded this through the helmet fittings to recreate a helmet harness and sewed the webbing ends onto the card by hand. It was a very comfortable way to wear the mask, being adjustable and easy to put on and off.