Rhino Mask Pattern
for Paper Mache
$12
Honor the spirit of this magnificent endangered beast with your own hand-crafted rhino mask.
The rhino mask pattern creates all the shapes for you, so no sculpting experience is needed.
After you wear your new rhino mask at a dress-up party, you can bring it home and display it on your wall. And when your friends see it, you can proudly say, “I made it myself!”
How to Use the Rhino Mask Pattern:
Print the pattern and put it on cereal box cardboard. Then cut out all the pieces
Tape the pieces together, following the instructions that are included in the downloaded PDF pattern.
Add paper mache, and give him some wrinkles with paper towels and paper mache paste.
Paint your rhino with acrylic paint, using your favorite rhino photo as a model.
My downloadable PDF Patterns come with full instructions.
There’s no waiting for your pattern to arrive, and no shipping costs, so you can start on your project right away.
Note: If you’ll be saving your pattern to and iPhone or iPad, those devices like to hide your downloaded files. You can scroll down this page to see how to find them.
And remember – if you have any problems downloading your files or putting your pattern together, just let me know. I’m always happy to help. 🙂
$12
Watch these videos to see how to make your Rhino Mask:
In this video, you can see how all the pieces go together, how the ears and horns are added, and how to add small details around the eyes and nostrils with foil. This pattern has fairly large pieces, so it goes together easily.
In this next video, you can see how I used some brown paper and cooked flour and water paste to cover my rhino mask. You can use newspaper strips instead of the brown paper, and you can use wood glue instead of paste if you need a really strong mask. After the paper mache was dry, I painted mine really fast – but you might want to spend more time on your mask, to make it look more realistic. 🙂
To make your rhino mask, you will need:
- The Pattern
- Access to a Printer
- Copy paper or full-sheet labels
- Glue stick if using copy paper for pattern
- Cardboard from 3 standard-sized cereal boxes or six letter-sized sheets of light chipboard.
- Sharp scissors for cutting cereal box cardboard
- Clear plastic tape and masking tape Note: Don’t use disappearing gift wrap tape – it isn’t strong enough.
- Very small amount of Aluminum foil
- Glue gun
- Paper strips and paste (find recipes here)
- Acrylic gesso or latex primer
- Acrylic paint and varnish
- Shoelaces or elastic to keep the mask on your head
* If purchasing cardboard in place of the cereal boxes, it will be sold as “light chipboard.” The thickness will be about 24pt or 1/41 of an inch. Medium or heavy chipboard is too stiff to bend well.
$12
When you finish your rhino mask…
We would really love to see how it comes out. Please visit the Daily Sculptors page and upload some photos. 🙂
Do you have a question or need help with your pattern?
I love questions!
There are two ways to contact me: The fastest way to get an answer is to leave a comment below. I read all comments and answer them as soon as I can, usually within a few hours. One of my readers might also chime in to help – we have a very supportive community here on this site.
If you prefer to reach me privately, you can send me an email.
I get a ton of spam and I don’t want your email to get lost, so please put “paper mache” in the subject line. Comments don’t get accidentally deleted, but emails sometimes do. If you don’t hear back from me within 24 hours, assume the cyberspace gremlins ate your email, and try again.
Here’s some of the rhino masks made with this pattern:
(If you’ve made one yourself, we’d love to see it. Please post your photos here.)
Hi Jonni,
I am interested in making a Rhino headdress mask. Do you think I can use this pattern and then add the cap pattern from another mask to use as a headdress? Just trying to make it work with my other animals for Lion King Jr who will be wearing a headress mask. Thanks for your help!
Hi Stephanie. I haven’t actually tried it, but it’s possible. You could use the cap portion of the free basic mask pattern, with the lower part of the rhino’s head attached to the cap. It might be unbalanced, though, so you might need to cut a flat piece of cardboard to cover the back, and tape that to the cap, too. Or fill in the empty space above the cap and behind the rhino with crumpled paper or foil, so some of the weight would be directly over the actor’s head, instead of in front of it. I hope that makes sense… I’m sure it will when you start playing with it. 🙂
Thank you! Yes that makes complete sense! I’ll let you know how it turns out.
I can’t wait to see how it goes. Have fun! 🙂
Just bought the pattern and I’m so excited to make this for my son’s Halloween costume. The instructions say to print smaller to make the mask smaller — any recommendation of what % smaller I should print to best fit an average 8 year old?
Hi Ashley. Every head is a different size, so I can’t say exactly. However, it should be safe to print at 95%. If that puts the eye holes just a little too high, you can clip off a little from the bottom of that piece that holds it up on the top of the head, and adjust it that way. I hope he has fun with his mask – and that you both have fun making it! 🙂
It’s super Jonni ,thanks for all your fun videos and ideas; love ’em!
Thanks, Jennifer! 🙂
I would like to put think on a plaque, then put on wall. Any suggestions?