Headband Masks for trick or treating

I wanted to make a bunch of Star Wars masks for my kids and their mates to play around in for my six year old's party and also for trick or treating a week later.

Firstly I want to let you know about the great mask print outs that we got from here and here. So lovely and retro and hand drawn/painted, just like the original artwork for the movie posters. Love it! I printed out some of the masks and then glued them to some Dollar Tree poster board to make them a bit more sturdy. Then it was Paul that did the cutting and covering with a layer of sticky back plastic, also from the Dollar Tree (the sticky back plastic, not Paul). He cut holes for the eyes and little doors for the noses to poke out a bit. We covered them with the sticky back plastic because the print outs were inkjet and so not water resistant. I figured there would be party beverages flying around, so the plastic covering would give the masks a better chance of lasting longer than just one night.

I originally planned to do the usual stick a couple of holes in either side and put elastic on to hold them on the kid's heads, but we had kids ranging from four up to eight years old and so one size wasn't going to fit all. It was a moot point anyway, because as it turned out I had no elastic. Bah. What I did have though were three packs of Dollar Tree kid's hair bands. They came in packs of three, so I had nine in total, which was perfect. They are just kid sized ridgid plastic hairbands that are covered with a woven fabric layer to make them prettier. All I had to do was get the hot glue gun out and glue them onto the backs of the masks at the right height.


The thing I really like about this result is that for trick or treating they can be flipped up to be worn like a real headband whilst walking about, so that you can see properly to cross roads etc, but it's easy to flip them down into a mask after you've knocked on the door. No more face planting on people's doorsteps because you can't see where you're putting your feet! (or is that just me?)

Ooh and one last one. I was one hair band short, so I glued an old pair of the 3D movie glasses to the back of the R2-D2 mask. That worked really well too, even though they were adult sized glasses.

So, just a quick post really, and more of an idea than a project, but I thought it might be useful to a few trick or treater last minute preparations.

Total cost for ten star wars masks was $5

$1 poster board
$1 roll of sticky back plastic (The Dollar Tree called it "self adhesive shelf liner")
$3 three packs of three Dollar Tree headbands.

The other good thing is that they have been worn a lot this week by a lot of different kids and none have broken so far. In other Halloweenish news... The 4th July tree has now become the Halloween tree. You don't need to tell me how weird this is ;)

No real projects to blog about from my older daughter's 6th birthday party really. We had to go for a pretty small party this year, with only four families, because we'd been ill and when we were finally well enough to have the party, the weather was terrible and with a party limited to the livingroom and kitchen, it had to be small. I used the same aproach with the cake this year as I did with the superhero cake from last year, only this time it was an Empire cake with storm trooper and vader party rings squished in the sides for decoration. We made balloon torch light sabers and had a death star pinata to abuse. I think my favourite bit was the party food at the "Ackbar Snackbar" in the kitchen :) She wants to be Darth Vader for halloween. Do you think it has anything to do with her feeling an affiliation to the entire crew of the death star, who just happen to all be British?
Hope you all have fun trick or treating on Sunday! Seems like October was the Star Wars month for us. I think we're maxed out with it now after back to back birthday and Halloween. I wonder what new obsessions November will hold for us.