DLTK's Crafts for Kids
Egyptian Pharaoh Masks

Thanks to Margarete and her children for sending in this idea!  

"I thought you might like to put these on your site. My daughter Rebecca 10, and son Thomas 6 made these.  I'm a mom of 7...some in school, some home and 1 in college.  My oldest son will be trying to get a website up for me to start putting our projects on." 

Check out the General Directions on how to paper mache if this is your first time working with this medium.

Materials:

• poster board or other large pieces of thin cardboard (poster board is under $1 a sheet at any drug store, department store or craft store).
• Plastic face mask
• string or elastic
• Paper mache and strips of newspaper
   
  • I make paper mache with one cup of flour and 4 cups of water.  Boil the paper mache stirring frequently just long enough for it to thicken...  Take off the stove and put in a separate bowl.  Add 4 ice cubes and stir those in.
  • You can make cold paper mache with equal parts flour and water.  It takes more flour and isn't quite as smooth, but it works just fine.
• scissors, glue and masking tape.
• gold spray paint and/or acrylic paints.

Instructions:

• We used posterboard for the headdress and a full plastic face mask for the face.
• We traced the mask and cut it out on the board; leaving about an inch so the mask would stay still.
• Add a bit of masking tape to hold it in place while you're paper macheing.
• Then we paper mached the front and when dry did the back and then cut the inch off.
• We did two layers, could use 3 to make it thicker.
• When finished, I poked the holes through the nose in the mask, cut out the eyes and poked the holes on the sides of the mask for the string to put around their head.
• We used gold spray paint and acrylic paints.
• You can also use beads etc..  To make it really fancy.