Sunday, March 01, 2015

Latex Masks available this year!

This post is a little premature, but I wanted to post something. I decided this year I'd start selling regular latex masks in my shop. I've been meaning to for some time now, but there was just never the time or something else always came up. I don't know.

These here are the first group that'll be going up for sale. The lower centre one is a test painting version that I'll be keeping for myself.

The idea with this shape came from seeing some LARP orc masks, no full neck with the chin and lower lip cut out - it means no Batman neck and you can totally eat, drink, whatever without the mask interfering and depending on the colouring, it can blend in decently well to give the illusion of a prosthetic. I thought it was brilliant and since I hadn't really settled on a specific design or methodology behind what masks I'd make, this was my starting point.

Things just keep coming up and taking up more of my time than I'd planned so I just haven't been able to crank these things out like I'd planned. But the mould is all done and I'm going to do them in small runs - since I don't have the space to keep a pile of them around and stored properly.


I'm planning two versions of this mask, haven't decided on a name yet, there'll be a caucasian flesh toned version - meaning it should blend in naturally with worn to the wearers exposed chin and neck. And I'll be doing up a red version, which I can supply some red creme makeup with to make it ready to wear right out of the box, the customers won't have to buy anything additional.

They're designed off an average sized male head, so that's who they'll fit. They might require a little padding in the back of the head since it can slide forward, impossible to fix that any other way since it'd require the mask be skin tight (and utterly uncomfortable). It's an issue I've noticed with all latex masks.

I'll be offering up blanks for sale as well, I know there are some folks out there that like getting them just to practice or they like customizing these things themselves. The finished versions will be $90 (plus shipping) and the blanks will be $45. I'll only be making about 20 of them at most I think, all depends.

So I'm hoping the rest of this week goes as planned, amidst sculpting other stuff, organizing photo shoots and actually doing them, to some small custom jobs, we'll just have to see what happens.

Since I'm only selling them in small runs, I may only sell them on Etsy, but with a link from my own website, it's easier when selling small numbers. I'll play it by ear for now I think and see how it all works.

I'm also planning to do female versions as well possibly, or at least do masks fitted for women (or smaller heads). These are way too large for the average female head so I thought I'd do up male and female versions.

I think they might go over decently well in the Haunted Attraction community as an alternative to makeup. They're easy to slip on and off, if cared for could last years - way cheaper than silicone masks so it's less of an investment. As awesome as silicone masks are, I know not every Haunted Attraction can afford more than a couple before it's just too expensive unfortunately.

By Friday you might see four of them online for sale, all depends on how this week shapes up. And over the course of the year I'm hoping to release 5 more different masks, 3 male sized ones and 3 female sized ones - and of course one of those sets will be an obligatory zombie design.

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