Handmade paper bag Halloween masks are easily scarier than any rubber horror mask you can buy online. Why? I have no idea. They are just creepy.
Imagine a group of silent people, standing on your porch with decorated paper bag masks. Personally, I would lock my door and turn off the porch light.
There is something so intrinsically wrong about silent people in paper bag masks that you would have to witness it to fully understand.
Forty years ago, while I was in elementary school, my class made paper bag masks for the Halloween parade. We made spooky faces and animal faces. It was a fun project, but all those kids walking in line around the playground wearing paper bags over their heads was enough to give me nightmares well into adulthood.
To make the masks, you will first need a paper bag that fits over your head.
The next step is to decide if you want ears or horns. If you do, simply crumple the top sides of the bag to form the desired shape and secure the ears or horns with rubber bands.
The second step is to put the bag on your head to locate the placement of your eyes. Draw and cut out the eye holes.
After the second step, all that is left is for you to decorate your mask. I recommend cheap paints because they are bright enough to see in poor lighting. Colored pencils and crayons don’t give the same strong effect that paint does. Construction paper is also good for mask making.
When you are finished, try it on. Wear the mask with regular clothes, with jean overalls, or with a pretty dress. The more normal the clothing, the creepier and out-of-sorts the mask becomes.
The image and newspaper instruction images were originally published in a 1931 newspaper. [1]
Of course, if you do not want to wear a paper bag over your head, but you still want to make an old fashioned style mask, make one out of cardboard. The mask below is from the 1920s and shows a girl wearing a painted cardboard mask.
