This Plastic is Fantastic! (Up-cycled painted trash bag masquerade masks)

A friend's daughter was going to a "masquerade themed" prom. Another friend had provided her with some masks. She asked me about adding sticks instead of the elastic strap that might mess up her hair. Easy enough, except this kid is SO nice to my family and always watches my kids when needed. I wanted to do something special, so I decided to embellish the masks a little more.

I wasn't opposed to spending a little cash on this kid, but I was at a spot where I couldn't get to the store for a while and I really wanted to play around with the masks. I had some feathers and flowers all of which would work on a girl's mask, but the red one was for the boyfriend. I thought of manly things like a devil or fire...... And then I got really creative with the trash that was laying around.

I started spray painting plastic to see what effects I could achieve. I was surprised at how well the plastic held the color, even the dark plastic garbage bags were starting to coordinate with the blue and red masks.

Next I played around with stretching and tearing the plastic to get interesting textures. This was SO much fun and so easy to do.

After gluing on only one layer of plastic to the edge of the mask, I am already getting the fiery look I was going for.

I ended up doing three ripple rows of plastic " fire" but it still needed a little something extra so I finger painted metallic paints in random patterns.

The finishing touches really look great up close.

For the "girl" mask, everything needed to be blue to match the prom dress. I sprayed some of the black trash bag, but also experimented with lighter colored grocery store plastic bags.

I glued the painted plastic to the back of the mask and it started to look like waves, which I thought was a good compliment to the fire on the boy's mask.

The thick row of sequins over the eyes inspired some smaller dot details under the eyes. I'm using liquid metallic acrylic paints and the end if the paintbrush on the dots.

I also added some blue metallic paint to the "waves" around the edges of the mask.

As a finishing touch, I added some feathers to the side of the mask. A little paint, some old masks, and TRASH bags create fantastic plastic prom accessories!