I love checking out the holiday deals at all of my favorite stores.  This year  in the Halloween aisle at Walgreens I found a box of plain, masquerade-style masks made out of craft foam priced at 2/$1.00.  Score!  Since I’ve always had a fascination with masquerade masks, I picked up a handful of them.   I’ve also been wanting to make a pair of  steampunk goggles, so I thought, why not combine the two into a single project?

Project estimate:

  • Mask, $0.50
  • Chopstick, on hand or $1
  • Spray paint, on hand or $1 and up
  • Felt, on hand or about $0.33
  • Thumb tacks or paper fasteners, on hand
  • Bottle caps, on hand
  • Plastic bottle, on hand
  • Hot glue, on hand
  • Spray adhesive, on hand or about $5

Total:  $0.50 and up

The mask came with an elastic string, which I immediately removed.  The outside edge around the beveled imprint was also quite uneven, so I trimmed it up with a pair of scissors.  Then I glued a chopstick to the back side of the mask with a liberal dose of  hot glue.  Here it is sitting in a shallow box and waiting for some paint!

Spray paint your mask.  Metallic paints work well for a steampunk look; I chose to go with a hammered copper finish.

Carefully cut the centers out of two large, plastic bottle caps.  (Mine are from Powerades.)  Sand the edges of the holes to smooth as needed.  Spray paint the caps in a contrasting metallic shade.  (I used a textured spray paint in a gunmetal color.)

Widen the eye holes on the mask so that the openings are round and just a little smaller than the bottle caps.  (I traced the bottle caps on the back side of the mask, then used scissors to cut holes slightly smaller than my marks.)

Cut a piece of felt to go across the mask, making sure that the eye holes line up and that it fits over the bridge of the nose.   Embellish the sides with paper fasteners.  When I went to the store they were out of paper fasteners, so instead I used some thumb tacks that I had on hand; I bent the back side of each tack all the way over, then poked the end of each tack through  the felt and glued them into place.

To make lenses for your goggles, cut two circles out of the curved top portion of a plastic soda or water bottle and snap them into place inside the painted caps.

Glue the bottle caps over the eye holes on the mask.

You could call it finished at this point, but I like lots of details so I did some outlining with a silver Sharpie.  This step is totally optional, but I love how it makes everything stand out!