Papier Macheniacs: Kadayawan Festival!

4 months?! Seriously?! Have I been away that long???
Well, there's good reason for that. We haven't been doing much papermacheing unless it was for some event. And this was a huge event. Linggo ng Wika representing Davao's Kadayawan Festival!

The Kadayawan Festival celebrates all things bountiful. A bountiful harvest, a bountiful business, a bountiful life --which Davaoenos visualize with strings of beads hanging from colorful masks and elaborate headpieces. Kindla like this one.

Mind you, this was noy my original design. This was.

I had wanted a do-rag kinda thing with bead attachments. But as luck would have it, I got a fabric that was way too thick to fold. And I was pressed for time so I just had to do with it what I can. *sigh* I think it still turned out great in the end. Although as a piece of advice for all you crafters: Always make sure you have the right materials with you beforehand. Don't get stuff at the last minute. *lesson learned*

Okay, onto the dangling beads! Well, you know I'd like to do those by hand and I wanted to give the visual representation of the Filipino capiz. I went to town with a few sheets of cardboard for that.

Papermache'd them, as per yoosh.

And painted them in Davao's favorite festive colors. These colors represent vegetables and fruits and nature.

You can see the colors better here. :P

We strung them all up with tie-dyed yarn to create fun danglers. We weighed them down with clipped on coins so that the yarn would stay stretched. Brilliant brain fart there, eh? Haha!

We attached them to the freshly-painted on headpiece. Of course, we made the necklaces, too. It was fun painting the bigger 'capiz' pieces.

Oh! I made two designs for the headpiece paint job, by the way. Both designs also come from patterns most commonly used in the Kadayawan Festival.

And here they are worn by my boys. I think the tie-dyed shirts made a great match to these hyper colorful papermache'd pieces. Howeverrrr... my boys weren't too pleased that the headpieces didn't turn out to be do-rags as planned. *sigh*

Here they are again after I forced them to be happy about their miscalculated headpieces anyway. Mwahahaha!

So that's it!
Will I post in Halloween? Nobody knows. :D

Papier Macheniacs: From Grocery Bag to Tribal Headdress

Yay! One more week to go and it's summer vacation already! Yesssss!!!

But before I prematurely bask into that relaxed feeling, allow me to stress myself out first with a Year-end Celebration costume creation for my boys' final 2019 school event.

The school will be having a musical that focuses on Filipino culture. Dude, that means tribalwear. Uh-huh. Right in my park, baybeeeh!
The boys are assigned to be Ifugao warriors and I'm just over the moon with that. The school will be providing the basic costume so all I have to do is fashion some kind of tribal headdress for them. Of course, for the Papier Macheniacs team, that means another bout of fun recycling in order to create --THESE!

And believe it or not, these headresses used to be recyclable grocery bags. Yep. I kid you not. I would've gone full on paper mache like I always do for headdresses, but the teachers wanted the costumes to be kept in the kids' lockers for dress rehearsals. So I needed a material that wouldn't bend and break when shoved in a locker full of books and gym socks. So grocery bags it is --with the most tribal-ish designs on them, too. Shout out to SM Markets for making my life so much easier! *mwah*

So what I did was fold the grocery bag so that the design comes up as the focal point and then measured my boys' skulls so that I can cut the recyclable fabric to the right length. I sewed on the sides to keep the material neat and sturdy.

Then, I conned the neighbor to give me her old feather duster. Would you believe she even wanted me to pay for the dusty old thing? Lol! I painstakingly paper mache'd each feather onto the fabric.

I also paper mache'd a couple of skulls --a bird's and a shrunken head's. Because I'm going for THAT kind of warrior. Haha!

I added a dash of fabric paint and --HEY, YEAH! WE GOT TRIBAL HEADDRESSES!

See how easy that was? And I didn't even spend a single cent. Mwahahaha!

If you want to create your own tribal headdress for whatever reason, feel free to do what we did. Recycle. Your grocery bag will thank you for its new purpose in life.
Happy paper mache-ing!

Papier Macheniacs: Benguet Strawberry Festival Masks

Buwan ng Wika.
A celebration of our language and culture.
And an ideal time to get cosplay crafting!
PAPIER MACHENIACS --ACTIVATE!

This year, the school assigned the Benguet Strawberry Festival as the theme for my boys' class. And because I was so sure every kid will be coming in Benguet native attire (read: red and black weaved cloth), I knew I had to push my boys gear up a notch. Naturally, that meant making strawberry masks! Creepily fruity, huh! :P

We found these eerie Jason canvas cloth masks at National Book Store and I just went nuts with glee!

Post haste, I went down to making paper mache leaves --which, by the way, was a very therapeutic exercise.

Can I be a dingus and tell you now that I totally forgot to take a picture of the freshly paper mache'd masks? Ugh. It was past midnight. I was working against the clock. Still, that's no excuse, you pathetic blogger! *whimpers*

Slathered the masks with red and green paint, complete with white teardrop details --and BOOM! We got strawberry masks!

I am extra proud of the leaf details!

Made tiny strawberries for necklace embellishments to complete the look, too.

And there you have it!
I was informed that my boys spent most of the school celebration sneaking up on people and scaring them with killer strawberry delight. So I guess that means this project's a success! :)

HAPPY BUWAN NG WIKA, GUYS! See you with more of these insane crafts next year!

Papier Macheniacs: Quick Warrior Armor

Another occasion, another costume.
This time, it's United Nations Day. And I am pissed that I didn't have enough time to do this. :(
You see the boys were representing Korea. And naturally, they totally bashed my suggestion that they go to the school event as colored-hair Kpop idols. Yeah, I have the lamest suggestions sometimes. My boys wanted to come as ancient Korean warriors. Yeah, why not? Kill me with that, huh?
I never back out of a challenge, so yeah --bring it!

Just in case you're tasked into making a warrior costume for your child under short notice, here's a short cut that I personally think still worked.

Just hunt for a huge box and fashion sleeveless shirts out of each side. These cardboard pieces are your warrior armor foundation so a lot of measuring is in order. Add texture.

Paper mache through the night. Only one layer will do if you're using a cardboard box of the hell-sturdy kind.

Add gold or silver paint for a metal finish and shoe laces to tie the two boards together. Kinda like a sandwich board at your favorite deli.

Throw in a quick paper mache head piece and you're set!

Honestly, I would've wanted to make shoulder and arm plates as well. :( But sometimes, a Papier Macheniac isn't given that luxury of time to go full-on.*le sigh*

Still happy how that armor turned out though. :)