Halloween Memories and Epic Costumes Using Papier-mâché

One of my favorite memories from Halloween past involves making papier-mâché masks with my dad & brother when I was a kindergartner. Looking back, it’s really impressive that my father undertook such an ambitious project with his children who were only five and two years old. Instead of taking us to the store to buy some of those flimsy plastic cape and mask combos that passed as “costumes” for children in the mid-1970s, dad took on the daunting task of engaging his young children in a creative activity that spanned several days.

We were country kids in the frigid Midwest, so I’m sure that the idea was for us to each make a large mask that would fit over our head, and could comfortably pair with a snowmobile suit and boots. While the project wasn’t grandiose, my brother and I were both involved in the design and creation of our masks and provided much of the “labor” involved with crafting our costume heads.

My brother wanted to be an astronaut, and I don’t recall the slightest bit of parental pressure for me to be an alien or to create a matching theme. Instead, I was given free reign with my creation, and I insisted that I wanted to be an apple. Specifically, I wanted to be a red apple with a green worm sticking out.

My father prepped all the materials — using a paper-cutter to slice three grocery bags full of newspaper into 1" X 2" strips, then taping a plastic cover over our dining table, and filling our biggest popcorn bowl with a mixture of flour and water. Using our heads as guide, he blew up two large balloons and gently set them atop a pair of saucepans so that the gluey balloons wouldn’t roll away while we were working.

With extraordinary patience, dad showed us how to dip the strips into the paste mixture, then layer them on the balloon until…