Hello! I have returned for another Halloween season of masquerade and mystery. I will soon be updating my shop at Etsy/EquinoxMasquerade with more unique masks and custom options. I can't wait to kick off the Halloween season with tons of crafting and creating! You will be seeing a lot of updates to the gallery in the next few days as well, so keep an eye out!
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I'm gearing up for another Halloween season! My most popular mask this year by far is the Day of the Dead Sugar Skull style. I am painting like crazy right now. What I love about them is that no matter how many times I do the same pattern, because they are hand painted they always come out unique. This year I got smart and put a layout in my listing to make it easy for customers to choose the pattern and color. Of course I am open to doing lots more patterns, but right now they are separate listings of ready-to-go masks instead of custom orders. I'm hoping to move a few more leaf masks too, since they are my absolute favorite to create. But I'm happy to be making any mask! Meanwhile I am also thinking of other costume accessories to add to my shop. I already have a couple sets of faerie wings and I would love to make more. I have a few floral headbands but I'd like to make full floral crowns. I have lots of ideas, but not always the time to make them. It's hard balancing a full time clock-in job with my seasonal rush. I always say I'm going to do my prep way ahead of time, but always end up here, rushing to bring all my ideas to life in time! Oh well. Sometimes the rush is exactly what I need to do my best work. ;)   My favorite day of the year is here! I have been working very hard this October. I started a new job at which I get nearly full-time hours and I spend about 2 hours per day just in travel. In addition, I spent every minute not at my job hard at work on masks. I painted four Day of the Dead sugar skull masks for various people, and I've been working on a long-term project of sixteen masks for a LARP event. In fact, sixteen became twenty-four total! I made eight furry wolf masks representing Cwn Annwn, a mythical Welsh Hellhound. I also made eight Wendigo masks, based off an Algonquin cannibal spirit. However, a small communication error revealed that my customer actually wanted the Wendigo to resemble a creature based in the Pathfinder RPG storyline. This meant creating entirely new masks. The old ones have been repurposed into Mudmen, and I made eight new masks, resembling deer complete with antlers. I was so excited about the antlers that I made a set for myself on a headband, which has become the basis of my Halloween costume; a Victorian faun woman.
The Cwn Annwn arrived at their new home a few weeks ago, and the new Deer Wendigo will be shipped today. The Mudmen are soon to follow! As much as I love making masks, it feels great to take a breather. I plan on dressing up, dropping the package off at the post office, and enjoying the rest of my day prancing around like a faun. It will be a wonderful Halloween day, despite the rain!  This website has been a long time coming. I have enjoyed making masks for five years now, but other things have distracted me from really concentrating on that particular medium. I started making hair accessories to match the masks, but ended up with more hair accessories than anything else. I learned how to knit and couldn't help but start cranking out knit projects for the shop. I played with jewelry. My shop had become more diverse, which can be good to appeal to a variety of people, but can also seem messy and without a focus. I wanted to reach back to my roots and work on the projects that first got me excited about costuming and crafting, and to work on and perfect my craft.
So I dropped my old business name, Natura Pluma Designs, which I didn't feel a connection with anymore. I started Equinox Masquerade to capture the delicate balance of light and dark themes in my art - fun sunny flower faeries, and mythical beasts and deathly creatures. In the coming months I hope to create a large variety of masks to share with you. I also hope to use this blog to share some of my past work and give you an insight to works in progress. A lot of custom projects I do revolve around creatures of mythos, and I find it very enjoyable to research into these myths and surround myself with media to put myself in the right mindset to bring the creatures from a concept sketch to life. Please feel free to leave comments on the blog or any part of the website. I love to hear input from customers and admirers, and your suggestions or words of encouragement meant a lot to me. Thank you! |
Elizabeth
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