DIY Paper Mache Animal Head

July 29, 2013

As we get ready to move around the corner to our *second* NYC apartment, I’ve been in full-on project mode. One of my most recent projects was making this faux taxidermy out of cardboard, plaster, paint, and paper mache. The night I decided to start working on this sheep, I think I just got this wild hair that drove me to start furiously cutting sheep shapes out of cardboard boxes.

To make the paper mache sheep you need:
-Cardboard
–Paper mache (to fill in gaps)
–Plaster gauze, or just dip paper towel strips in a solution of tacky glue and water.
-Masking tape
-A bit of wire
-Acrylic paint
–Mod Podge
-The template below

I first got the idea to make the sheep head from this Instructable on how to make a cardboard deer head. I began by cutting out general shapes that looked like the deer head shapes in the Instructable template.

Here’s the main structure of my sheep head.

After I had the main structure finished, I filled in some of the gaps with plastic bags and taped over the top with masking tape. At this point, the sheep was not looking so pretty, but I pressed on. (I was a little scared it wasn’t going to work. :/ The shapes on the right are what I used for the horns.

To make the horns, I used the same principles from the body base by adding a skeleton of cardboard and taping it secure with the masking tape. To get the shape of the horns, I also taped wire to the outside of the cardboard skeleton and shaped it in the way I wanted.

After I had the horns in place, I then used the plaster strips to flesh out the sheep. After the plaster dried, I filled in the sheep even more with some paper mache. This part was really, really fun. 🙂

Sheep drying on the bar cart.

Then, after the paper mache had dried, I painted a coat of white acrylic paint all over the sheep. This is where I started watching Hemlock Grove on Netflix… Nothing like binge-watching a vampire TV show. 🙂

After I let the white coat of acrylic dry, I started brainstorming what patterns I wanted to paint onto the ram’s head. I was looking at a bunch of henna art, so I decided to paint henna designs on the ram with a taupe acrylic paint.