T-Rex Teeth? No, Bird Beaks

T-Rex teeth?  No, bird beaks.  Seagull beaks, to be exact.

My assignment was to make three additional seagull costumes for the play (The Little Mermaid Jr.).  No problem, I said, but I had forgotten about their heads.  Or shall I say, beaks...

The seagulls wear a pretty simple set of wings held on the actor's arms with elastic.  The feathers are layered felt in black, grey and white.  The beaks, however, I had made of paper mache and then attached to a yellow baseball hat.  Actually, someone else attached them for me, since I was pretty much in stress melt-down stage by then.  To form the beak shape I used approximately 10 crumpled up sheets of newspaper, setting them down on the table in three rows of three, and then topped off with one (or two) at the end to form the point of each bird's beak.  Then I attached them all together using masking tape (just enough to keep each crumpled paper in place), and covered them in paper mache (flour, water and bounty paper towels).  They'll dry near the wood stove tonight (maybe not as near as in this picture) and then tomorrow I'll give them another layer of paper mache, and then they'll be ready to cut and glue to the hats.