A Life-like Styrofoam Head

This is great for school projects. It definitely catches people's attention!

You will need:

• a styrofoam head (mine is a male styrofoam head I bought online for around $10)
• newspaper
• flour and water
• acrylic paint
• paper towel
• cotton batting
• tacky glue

Mix flour and water with a mixer until you get a consistency that is a little runnier than pancake batter. This is a very easy paper mache paste. You could also buy paper mache paste if you prefer.

Next, rip your newspaper into strips. Rip enough to cover your styrofoam head.

Then, paper mache away! Just dip your fingers in the paste, wipe the paste on the newspaper, then plaster the newspaper strip to the styrofoam head. Repeat this until the whole head is covered. If you want the head to have wrinkles, simply wrinkle the newspaper strip and let it dry on the head like that. Also, I slightly altered the shape of the head by wadding up some paper towel with paper mache paste and added it to the ears to make them longer and to the sides of the nose to make it wider. Put newspaper strips over the paper towel. You can also use just paper towel to give the skin a more textured look, like a did for the top of the head.

Let it set till it is dry to the touch.

My first attempt to paint the head a skin color was disastrous. I let the disastrous color dry and the painted over with a successful mixture of colors: brown, yellow, and white. Don't go crazy with the yellow. You could also just buy a skin color paint and skip potential disasters. Let the paint dry before continuing to the details.

Paint a slightly darker, pinker version of the skin color paint into the wrinkles and details of the face, such as around the nose.

Then, paint the eyes. Paint the eye shape solid white first. Let it dry, then paint over the white with the round colored part of the eye. To make it look more realistic, carefully mix a slightly darker version of the eye color with solid eye color, starting at the center and painting out. Let it dry and then paint the pupil in black. You can also add a little "sparkle" in the eye by painting a tiny white dot that touches the pupil.

Paint the lips. I used a pale pink-tan color, but it all depends on the look you are going for.

For the beard, I cut out a piece of white fabric to give the beard more stability. I glued the cotton batting to the fabric and the fabric to the head with tacky glue. The mustache and the rest of the hair and eyebrows I glued straight to the head with tacky glue.

Using a shoebox and a thrift store suit coat, I formed the shoulders. I used this lifelike head for a school project, and it was a success.