A few years back some friends and I planned a trip to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. We packed up with us all of the Mardi Gras accessories we thought we would need: beads, body paint, glitter, our cameras, and a flask for each of us of our favorite drinks of choice. We road tripped down, crazy excited for the big day!
We arrived in New Orleans the evening before Mardi Gras. There were already street parties going on but we wanted to save ourselves for tomorrow. We went to a low-key local place and had dinner. That’s when the waitress asked us a question we never expected: where did you get your masks?
Um, masks? No one told us you needed masks for Mardi Gras! I asked her if she meant like Halloween costumes and she laughed. She showed us the mask she was going to wear and I have to say it looked killer on her. It looked like a bird’s face and had a giant plume on top. She told us we could get them at any of the tourist stores, so off we went – but the pickings were slim. The few that were left seemed pretty unexciting.
So what did we do? Made our own of course! With a little google fu and about four hours of our time we made a series of masks the likes of which New Orleans never saw before or since. By the time the partying started the next night we were strutting around getting comments on our masks left and right. Feels good to be the center of attention!