Make Me a Mummy – The Transformation Process

As you may know, I recently was able to work with MOSI (Museum of Science and Industry) of Tampa on their Mummy exhibit. Their goal was to have an interactive experience where the mummies come to life. They wanted a very family friendly event that would simply bring attention to the exhibit and help to make the crowd more involved in the process.

When we initially discussed the project I was so overwhelmed with ideas, I couldn’t decide what exactly to do and how to do it. Fortunately, I have worked with large companies before and know that you first have to wait for the meetings and sessions and decisions from the people in charge. So they finally contacted me with the specifics for the day and how we would like to do a promo the week prior to publicise the event. I love publicity so this was very exciting for me. We had discussed the costumes, I went to view the exhibit and got a good idea of the different types of mummies and different areas around the world they might come from. After that I started scouring the local thrift shops, it is much harder than you might imagine to find natural looking outfits.

I had planned on having two models, a male and female and both being from South America. It was a tribal type of look with simple muslin clothes. In the exhibit some of the clothes had patterns on them and I thought that would be really neat. I got a ton of stuff and continued to learn how to age the material. I learned that polyester is VERY difficult to age (seriously, a bucket of bleach did nothing!). I tried staining some stuff, bleaching, scraping with a wire brush, not much would work on the items I found except a cute cotton dress I found. I went to a yard sale and came across a beautiful knitted long jacket (kinda rare in these parts). I decided to focus on the muslin dress and knit jacket and go from there. The jacket was so easy to stain, I mainly used dark coffee and some balsamic vinaigrette (so stinky!), let them dry with the stains on them then dragged through dirt with bricks inside and on clothes. The dress I dragged behind our car quite a bit but that didn’t work as well as I would have liked. I found some faux fur in the house and made a little shrug to cover the top of the dress. Using twine and cutting holes I made it wrap around the neck and outside edges. I used the bricks and wire brush a lot on the faux fur and it worked quite well. I then found an old table-cloth my husband thought looked somewhat egyptian. I cut it up and frayed the bottom to create the egyptian wrap. I did a good amount of research to get the right look but it was really difficult with the supplies I had.

Finally after doing my best to stain the clothes, I hung them up and pulled out my airbrush. Wow, that was so much easier and faster. In the future I may break the fibers down, creating holes and such and then just airbrush the daylights out of everything. Brown and tan airbrush ink was used and it worked very well, I didn’t use any black or white.

So after a lot of changes with ABC and MOSI it was finally decided that the promo would need to take place on Saturday morning. This was difficult for me as I was already on a very tight schedule, we had to paint to people, dress them and do hair in a few hours and then do face painting for children immediately following. We all lived in different areas so we couldn’t do it at a house and MOSI was unavailable until 7am. It was decided we could paint at the studio and meet there at 6:30am to be done by 9:00 and then back to MOSI by 11:00 to walk the exhibit. It was a tight schedule as I had a lot of stuff and a lot of people.

We got to the studio and got set up and were painting by about 7am. I had woken up at 5am to paint my own face and make sure I had everything (and I always forget something!). Joanne Conte was my assistant and she is an incredible artist. I was pretty excited to work with her all day. She helped lay all the bases and then we worked together with the airbrush and details. We couldn’t believe it but we were done by 9am, ready to go for the 9:15 slot. We had a few minutes so I painted a pretty butterfly on Joanne’s face and we all headed out to be on TV.

I thought the TV segment went well, I probably could have talked the entire time but it was really interesting.

After the segment we were actually all done with both models so we all headed back to the museum to eat and take a quick break. I was able to set up my portable studio and take a few shots. The models both headed to the lobby to walk around and then Joanne and I set up to face paint children.

Ironically, there were some ‘volunteer’ face painters outside painting children’s faces and we were in the furthest corner away from most people’s direction of travel. I think we might have painted 15 kids in 3 hours, it was a little slow. Joanne and I were able to give each other ideas and watch each other’s technique which can be a lot of fun. By the end of the day we were all exhausted and so glad to finally finish.

I can’t believe it all went off without any problems. The best thing is we were able to get videos and photos of the entire day.