>> Whilst I'm being a lazy bum and not doing any scouring myself, fellow bloggers are doing it for me. Fashion Me Fabulous, who has an uncanny knack for sourcing unlikely eBay and Etsy stores has come up with an absolute gem. Actually this one isn't a diamond in the rough or a particularly unknown gem but hopefully these haven't been doing the fashion blogosphere rounds TOO much. The California-based Tom Banwell has a bit of an online presence going on; he sure knows how to utilise the internet for getting his leather crafting skills around... a Twitter, Flickr, blog (quite a good read if you have the time...), a website, DeviantArt AND an Etsy page. So along with intricately cutting out leather to make these amazingly face-transforming masks, he's also tweeting/uploading/creating other art work and giving people cool tutorials on his blog. THAT just increased the aforementioned self-title of lazy bum by ten fold Ithink.
I've only posted the cut-out ones, the ones that have "Buy Me Susie, You Know You Want To Even Though You Have Enough Ridiculous Headgear" written all over them (yes they do need a descriptive quote THAT long...). However Tom does masks that are embossed, braided and headbands that are probably more along the speed of people who are nervously trying out Bat for Lashes/Natasha Khan's trademark. There may also be a minute population who are into being unicorns for a day or two, when the week is not going so well, in which case Tom also has a stunning mask option. I haven't quite gotten to the stage where it has been so tough that I needed to resort to calling upon my inner unicorn spirit... one day though...
