Free mask SVG files

Three kinds of mask

The first five designs are the masks of the stage. Comedy laughs and Tragedy weeps: the pair goes back to the theatre of ancient Greece, where actors wore masks, and it has stood for drama ever since. They are drawn here as plain faces with eyes, brows, the line of a nose and a mouth cut out, alone, as a pair, as one mask split down the middle and hanging under a curtain.

The next seven are masks to wear: a cat, a fox, a bear, a bunny and an owl, a blank half mask to decorate and a hero mask. The last three are masks people know by sight and use as pictures: a sleep mask, a gas mask and a ski mask. Feathered party masks are in the Mardi Gras mask set, and there are no medical face masks here.

Making a mask that fits a child

The files are 100 mm on their longer side, which is far too small to wear. Scale an animal mask to about 180 mm wide for a child of four to eight and about 200 mm for an older child or an adult: at 180 mm the eye holes sit about 65 to 72 mm apart, centre to centre, and each is about 30 mm wide, so most faces can see through them. Cut from 250 to 300 gsm card or 2 mm craft foam, thread 30 cm of thin elastic through the two side holes and knot it behind each one. The holes for the elastic are a little under 4 mm across at 100 mm, so about 7 mm at wearing size.

How to open the files

• Cricut Design Space: choose Upload, pick the SVG, and add it to the canvas. Set the width you want; the shape is already welded.
• Silhouette Studio: Designer Edition and above open the SVG. The free Basic Edition does not, so open the DXF instead.
• LightBurn, xTool Creative Space and Glowforge: import the SVG, then set the layer to cut, score or engrave.
• Inkscape, Illustrator and Affinity: open the SVG. It is a plain filled path, so you can recolour it, add a stroke or combine it with your own work.
• Printing or sublimation: use the PNG, which has a transparent background.

Each design page lists the file’s narrowest part at seven sizes, so you can tell whether it will survive at the size you plan to cut.

Questions