Let me introduce you to "Mangle." His breed is Japanese Akita, and he's not happy to see anyone. He's kind of a bully and quite full of spite. >:3
He's my boyfriend's new fursuit (soon to be a fullsuit as soon as I finish the footpaws) that I made for him (with a little bit of convincing). You see.. he's not really a furry, but is willing to get into "costuming" at the conventions I drag him to, so we devised this charming character. I am very proud of this costume, and I finished the details on the head 3/23/08.

This head is all 1/4 inch foam construction. The mask is hollow almost entirely, and the outer foam shell is the only structure. It holds up perfectly on its own, as you can see in the photos. But when worn the mask "rounds out" and is a little bit wider in the cheeks, and looks even better on a person since it fits well. This is exceptionally a plus, because you can just about fold the mask in half and flatten it (except the harder nose) which makes that part a bonus for traveling with it.

I hope this cool magnet thing catches on -- but you know those snarly side teeth? They are entirely removable, as well as the canine teeth! They magnet on! I LOVE MAGNETS. I can't say how much I love magnets enough, because its such an awesome feature to this mask! Without the teeth, he's still angry, but with the fangs he's kinda angrier, and with the side teeth it makes him look even more aggressive. I LOVE THIS. The magnets are rare earth magnets.

Link to Ebay to buy them: http://search.ebay.com/rare-earth-magnet

You can get them in all different quantities and sizes. I got about 50 small round ones about 1cm wide by 3mm thick. I've found thousands of uses for them, including using magnets instead of snaps to close the flap that covers the zipper on the bodysuit. You can get in and out of the bodysuit without assistance because of this!!

The jaw is static, the eyes are plastic bowl painted with acrylic. The pupils were cut out with a dremil, and vision is through black "chiffon" sheer fabric. The ears have wire in them to bend them slightly different directions (like straight up, or out a little, not too much of a range in motion).

The nose, teeth and eyelids are made out of this awesome clay I found at a store called "Daiso" (there's several in Washington state, if you are in the area, I highly suggest checking out the place) Its a Japanese-based dollar store. Its wildly previlant in Japan and a few other countries, and is much like japanese version of Wal Mart (low prices, high inventory selection). The clay itself is air-dry water based pulp clay (much like crayola Model Magic) and is WAY cheap $1.50 a package. Its sealed with "Satin" Mod Podge (since the clay itself is water-based, it reconstitutes with water), and the nose is brush textured with the mod podge-- one of my favorite parts!

The fur is several lengths shaved down to match, so there is really a textural dimension to the mask. It is my first attempt at shaving down a mask, and I really like it. Especially since I can just pick out the color fur I wanted and not worry so much about the length. The fur is dry-brushed with black acrylic in several places to help blend the color transitions in certain parts

The whiskers -- Another favorite part of mine! OMG the whiskers. I LOVE how they look on this mask (and I hope others do, too) If you've been around dogs with short hair on their faces before, you know how their whiskers really help with their body language, on this mask I set the muzzle whiskers pointing forwards, very much like a dog would do when they become agressive. There's also eyebrow whiskers, and whiskers sticking out of the black spot markings on the side of the face. The whiskers themselves are actually the fibers from those plastic fiber-optic novelty lamps. If you ever get one of those, you'll have a lifetime of whiskers and replacement whiskers. Just stick one into the end of your hot glue and twiddle it around to get some glue on it, then push straight into the backing of the fur quickly, and you've got a whisker! Trim to an apropriate length or they won't stick up on their own.

Anyways, I could blather on forever about how proud I am of this mask. Hopefully I've given you ideas that you could use for your own future masks. <3

(P.s. Sorry for the copy-and-paste info from LJ to here, but that was a lot of typing the first time around. ;3)