The Journal Of The InnKeeper

I've had enough people ask me now how to make my adhesive masks that I'm making a tutorial. At the moment, I don't have pictures of me constructing the mask, so I will add those later, perhaps the next time I make one. But I can write out the instructions. I have been putting it off because I want to make a video, so I'll add that later too, when I get around to it.

I have chosen an adhesive mask that creates a full and complete seal all the way around for better control of the air leaving my mouth (no air leak up into my eyes or glasses!), and a "beak" shape that creates a pocket in front of my mouth that makes it feel easier to breath. I wear this mask while dancing for several hours and I can breathe fine in it. If Disney employees can dance around in a full fur suit, I can certainly handle social dancing and grocery shopping in a cloth mask.

The adhesive is intended for use on human skin and during athletic activity, so it stays on even while sweating and heavy breathing and I have no reaction to the adhesive. I do tend to wash my face around my nose and mouth afterwards, though, because the moisture from my breath being trapped around my face makes me feel like my skin is getting oily, but I have not seen any irritation or abrasion or even acne or skin blemishes from wearing this mask regularly.

Items you will need:

• Kinesiology Athletic Tape
• Some kind of filter material
  • coffee filter
  • tissues
  • toilet paper
  • air filter for your air conditioning unit
• Scissors

If you're feeling particularly crafty, you can also get a hot glue gun and some hot glue, and some other decoration. I'll include a picture at the end of a red mask I made with some black lace over the top.

The first thing you'll want to do is choose your filter material. This mask is not rated for anything, even if you use some kind of rated filter material, so you need to think of it as being approximately as safe for the people around you as a standard cloth or surgical mask. It is probably safer because of the seal around the mouth and the filter material, but because it has not been tested and approved for anything, you ought to treat it as if it's only as effective as the standard masks.

So you can choose your filter material to be out of anything you want. I mainly decided to create a filtered mask because I needed something in the middle of the adhesive to keep it from sticking to itself. It turns out that air filters for home air conditioning units are often the same price regardless of size - the price is determined by the level of filtration.

So I bought the highest HEPA-rated filter I could find, which included anti-viral filtration, in the largest size available. This may or may not still be effective once it's applied in the mask, so this is why you should treat the mask as if it's a standard mask.

Anyway, you can buy an air filter and get a TON of usable material. Combined with the cost of a package of athletic tape, I estimate my masks to cost me roughly 50 cents per mask. If you are using an air filter, you will need to separate the filter material from the frame. This can take some work, and there are YouTube videos out there showing how to do this.

Basically, you need to cut the chicken wire off of the face of the frame (on both sides) and then cut the filter around the edge to separate it from the cardboard frame. It's simple to do and regular scissors will cut the wire, but the wire is sharp and can poke or cut you while you're working, so take care with this step.

Once your filter material is free of any packaging, you can work with it to make masks and you can store the excess (if any) in a plastic bag for the next mask. If you choose to use coffee filters or tissue or any other filter material, this preparation step should be significantly less work.

So, now that you have your filter material and it's ready to be worked, you can start constructing your mask. Next you will need to prepare your athletic tape.

Kinesiology tape tends to come in 2-inch strips or rolls. Some brands of the tape come pre-cut into roughly 10-inch lengths. Most of them include a grid on the back to use as a cutting guide. I found that the pre-cut strips fit me well if I shortened them by about 4 squares (approximately 7-8 inches). This will take some experimentation on your part.

I can wear a mask with a pre-cut strip that has not been shortened at all, but I like it better at around 7-8 inches in length. I have a very small face and I fit most large children's size things. Average people will probably fit fine into 2 10-inch strips "standard" version. Larger people may need to to use the un-cut rolls and make it longer and/or with 2 1/2 or 3 strips instead of 2.

So choose your tape color and determine the length you need.
Now that you have your tape and your filter material, we can begin the instructions:

1. Take 2 strips of tape of the appropriate length. Peel back the adhesive backing along the length of one of the strips by about 1 square (1/4 inch). Place the other strip face down onto the now-exposed adhesive, overlapping the two strips and creating a double-width band of tape just shy of 4 inches wide.
    
2. Remove the backing from both strips and place face down on a surface with the adhesive face up.
    
3. Cut 2 strips of the filter material, one smaller than the other. The larger strip should be approximately the dimensions of your double-wide mask, minus about a quarter inch all the way around (so, if your mask is 4" x 10", you'll want a piece of filter material approximately 3.5" x 9.5" - this does not need to be exact and it can be a rough cut. The important part is that one piece is bigger than the other and the bigger piece is smaller than the whole mask). You can also choose to have only 1 layer of filter. In this case, make your filter to the "larger filter" dimensions.
    
4. Place the smaller filter in the center of the double-wide strip, right on the adhesive. Place the bigger filter over it and press down around the edges that are touching the exposed adhesive. If you go with only 1 layer of filter, you only need to do this step once - place the filter in the center of the adhesive, leaving about 1/4" of adhesive exposed all the way around.
    
5. Now you should have a rectangle of athletic tape with a patch of filter in the middle and a strip of exposed adhesive all the way around.
    
6. Carefully fold the mask in half, so that the short ends meet each other (but don't touch!). Along one long side only, press the exposed 1/4" inch of adhesive edges together to create a seam. This forms your "beak" shape. It looks kind of like one of those simple leather or duct tape wallets kids make at summer camp.
    
7. Now, with that seam on the bottom / front, going from your chin to your beak's "nose", place the beak over your mouth and nose and press the rest of the exposed adhesive over the bridge of your nose and smooth down your cheeks.
    
8. You can choose to leave your chin free of adhesive, so that air escapes out the bottom if you want to get a straw inside to drink (this basically makes it about as protective for others as a surgical mask with its gapping around the face) or you can seal the adhesive all the way around your face.
   
   Leaving a gap at the bottom will also make it cooler, so I tend to do this after I've finished dancing, when I'm back at my table, to cool off and to drink water, but I close up the seal at my chin when I'm interacting with other people.

So that's it! Once you get the hang of it, it's really simple and only takes a few minutes.

Current recommendations are that disposable masks should be replaced about once a day or if it gets wet while reusable masks should be washed at least once a week - for those not in the medical field and only using them in moderate settings.

I tend to wear mine for about a week, using the reusable washing guidelines, because these are so much heavier duty than typical disposable masks and I generally only go to the grocery store and to my office. I tend to make a brand new one on the very rare occasions that I go dancing with my established dance partner. I do not recommend making these ahead of time because you expose the adhesive during the process, which will decrease the length of time you can wear one.

To reuse it, I keep the strip backings. Then, when I take my mask off, I fold the backing strips in half, and I insert them into the mask, with the fold of the backing tucked into the fold of the mask. They end up crossing each other like an L or a V.

Then I press the mask flat with the backings between the layers to keep the adhesive from sticking to itself, and store it until I need it again.

After about a week of wear, the adhesive stops sticking consistently. My record so far was 6 days of 8-hour use with 1 evening of dancing (and sweating) in the middle of that run. It now takes me about 10 minutes or less to make a mask (depending on if I have to cut off more filter from the pack or if I have some strips already pre-cut). I was also able to wear a mask that I had made probably 3 or 4 days prior so it was sitting open for several days. I did this for testing purposes, so I recommend changing your mask more frequently.

Here are some pictures of me in the mask:
 
And here is a picture of my red and black lace version:

This was made the same way, but before I removed the backing to add the filter, I added the lace. I found a 2-inch black lace ribbon that I liked. I cut 2 strips the same length as the athletic tape and placed it over the top of the tape. Using my hot glue gun, I glued the lace around the edges and along the center seam.

To hide the glue, I also took some strips of black sequins and hot glued that all the way around the edge and along the center seam. This held up during several hours of dancing and in a combination of temperatures, which can stress hot glue. If you use a fabric or material that is at least 4 inches (or wider than the mask), then you only need to glue around the edges, not along the center overlap seam.

Once the glue was dry, I completed the steps starting with step #3, adding the filter and folding the mask into shape.

Adding the lace and sequins really classed up the mask. I could see doing this with a variety of colors of lace, or just sequins, even individual sequins in a pattern all over instead of a ribbon strip. But the bare tape in a variety of colors is pretty festive all on its own too.

And here is a short video of me dancing in the first mask I made:

 

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