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HOW TO MAKE A HAND DECORATED COVID-19 FACE MASK USING A TEMPLATE FOR PAINTING WITH ACRYLIC COLORS?
A COVID-19 contribution developed in the TUEFTELLABOR ZUG

Individualized face mask using acrylic colors and a template for replicating your work

Here I show you how you can build your own individualized face mask using acrylic colors and a template for replicating your work on KN 95 high security masks. This work has been done at the TUEFTELLABOR EINSTEIN in Zug. This can therefore be considered as a an example of my involvement at the TUEFTELLABOR EINSTEIN in Zug by respecting social distancing as conscribed by the federal government of Switzerland.

1    Shows my first trial in summer 2020 waiting for visitors at Château d’Epanvilliers Museum of old games. I had the idea to decorate my KN 95 mask which I always used as a tourist guide in my château by wrapping a decorated hanky ( a tissue of the Zunftkabaret of the guilt of Zimmerleuten) around it.

2    This looks not bad, but is not very practical as hard to replicate and not easy to wear without messing up the setup.

3    We clearly need a template to directly copy the design on the masks. I started out by scanning the Tirgel, a typical Zürich bakery, sent to us members of the guilt of Zimmerleuten as a consolation for not having our yearly Sechseläuten for COVID-19 reasons.

4    The scan of course needed to be worked over in order to get a crisp black and white design. It also had to be scaled to the correct size for using it as a template to color the facial masks.

5    A copy of the printed out design was glued with cyan acrylic glue to an aluminum plate (strength of xxx mm). One 2mm diameter hole had to be drilled in order to introduce the jigsaw (LAUBSÄGE). Two hours of careful sawing where needed to saw out the complicated curve. The eye of the eagle can of course not be reproduced on the template and this shows a limit of using templates for copying designs.

6    The template is fairly fragile and must be handled with care.

7    The masks must be painted in two steps as they come as folded entities. I used two brushes, a course and a fine one. The first one can be used as a pushing brush by holding it straight up and pushing it down into the template. The same brush can also be used in the normal way if the template is solidly pushed onto the tissue. The problem of paint flowing into the gap between the template and the tissue can be reduced by using the acrylic paint non diluted as it comes out of the flask. The fine brush is used to correct the design after having lifted off the template. After every use of the template, its bottom side needs to be inspected and cleaned with a wet tissue. After carefully positioning the template on the mask in a reproducible way, I filled two to three drops of acrylic paint into the plastic container. I then solidly pushed the template into the tissue of the mask by pushing down on the sections around the surface to be painted. This was a bit tricky around the head of the bird, but rather straight forward for the claws. Note, the tail of the birds became a victim of the fact that we project a 2 dimensional design on to a three dimensional object. The paint on the masks must be fully dried before turning them and starting with the second halve of the template work. This progress is visible on the picture shown: the lower row shows the first halve of the painting and the top row shows finished masks, painted on both sides.

8 and 9    Of course I had to sacrifice a mask for trials and selfie shootings at the TUEFTELLABOR EINSTEIN in Zug.

12 and 13   Ten masks are packed and ready to go. Note, each mask is sealed by the manufacturer and can not be contaminated inside, unless opened by the user. The plastic foil is merely an additional protection.

10 and 11   I brought the finished masks to the team of the Zunft zur Zimmerleuten right away and proved the saying “you don’t get a free lunch” to be wrong. After enjoying a wonderful lunch at the river Limmat in front of our venerable Zunft house, I had a check at the second floor and found our chef de service already wearing the Tueftellabor Zug generated mask. I only hope the Zimmerleuten eagle did not frighten our always welcomed guests of the Zunft zur Zimmerleuten.

Time to create the template: 2 to 3 hours. Time to paint the masks: 5 masks per hour. This content has also beeen posted on https://www.facebook.com/berchtold.rordorf