When all you have is lemons, then make lemon aid. Wearing a mask right now makes a lot of sense, and I am relatively sure it will soon be a requirement almost everywhere. With that in mind, I drove to Canadian Tire and bought a pair of masks for $16. When I got home and looked at my blank mask in the mirror, I could not help but think people were overlooking an opportunity.
If I had a businesses right now I would be ordering masks with my logo printed on the front, so I could hand them out to my customers. Get a free mask with every visit, purchase, test drive, hotel stay, bottle of wine, or whatever.
After seeing all that unused potential going to waste, in the now empty space where the lower half of my face used to be, it did not take me long to come up with an idea. I headed over to Staples to buy some inkjet transfers, and then laid out some copies of the FireDrake pencil drawing I included on page 144 of my new book. Five minutes to heat up the iron, one more to apply the heat, two more to cool and peel away the backing, and then my prototype was done.
I think this idea might work well for artists. Just think of every plain cloth face mask as a blank canvas. Transfer your favourite artwork to a mask, and you suddenly become a walking advertisement. I offer only one caution. The masks I bought at Canadian Tire contain 5% spandex, so they can stretch more than enough to crack the ink if you are using the iron-on transfer method. I suggest using 100% cotton if at all possible. Staples also has printable cloth sheets that can be trimmed and sewn onto a mask, if you’re handy with a sewing machine that is.
Making the first one was certainly entertaining, and the whole process, including writing this, kept me busy for an entire afternoon. The bottom line is just have some fun.
Comments 2
Very cool! Maybe YOU should sell them with different characters from your books. We would buy them! 🙂
~Lucas D
Author
I will send you the iron on patch.