
Friends… if you would have asked me a little over ten years ago when I started this blog what I thought I would be making ten years from now, I would have never in my life said tie-dye face masks. Yet, here we are in 2020 and we are in a world that we never thought we would be in. Right?
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At first, when we needed face masks, I just grabbed my huge stack of cloth cast-offs and made some that would do the job. I didn’t care if they were cute or ones we actually wanted to wear. Honestly, I thought we might need them for 2-3 weeks tops. Now they’re mandated in our state of Texas and it’s becoming really evident that our kids are going to have to go back to school wearing them. So… that’s how there came to be tie-dye face masks instructions on Clumsy Crafter.
The good news is that these are unbelievably easy and my teens love them.
Here’s the deal – You can make your own face masks using this tutorial and an old white t-shirt or pillowcase and that would work great. But… I’ve sewn over 200 masks. I stopped counting at 200 and I’m tired of sewing them. So I bought white face masks off of Amazon.
The key to buying pre-made face masks is that you need to find ones that are cotton, preferably jersey cotton material. I found this 5 pack of jersey cotton face masks that had mixed reviews. (I’m a huge review reader). The reviews said that they weren’t really jersey cotton and they shrank in the dryer. I went ahead and ordered them because I figured I could always send them back or just use them for our youngest child if they shrank.

These face masks that I ordered are jersey cotton – on the inside. But I just flipped them inside out and dyed the cotton side and they worked perfectly. Also, the fit is great for our teen daughters but is too small for my husband. For me, the gamble of ordering them worked. If you want to check them out, you can do so here —> White Jersey Cotton Face Masks on Amazon.
How To Tie-Dye Face Masks
To tie-dye fasks masks you will need:
- tie-dye (I used Tulip brand tie-dye we had leftover from previous projects)
- small rubber bands
- plastic baggies
- face masks

The first thing you need to do is to tie up your face masks using the small rubber bands. If you’ve ever tie-dyed before than you probably know how to make the spin by pinching the fabric and twisting it. I tried that several times on these face masks and because of the small size, it’s almost impossible to see. I found the easiest thing was either just to crumple the fabric or to twist it into a log and secure with rubber bands in several places. You just want to pull the rubber bands semi-tight and make sure that all the fabric is gathered well. Once you have that done, it’s time for the dye.

Can I just confess that we have these bottles filled with tye-dye that we have been reusing over and over again and it’s been the best thing for my teens during this quarantine. If you find huge bottles of tie-dye on sale and never know if you will use it all, it seems to keep for a really long time.

Also, I know that it can be kinda hard to find dye right now, even Amazon was out of stock the other day. You can also dye using Kool-aide! So if you can’t find it, try using kool-aide.

Why I tie-dye, I tend to try to put colors next to each other that will form a pretty color. For instance, green and purple make brown. So if they bleed into each other, you’re going to get a brown spot. But pink and blue make purple, which is awesome.
When you start dying your masks, you really want to go slow and let the dye really soak into it. Work slowly and don’t be afraid of using too much. I tie-dye and do a lot of other messy craft projects in an old baking tin, which will corral the mess.
You might want to wear gloves to protect your hands but that’s up to you.
Most dye instructions will say to leave on the dye for 6-8 hours. I did this with two masks and the dye colors were really muddled. This fabric is thin and the mask so small that I found leaving it on for about 2 hours worked best.
After about two hours, rinse the masks under running water until the water is clear. Because of the size of the masks, I just went ahead and washed them in the sink with soap and water and then laid them outside in the sun to dry.
The sun here in Texas is just as hot as our dryer, if not hotter. But if you want to air dry them and still want to apply heat to kill any potential germs, you can always use and iron or straightening iron.

I don’t like seeing my girls in face masks but… they look adorable! I’m sorry girls, I mean they look on fleek…. maybe totally tubular? I’m sure I still have that wrong.

If you make tie-dye face masks, let me know! Tag me on Instagram – @ClumsyCrafter.
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