Like a beautiful folded paper crane…for your face.

Ever since news of coronavirus began spreading around the world, shortly before the virus began spreading itself, disposable face masks have been in short supply.

With people stealing them, fighting over them, and elbowing each other out of the way to get their hands on them, these in-demand face coverings are still incredibly hard to find, but people are now coming up with novel ideas to help deal with the problem, and one handmade solution we’re trying today is also one of the most beautiful we’ve seen so far.

Simply called the Origami Mask, the idea first came to everyone’s attention thanks to an instructional video from a Polish Art school, which quickly went viral online. Not only is it beautiful, but it’s incredibly simple to make — all you need to get started is a couple of sheets of paper towels, two hairbands and a stapler.

One thing to be careful of is the shape of your paper towel, which needs to be rectangular.

Now it’s time to make four simple folds, illustrated in the images left to right, top to bottom below.

▼ Make sure to fold each crease firmly to keep it in place.

The folding process isn’t too difficult, especially if you’ve made origami before. However, after the initial four folds there are a series of more complicated ones that need close attention.

▼ Take a look at the video below to see how it’s done.

Hmmm…even our Japanese-language reporters, who’ve been making origami since they were little, had a little trouble getting the same expert result as the Polish art students who came up with the idea.

▼ Umm…it’s kind of the same?

If you end up with a result like ours, don’t despair! Simply try and try again until you get the same nice, crisp lines of the original origami mask. We went back and used a slightly larger paper towel like the one in the video, which gave us a better size for covering our face.

The bottom of the mask was noticeably longer than the top, though, so there was still room for improvement. But that’s the beauty of the Origami Mask, as you can try different lengths of paper towel until you get a custom fit for your face!

Now that we’ve had a go at making the origami mask, we have one more hack up our sleeves ready and waiting to go if we need to cover our faces in a pinch. If you’re looking for more handy DIY mask ideas, there are plenty of options available, covering designs made from cloth, socks, and even old bras.

Oh, and if you’re wondering about the effectiveness of paper towel masks, take a look at this experiment from the Associate Professor of Applied Chemistry at Keio University.

Reference: Facebook/@wfpkrakow
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