Use Dollar Store Cutting Mats to Make Ear Savers

DIY Ear Savers for Masks using Cricut Maker

5/2/2020

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With the increased use of fabric and medical masks, the need for ear savers has grown. Ear savers are most often worn by health professionals to ease the discomfort of wearing a mask for a long time. As the general population adopts the use of masks for every day use, we all could benefit from these simple little devices.

In the workshop, we we've been wearing masks for years. We tend to take them off as soon as possible because they can be uncomfortable so we wanted a couple of these for ourselves and to giveaway.

In April 2020, Cricut added three sizes of ear protectors to Cricut Design Space. They are free, but they did not offer up a tutorial on how to actually use the pattern.

Steph found a way to use the file, and we found an inexpensive, readily available resource from which to make them.

Ear savers for mask from Cricut design space.

We made a sample of all three sizes to try out. We decided on the large because it seemed more efficient to make the larger size and then cut them down if the smaller was needed.

Ear savers can be used with medical or homemade cloth masks.

We tried them out with commercially made masks as well as a homemade cloth one. The homemade cloth mask is based on the pattern by ragmask.com. I've tried a lot of patterns and this one, by far, is the easiest! The pattern uses fabric ties, but I adapted this one to use elastic.

We are making the ear savers from Dollar Store plastic cutting mats.

A trip to the Dollar Store yielded the perfect cutting materials. At $1.00 for two mats, you can make a lot of ear savers for very little money! It looks like you can order online as well for shipping to your home.

Set up the cutting specs in Cricut design space.

Steph figured out the settings needed for using the plastic cutting mats. In Design Space, she created a new setting for the mats. Steph goes through all the set-up steps in the video so be sure to watch.

You can choose from three different ear savers. We chose the large.

Use the purple Cricut sticky mat for the cutting the dollar store cutting mat.

The plastic chopping mat is laid texture side down on the purple Cricut mat. We used a brayer to securely position the plastic on the purple mat.

The newly Cricut Maker cut ear saver removed easily.

The cutting takes about one minute. It pulled off easily just like it was supposed to! Love when that happens!

Make lots of Cricut Maker cut ear savers to donate to essential workers.

Duplicate the image and you can make a lot more at at time. It took about 20 minutes to fully cut this sheet of large ear savers.

Please note: This is not a sponsored post.

FYI: We are not professionals, and we don't claim to be. This is what we found worked for our project. Yours may need a little different approach. Safety first!

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