Friday, May 21, 2010

Duct Tape Wallet with Pockets

Most people don't just carry around money in our wallets. We are probably loaded with credit cards, membership cards, gift cards, grocery receipts, atm receipts, drivers license, you name it, all of it just bursting at the seams of our wallets. This is why most people can't be satisfied with your basic wallet. You need pockets! I realize there have been tons of tutorials already on this. Well, this is me jumping on the bandwagon. I hope this one helps you!


Hopefully you already know how to make duct tape fabric, if not, go to my first post on instructions on how to make it.  You will need 9 to 10 pieces of duct tape and you will need to cut it longer than the length of a dollar bill, in fact you will need to cut it the size of 2 lengths of card because as you can see,

a card is longer than a half of a bill and if you are going to have pockets on both insides of the wallet, it'll need to be longer than a plain wallet. And just to be safe, always cut longer the tape than you need to give yourself room to work with in case you cut too little. Just like hair, its easy to cut too short, but what you have cut off, you can't tack back on.

 Just be careful when you are cutting out your duct tape, that it wont stick to itself or to each other! Because if it does, the tape is useless. I hate when this happens!

Here is my nice piece of duct tape fabric used to make the base of this wallet.

To this, we are going to add the pockets. To make the pockets, make smaller pieces of fabric which are longer than the length of a card but about the same height, I made 4 of these so that I will have 4 pockets.


I used 3-4 pieces of tape for every pocket. Trim the edges. Fold the wallet in half, leaving a small gap between edges if you like and lay the pocket pieces on top of the wallet.

Now you can tape it all down around the edges and trim off excess.
 
One more step, if you can't fit your cards in, cut a bit into the tape holding down the pockets. That's it! You're done!



Thursday, May 6, 2010

Duct Tape Fabric

Making duct tape fabric is the very basis of duct tape creations. What is duct tape fabric? It is very simply pieces of duct tape laid over each other to form a sheet of tape. This sheet of tape, then, is used in all sorts of duct tape projects.




Its very simple and very repetitive to make. First, you tear off a piece of duct tape, turn it over and lay another piece of tape halfway on top of it.



Second, you turn this whole thing over and lay another piece on top of the sticky part:



You continue doing this, turning it over and laying down more pieces until you are satisfied with however long you want it to be.





Third, you fold up the sticky edges and trim the sides:


And there you have it, virgin duct tape fabric all ready to be used.

Simple Duct Tape Wallet

This is the very basic duct tape wallet. No pockets for cards, no fancy addons, nothing. just a plain and simple wallet for your paper bills.







First, you want to make a piece of duct tape fabric. See my very first post if you don't know how to do it.
For the perfect wallet size, you'll need 8 pieces of duct tape. I like to cut them all out and stick them to the edge of the table, just be careful they don't stick to each other or to itself. You'll want to cut them to be just a little bit longer than the length of the bill.


After making the fabric from these 8 pieces of tape, you will fold the fabric in a little bit less half, so that you leave a gap like this:

Then you tape up the sides,

cut a notch where it hits the top edge, and fold it in:


Finally, fold in half lengthwise and stick this baby under something heavy like a stack of books so that you have a nice crease in the middle. There you have it.
 
You can also dress it up with different colors and designs if you so wish. I've seen other ones where you put designs on the front, stenciled out with a knife. Just be creative! Have fun!