Duct Tape Armband

I'm kind of in love with duct tape. Obviously. But here's another duct tape project! I always liked the look of black leather armbands, but they're expensive and hard to find the perfect style. I took matters into my own hands and made this:













for about 3 cents. It's just a piece of paper that I completely covered in duct tape and then poked holes with a pin through the place where the ends overlapped. In Walmart, I found a package of brass fasteners for about $3 (for 300) and stuck them through the holes. Done! It looks pretty cool- the only little issue is that duct tape doesn't breathe well, but you can just make it loose enough to slide it up and down your wrist. Good luck :)

Duct Tape Prom Dress

This one's a little bit more complex, but I'll start off by admitting I used a template. Instead of making my duct tape prom dress out of duct tape alone, I just cut some fabric into a pretty basic dress and taped over it. Later, when I wanted to make changes, I just cut the duct tape and fabric and re-taped it if necessary. This was really convenient for the back. The dress I started with had two straps and a back, but you can see I was going for something completely different, so I cut the whole back out and added a new strap. The hardest part was the top, which I had some help with. We just put tape anywhere we could still see the dress, and surprisingly, the slightly wrinkled tape gave it a nice texture compared to the neat, straight tape lines on the bottom. Then the electrical part was also a little bit of a challenge. I had sketched out exactly what I had in mind on paper, but I barely used it except to get ideas for shapes, and sometimes had to alter them as I went. Finally, I got to the scales (I realize it sounds weird to describe it as having both an electrical circuit and fish scales theme, but I think it turned out pretty cool anyway) and struggled before someone suggested folding the tape over on itself before cutting the rounded edges. Do you know what I mean? It's a little complicated to explain, but if you've ever tried cutting elaborate patterns in duct tape, you can appreciate this method. Since the you eliminate the sticky sides by folding them together, cutting is much easier. The scissors don't get stuck. It was definitely a time-consuming project, but probably worth it- look at it! What do you think?

(Leave me a comment if you're not too busy, I'd love to hear your opinion :) )

Duct Tape Pants

So I figured I would start off with one of my first duct tape ventures: pants! The whole project went pretty well... until I tried to get out of them. When people see this picture:

http://pinterest.com/pin/136233957448344280/

 that seems to be their first question. I guess that was just bad planning on my part, but I just cut vertically down the sides to get out and added zippers so I could wear them again. So I could bend my knees, I used the scraps of an old t-shirt in strips. And here's the step-by-step if you want to try for yourself:

1) Tape around your ankles, sticky side facing out

2) Keep making tape circles around each leg all the way up, skipping your knees, where you can stick in the t-shirt strips

3) Make a belt, again with the sticky side out, and keep making belts until you reach the tops of your legs (which should already have tape around them)

4) Add in little pieces of tape wherever necessary to fill in gaps between the leg rings and belts

5) Tape vertically from your ankles to your knees, connecting all the rings- you can alternate tape colors if you're going for the stripes look that I have

6) Tape vertically from your knees to past the top of the belts, folding the vertical tape underneath

7) Neaten up your edges, around your waist and ankles you might want to tape horizontally for a cleaner look.

And you're done! It really wasn't too difficult, other than reaching behind you and trying to keep the tape vertical haha- you might even want to ask someone else to help you. Good luck!