Our Duct Tape Wallets

When Will mentioned that she wanted a wallet, instead of being normal and just going out and buying her a dang wallet, I said, "Ooh! I've been dying to make duct tape wallets!" and I instead went out and spent twice as much money on duct tape (I bought this exact set, and we've been very happy with it).

Because this:

image via Something Turquoise and Death to the Stock Photo

When I craft via tutorials, I generally use photo-heavy written tutorials, but I've found that when the kids use tutorials, mostly for their Sculpey creations but also for the occasional other random project, they really find video tutorials the best. There's lots of rewinding and playing segments over and over again, but also, I think they just find watching another person making the actual muscle movements required to be the modeling that's needed for a lot of these more sophisticated projects.

We skimmed through several YouTube duct tape wallet tutorials, blowing some off for poor lighting, some for having over-engineered wallets, some for requiring materials I didn't feel like finding (a lot of tutes include a clear plastic piece so you can make a window for your driver's license, but I have never been in a situation in which I was asked for my license and showing it via that clear plastic window sufficed, so I don't see the point of it), but finally we settled on this one:



Why are all of the most useful YouTube tutes created by teen girls?

Don't answer that. I don't really want to know.

Anyway, with the tute at the ready, rewound and played over and over, the wallet creation was more-or-less a walk-through:

Surprisingly, it was Syd who needed some help with this, as you can see in the photo below, in which I've got one of her duct tape pieces on my mat. She's generally "craftier" than Will, but she's also far less tolerant than Will of results that deviate from what something is "supposed" to look like, and she gets frustrated more easily. Once I helped her even things up, though, she was happier:

I wish I'd had more of my secondary color in my wallet, but somehow I ended up only cutting enough of it to make one inside pocket on each side from it, not realizing that meant that only the very top bits would show. I like Will's wallet, center, which has her secondary color used for all of the binding, and Syd did both of her inside pockets on each side in her secondary color, which also looks nice:

Here's a closer view of the inside. There are two hidden pockets that open towards the center, and the pocket for bills that extends the entire length of the wallet and opens at the top:

The kids weren't interested in futzing with their wallets anymore after they'd completed them, but I couldn't stop until I'd put a little duct tape embellishment on my wallet. I cut out a shark stencil, traced it onto duct tape that was still on the roll, then cut the stencil out of the tape with duct tape scissors (that work only okay on duct tape, but they're better than working super crappy, as other scissors do, I guess?)

I could have done a much neater job on my shark, but eh.

This isn't the wallet that I use every day, although it really is sturdy enough that you could. It's now the wallet that I keep in my backpack, with a little emergency money and a few membership cards and discount cards, etc.

Because if you've ever seen me around town, walking down the street like a pack mule with my gigantic Army surplus backpack stuffed full of crap, you've noticed that what I really need is just one more thing to put in it, amiright?