Hi my name is Katie Crooks.
I'm the Public Programs Coordinator at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American
Art Museum, and today I'm going to show you one of the featured crafts for our upcoming
Handi-Hour program that will be held at the museum.
The craft we're featuring today will be duct tape wallets-very fun and functional.
This one here features penguins and solid-colored tape.
We also have two featuring polka dots with solid accents.
To get started, you're going to need to get a few materials: a pair of scissors, a ruler
or a mat board like I have here, a card that you can use for measuring, and some fun duct
tape.
You can make your whole duct tape wallet out of basic, gray, utility tape, it works just
as well, but I find that some colorful or patterned tapes make it much more interesting.
So to start, we have to make a swatch of duct tape fabric essentially.
So go ahead and grab some tape and pull out about 8 to 9 inches.
And tear off that strip.
You're going to need four strips total.
And I've already started and I have three placed together, so I'm going to add my fourth
strip to this.
Once you have your first color done, go ahead and pick a second color if you want to do
something like the penguin wallet, where it's black on outside and blue on the inside.
If you want to do something more like this polka dot one, where it's white with white
on the inside, go ahead and just use one color for both.
For this particular design, I’m using yellow and green.
I've already put four strips of the green together, so I'm just going to sandwich the
swatches.
Just try to line them up as best you can.
Once you line them up, push them down.
It may not be perfect and you may get some bubbles, you may have to pull the tape apart
a little bit, but you can always push it pretty flat anyway.
Not too bad, and the yellow side is almost perfect.
Then, you're going to want to trim the edges to get rid of the excess stickiness that may
be on the edges and to make them all pretty even.
And, once you trim it down, measure again to make sure it's in that 8 to 9 inches.
I'm going to go ahead and swap this one out for this guy over here that I've already trimmed
down.
If I go ahead and measure it it's almost 9 inches across, which is good.
The next part that you need to do is to get these inside pockets.
Here, you'll notice that they're white pockets with penguin trim.
For this wallet, I'm doing yellow pockets with paint drop trim.
So I've already made some of the swatches, but I'll make another one so you can see how.
Pull out one strip of tape, roughly about 7 inches in length, and fold it over on itself.
And push down.
Measure it.
I have about 3 1/4 to 4 inches, which is good.
Most cards that you put in your wallet will fit with a little extra on the sides.
Just like so, which is what you want.
Go ahead and trim that bit, that scraggly bit off on the end so that it looks nice.
Next, you're going to want to pull yourself a piece of the splatter duct tape.
And you'll notice that I'm ripping the tape the majority of the time.
Duct tape is actually very easy to rip from the roll, and, if you don't use your scissors,
they don't get all gunked-up right away, which is kind of nice.
I'm going to rip the piece in half and use it the top and use it to be an accent piece.
I just eyeball it and press it down and then on the back, you'll notice that's where my
air bubble crease is, you'll fold over.
Nobody sees that part so it's okay.
Then this is where you need your scissors-to trim the sides when you have the excess.
So go ahead and make four of those.
Now I've already started placing some of my pockets on this partially premade wallet.
When you're placing them go ahead and take that sample card that you have out of your
wallet and put it so that the top of the card is right at the edge.
Then, take the piece of duct tape that you have and measure it to the top.
This one is a little short after I trimmed it, but luckily I've already made a couple
extras.
If you find that you've trimmed to far, just go ahead back and make another.
So looking at this one, you need to make sure that the bottom covers the bottom of the card,
while the top of card doesn't extend the top of the wallet.
And, I like to edge the pocket side right up to the edge of the wallet.
So that's about a good spot for it.
The wallet is still there.
I have some pre-torn green pieces.
I'm going to go ahead and get a really small strip just to tape along the bottom.
I'm using the green here because the yellow pocket against the green, you won't notice
that green so much, and that's not the accent part I'm going to want noticed.
I'm going to want this top part noticed.
Then I grab my other pocket, take my card out, and this time, I'm going to put the pocket
pretty close to the bottom, and when you have your card in there you want to be able to
see the pocket top, the card, and then the next pocket top without it coming out the
bottom.
And that looks pretty good, so I'm going to go ahead, get another small strip, and tape
the bottom.
You'll notice when I tape across I try not to hit that middle crease—it'll just make
your wallet that much harder to fold in half.
Now I'm just going to quick trim these sides, and you'll see I have four pockets that still
kind of flop around a little bit because I haven't secured them in the middle.
What I'm going to do next is I'm going to take a larger piece of green and tape it right
down the middle so it just slightly covers the side of each and it can go up and fold
over the top here.
It won't need to be quite as big as a full strip, so just trim a little bit of the strip
off.
Depending on how you've made your wallet, you may need to trim more or less.
Before I really push down, I'm going to go ahead and test this again with my card, and
it looks like there will be plenty of room on this side for me to add a piece of tape
to close everything off.
That side, not quite so much, so I'm going to pull this up, I'm going to take a little
bit more off.
That's the great thing about the tape is that once you have your wallet to this point, where
nothing sticky is facing up, you can pull it on and off pretty easily.
So let's test that again.
That's plenty of space, as is that.
So I'm going to fold it over the edge, just a little bit.
And at the bottom instead of folding it over, I'm going to go ahead and just snip it off.
Next, I want to put some pretty trim on the top here and the top here so that it's lined
just like it is here in the penguin wallet.
Go ahead, eyeball a piece of your decorative tape, rip it in half, and then for this one
I didn't leave myself a lot of room, but that's okay.
There's just enough there.
Go ahead and secure it on the edge of the wallet, and then fold it over so the bright
yellow on the inside will also be accented by the paint splatter on the edge.
And I'm going to go ahead and do that on the other side with the other half of the tape
I fold.
With this one, I put a little bit extra width of the tape to be shown on the outside because
there are no pockets hindering that view.
Fold it up and trim your edges.
Once that's done, all you have are two more pieces of tape.
Eyeball it, so that you get about the right size that you need.
Split the tape in half again, take your card and make sure you measure.
So with this, I see that I have about 1/2 an inch of space there.
So, I'm going to get pretty close to the card, but not touching it, and go all the way across
and fold it over on this side as well.
I have half the tape on this side, so go ahead and pull that card out, put the card on the
other side, and repeat.
Almost there.
Go ahead, trim off these extra bits that you have on the tops and the bottoms, and then,
this part is tricky depending on how yours lines up, but you might need to do a little
snip right at the top, just where it opens up, so that you can open the cash pocket easily.
Then once you’ve done that, go ahead and fold it in half.
Push the crease tightly, so it holds that fold, and there you have your duct tape wallet.
Four card pockets on the inside and a bright yellow cash pocket.