Duct Taped Gift Bag

Hmm - it seems that many of my posts have been about gifts I've been giving instead of about crafts I've been getting done. I've been making a lot of things, and I'll catch up on that shortly.

My sister-in-law graduated from college last weekend, and my husband and I tried to give her something practical - kitchen gadgets that all nest together for easy storage as she gets her first apartment.

My husband's sister likes duct tape, so I thought it would be fun to dress up a plain gift bag with duct tape in her school colors. A lot of members of the family - myself, included - seem to have chosen schools that include blue in the school colors, so we tend to have a lot of blue decorations around, but the only gift bag I could find wasn't the right shade. Even the wrapping paper is blue.

I was going to just cut out triangle shapes from my blue duct tape to decorate the bag, but found a fantastic tutorial on making duct tape stickers here: http://www.richelafabianmorgan.com/2013/06/making-duct-tape-stickers.html

This required:
Duct Tape
and
Parchment Paper

Basically, the duct tape goes onto a sheet of parchment, and then you can cut out the shapes you want.

I used a circle punch instead of cutting out shapes freehand.
This was a pain in the butt because the shapes didn't always cut out right, so I started holding the punch upside down when I punched my shapes, which was helpful.

I laid out the circles in an allover polkadot pattern, but less of a design would still look cute and be a lot less work. (Yes, this picture was taken right before gifting the bag, because I didn't get any when wrapping the night before.)

If I'm going to make my own bow for a gift bag, it's going to be a giant, curly bow. They're just fun. For a regular wrapped present, I'm still waiting to try getting those cute recycled magazine bows to work out for me.

Obviously, there are also sheets of duct tape available at craft stores. They'd make this sort of project a lot easier, but it also means going out and buying them. As it was, the duct tape on parchment slid a bit, but it worked just fine for what I needed it for.