The Story Behind Ducttapestuff

The story behind Ducttapestuff dates all the way back to 2003 when one of my friends showed me a wallet that he had made out of duct tape. I complimented him on how neat it was and I knew that I had to give it a shot. A little while later I got a roll of red duct tape (it was actually Scotch brand) and tried my hand at making a wallet. It probably would have been a lot easier if I had looked online on how to make a wallet before trying it out but instead I broke down the process of how it had to be done in my head and then started sticking pieces of tape together. I ended up with a pretty wrinkled wallet with no credit card holders (I would learn these later, also without looking at any directions/videos.) You can check out my first wallet in "Collections Volume 1" on the Youtube channel. I perfected my design and then made an all black wallet which I use to this day. From 2003 to 2008 I tinkered with duct tape and various ways of making things out of it. I taught several classes at summer camps on how to make wallets out of tape and some of these classes had 30-40 people! In October of 2008 I got an idea for making a Youtube channel to showcase tutorials that I would come up with and then post for others to see. On November 7th, 2008 the channel was born and on November 28th my first video on how to make flowers out of tape was posted. The rest, of course, is history.

The Sonic character wallets

A while back I decided to make a Sonic the Hedgehog wallet and the design became so popular that I eventually made three more characters from the Sonic universe. All four of these wallets are made by a form of decoration that I refer to as "puzzle decoration." Puzzle decoration involves cutting out several different pieces of duct tape which are pieced together like a puzzle to form a more complex picture or design.

Check out the Sonic poll on the left side of the blog and vote for your favorite character wallet!

If you would like to learn how to pull off puzzle decoration on your own, check out this tutorial on puzzle decoration: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ny7AerNi9O8

My Favorite Duct Tape Story - It's Out of this World

Duct tape saved Apollo 17 moonbuggy, while on the moon.

On the NASA website today, a tale in praise of the many merits of duct tape when one is on the moon with a busted buggy:

The date was Dec. 11, 1972. Astronauts Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt had just landed their lunar module Challenger in a beautiful mountain-ringed valley named Taurus-Littrow on the edge of the Sea of Serenity. (...)

Cernan: "Okay. I can't say I'm very adept at putting fenders back on. But I sure don't want to start without it. I'm just going to put a couple of pieces of good old-fashioned American gray tape on it...(and) see whether we can't make sure it stays."

In spite of his thick gloves, Cernan managed to unroll and tear off the needed pieces, but moondust foiled his first repair:

Cernan: "…good old-fashioned gray tape doesn't want to stick very well." (At a post flight briefing he explained: "Because there was dust on everything, once you got a piece of tape off the roll, the first thing the tape stuck to was dust; and then it didn't stick to anything else.")

His second attempt succeeded, however. "I am done!" crowed Cernan. "If that fender stays on ... I'd like some sort of mending award." And with that, they were off.

Welcome To Blogger.com!

Hello there and welcome to the blog of Ducttapestuff. This is the third internet spot for the official Ducttapestuff Youtube channel. Now you can watch videos on the Youtube channel, check for updates on my Facebook fan page, and check out all kinds of cool pictures, articles, and other online material on my blog. Hope you like it and become a follower today!