Thursday, February 9, 2012

Come Walk in my Shoes and See the Way I'm Living if You Really Want to

On another visit to Target, I was drawn to this plaid Duck Tape:


There were other colors and styles like animal prints ( and even themes like Hello Kitty) which kind of got me thinking about the craftier side of duct tape.  I remember a while back seeing posts about kids who went to their proms in duct taped outfits and currently, Duck Tape even has contests for it.  So when I got these boots from Goodwill, I realized I had a project.  They were the perfect candidate as some of the original pleather was scratched off in places:


And they ended up like this.


Interested?

I googled around and came across great posts about such a project here, here, and this great tutorial by Crafting in the Rain here.  Anyhoo, I ran into one major issue: matching the plaid exactly was not possible due to the way the pattern is printed on the tape.  So I focused on syncing the broad purple lines as much as possible:


As I was using a pair of somewhat dull scissors of my mom's that got stickier as I cut more tape, I found it advantageous to work as much length as possible to prevent tearing the tape (due to cutting with dull scissors) and pattern consistency: 


Be sure to press the tape into all the wrinkles of the boot by pressing outward with a hand inside the boot and pressing the tape into the wrinkles with the other hand on the outside of the boot.  When I was able to lay the pieces evenly next to each other, it didn't look too bad:


The hard part was hitting the curves, where the tape can't just be laid side by side in rows:


So I would fill the blank spaces with shorter pieces of duct tape trying to sync the purple lines as best I could.  I also made a boundary near the bottom edge with little pieces of duct tape so that when I cut the bottom edges of the long strips roughly with the scissors, the boundary would keep the bottom edge looking clean:


Unfortunately it was really challenging to match even just the purple lines around the bottom curve, so the bottom part of the boot definitely has a more collagy look.


Well they may not be perfect, but they lend a fun accent to simple jeans, don't you think?


This project took less about two hours so I give a thumbs up on the fun plaid Duck Tape for this upcycled boot project.  Anybody else have ideas of what I else should duct tape?

4 comments:

tiffany said...

you are so amazing. i would buy those in a store! p.s. i miss your face so much. :(

Pound said...

oh holy hell, duct tape boots? evan BOUGHT a duct tape wallet from one of sabastian's kids and actually uses it. you 2 will be the source of ridicule. from me.

Heidi said...

Brad has made some super cool bracelets with duct tape. We'll send you some!

Blah said...
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